Genocide in Sudan has been on-going for over twenty years with hardly a peep out of the media or the U.N. Go here for an overview of this terrible situation (Thanks to Instapundit for the link). See also here.
Here's a test. The governing party in Khartoum, which is carrying out the starvation, displacement, slaughter and enslavement of millions of Sudanese, are (insert ethnicity) ________ . Their victims are (insert ethnicity) ________. The forces carrying out the bloody atrocities in Sudan are (insert religion) _________ and their victims are (insert religion) _________. If you're not sure of the answers you may go here to find them, but I suspect most readers won't have any trouble figuring them out.
Here's another question: Why do you suppose the media has been reticent about publicizing what is the worst case of genocide since, well, at least since the Hutus killed almost a million Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, and maybe since the Jewish holocaust of the early forties? For the answer to this question consult the answers to the questions above. Meanwhile, imagine the media reaction if the perpetrators of this horror were Israelis and the victims were Palestinians.
A third question: Should the U.S. intervene to stop the killing or should we merely try to negotiate an end to the genocide? What if negotiations fail? What if intervention means the loss of some American lives and the loss of some innocent Sudanese lives? Should we just walk away and excuse our indifference by simply saying it's none of our business, these people are no threat to us? How is this choice between intervention or non-intervention morally different than the decision the Bush administration was faced with prior to invading Iraq?
I assume that those who believe Bush had no business going into Iraq would look at the pictures of the starving Sudanese children and read the ghastly stories of butchery and say that, nevertheless, if negotiations don't work then we should do nothing more than pray for those poor people, and maybe try to send relief aid. I guess they would also be able to offer some moral justification for permitting a horrific evil that we have the means to end if we had the will to use it, although I don't know how convincing it would be.
I further assume that anyone who reads about the plight of these long-suffering, terrified and helpless people and decides that we should do whatever we reasonably can to help them, including sending in the Marines, will also agree that Bush did the right thing in going into Iraq to depose a tyrant whose murderous rule was no less brutal than that of the ruling party in Khartoum. If they don't I would like to know what the salient moral differences are between the two situations which would justify intervention in Sudan but not in Iraq because frankly I don't see them.
