The world is watching.
Tragically, that is all the world does. Watch.
Watching seems to be what we world citizens do best. It's certainly what nations do best. For sure it's what the United Nations does best.
In Myanmar or Darfur, we love to watch. Sometimes we even posture and preen and puff up our chest. It's a sort of voyeuristic use of power.
We stare in through whatever window is available, usually the television screen, and we shake our heads in disbelief. We ask "Why doesn't somebody help? Just not us."
We are voyeurs, addicted to rape and war and murder. We can't seem to get enough. How else can you explain our failure to stop it? We must need it. We must want it.
In a distant land we can't even find on a map it's all so sanitary.... so clean. The people look so strange. We can't understand a thing they say. It's not like it's one of us.
And the numbers. They are so sanitary, too. They are so big we cannot relate to them. 100,000. 200,000. 400,000. With numbers like that it's just not real. It's more like the score of a video game.
So we do nothing but watch. We take an extreme nationalistic, racist, xenophobic stance to defend our inaction. Not just Americans (although we may be the worst), but virtually every country on earth claims the deaths of thousands isn't worth the life of "one of our own."
Even as the United Nations finally approves a peace keeping force for Sudan and Darfur, no country will offer manpower to fill the ranks. So thousands continue to die and hundreds of thousands continue to suffer. Millions are displaced.
And we watch. Voyeurs to injustice. Voyeurs to suffering. Voyeurs to genocide.
It's no wonder the military junta in Myanmar feel so very safe. They all will sleep soundly tonight, secure in the knowledge that the world is watching.
1 comment:
Say what, Wizard! Don't you think it's time to put up:
1. One more reason to boycott the Chinese Olympics?
2. One less reason to outlaw terrorism?
3. Both of the above?
About #2: non-violence in Burma has been a bust. Is it time for Freedom-Fighters to foment terrorism? I mean, that's what we did in the event of the Spanish Civil War. Remember the Abraham Lincoln Brigade? Is it time to raise money, buy arms, and get it on? I mean China's never going to do squat other than squatting on their own little honey-pot of LNG, right?
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