Genocide...

This morning as I watched the Today show in a quite hurried fashion, I happened to catch the following revellation:

There is a genocide going on in Dharfur...

Interesting.

Well I am here to tell you to be a little cynical of this. Crazy huh - being a cynic about something so serious. But let us all step back from the emotion for a second and understand ONE thing - there can't be good guys without bad guys. The United States has romanticized its role on the planet since the Manifest Destiny, and has continued to do so via men like Jackson, Sherman, Grant, Roosevelt (x2), Wilson, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy, and right on up through Colin Powell, and Stormin' Norman. When we did not have the hero in politics and war, we have had John Wayne play the part on television.

America loves the good guy.

So in order for us to play this part, we need a villian. We need a Slobodan Milosovic. We need a Hitler, a Hussein. Without these chumps, we would simply be another group of jerkoffs that think our country is the best - we have to PROVE we are the best.

In this light consider what is going on in Sudan. The information that has been disseminated about the conflict has been somewhat sparse, and in most cases as been presented as the "bad guys" going into villages and killing the men and raping the women...

...which is a sad story, and I have no doubt that it is happening. But, it is very akin to the story of Serbia, is it not? Oddly, that was ALSO sold to us as genocide, when in FACT it was not at all genocide.

Consider the definition of the word:

"The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group."

The problem in Serbia was that Milosovic was engaged in a WAR with Bosnia, and then a civil war of its own. By its very nature, one side is trying to eliminate the other in war - so the question begs to be raised, "Is war genocide?"

The answer is no.

Genocide is lacing blankets with small pox and giving them to freezing Native Americans in the Plains...

Genocide is taking people from their homes in Africa and making them work fields on another continent some 5 thousand miles away...

Genocide is taking people from their homes in the middle of the night and placing them in camps where they work to death and have their body parts used in household items...

What happened in Bosnia and Serbia was the result of a civil war. In all of this media bullshit, everyone somehow forgot that Yugoslavia is not even on the map anymore. It was no accident - and these wars were no accident either.

Why is it that no one said "genocide" when we did the EXACT same thing to the Vietnamese in the late sixties and early seventies? Is it not genocide to drop more bombs on Hanoi and North Vietnam than were dropped in ALL of World War Two by the United States?

My feeling is that there is a war going on in Sudan, and as a result the use of the word genocide is a bit of a stretch. I believe that the media wants us to be the good guy again, and based on their success in the former Yugoslavia, think that they can get another story in East Africa. I hope that they are wrong, because sacrificing American men and women for battles that need not be fought is FAR from heroic, and makes OUR government the villian...