On 15 November, the Democratic candidates debated each other in Las Vegas.  One issue in particular caught my attention, and that was the question posed by Wolf Blitzer when he asked, “When they clash, what is more important, human rights or national security?”  The framing of this question interests me – are these mutually exclusive goals in the 21st century?  And who set the framework for this type of conjecture? 

I think the answer to the latter is obvious as we have lived through a Presidency that would propose and carry out to limit the freedoms of its own citizens in order to provide – at least on the surface – a sense of security.  From the suspension of habeas corpus to the illegal spying of American citizens to soft media control, BushCo’s answer to the terrorist question is to become like them in order to fight them. 

Of course, the irrationality of our diminished freedoms at home stems from the fact that the great call of duty all neoconservatives assume upon their shoulders is the spread of democracy abroad.  As Bill Maher, one of the patron saints of this blog, observed:

[George Bush] is gonna spread freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people if he has to kill every last one of them to do it.

So we have the neocon’s answer to the question.  What about the Democratic candidates?

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If you needed more proof that Republicans continue to the frame debate, you need only listen to Blitzer’s assertion that “occassionally they could clash”, but also to Clinton’s and Dodd’s answer. 

Only Bill Richardson and Barack Obama maintained that the concepts are not mutually exclusive.  More importantly, I would maintain that if you tend to the issues of human rights, not only on a moral basis, but on an economic, social and political basis, it will make the United States safer. 

Samantha Power, Obama’s Foreign Policy Advisor, in her book A Problem from Hell, asserted the following:

… security for the Americans at home and abroad is contingent on international stability, and there is perhaps no greater source of havoc than a group of well-armed extremists bent on wiping out a people on ethnic, national, or religious grounds.

… the sad record of the last century shows that the walls of the United States tries to build around genocidal socities almost inevitably shatter.  States that murder and torment their own citizens target citizens elsewhere. 

~ Excerpt, page 513

We need only look to the lessons of the past – the lessons of Hilter who persecuted his own people and then moved across Europe, Saddam Hussein who tried to wipe out the Kurds and then waged war on Kuwait, and Molosevic spread his war from Slovenia to Bosnia and Kosovo – to see that leaders who will squelch the rights of their own citizens don’t necessarily play well with others, much less respect our borders. 

After all, the well-documented humanitarian crisis that existed under the Taliban reached our shores on September the 11th.  And we can see regimes today, like the government of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan, who not only mimic the Taliban in their cruelty, but also in their disrespect for the borders of their neighbors. 

We cannot build a wall around America, but we can ensure that the grievences of citizens around the world are not played out upon our national stage.  This does not mean policing the world, but it does mean that America needs to operate globally at a diplomatic intensity where the Geneva Convention is of utmost importance.  We need a President who understands that if the people of the world have their basic human rights, there will be no need to threaten our security. 

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When I think of the atrocities in Darfur, a quote from the recent Ken Burns documentary, The War, comes to mind:

“G-d help us.  You come Yourself.  Don’t send Jesus … this is no place for children.”

~Episode 3 – Sergeant at the battle of Anzio

I’m wondering if anyone has seen any of the refugees in Darfur, whether in Mornei Camp or Kalma Camp, drinking a refreshing bottle of Coca-Cola? Me neither. However, Coke is doing great business in Khartoum, according to a recent New York Times article.

“In 2002, Sudanese investors opened a new Coca-Cola factory, with Coke syrup legally exported to Sudan under an exemption for food and medicine. The $140-million plant churns out 100,000 bottles of Coke, Sprite and Fanta per hour”. [1]

How interesting. Especially since the company has recently announced a land donation in Atlanta, Georgia worth $2 million for a museum that will exhibit the papers of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder what Dr. King would say about the donation?

Representative John Lewis, D-GA said about the donation: “It helps to educate and sensitize [the business community]. When Coca-Cola speaks, the business community listens.” [2]

Maybe Coca-Cola needs to stop speaking, and start listening a little more. In their own words, Coke has this on their website:

“Our actions – the way we treat our people, produce our beverages, protect the environment and benefit communities – determine whether we will be invited [into people’s lives] again. We strive to listen and respond to the needs of people and the planet. For us, corporate responsibility is an ongoing journey, not a destination.”

Maybe the corporate heads of Coca-Cola need to journey to Kalma Camp. I’m sure they can afford the trip.

There’s a place on their site to talk back: http://www2.coca-cola.com/contactus/index.html

The address is:

The Coca-Cola Company
P.O. Box 1734
Atlanta, GA 30301

[1] Gettleman, Jeffrey. “War in Sudan? Not Where the Oil Wealth Flows.” The New York Times. 24 October 2006

[2] Dewan, Shaila. “Coca-Cola Donates Land to Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta.” The New York Times 23 October 2006.

The Shame of Darfur

Estimates for the death toll in Darfur are reaching the 300,000 mark. I find it interesting that we use the phrase “death toll” and not “death count” for such things. It underlies the cost of the loss of life – this is a toll not on the victims, but on us, the communities of the world that allow such a price to be paid.

Collective guilt is not apropos to what we have allowed to happen. And let me be clear – we allow this to happen. We allow China to trade lives for cheap oil. We allow the Khartoum government to get away with genocide for tips on Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist cells. This last revelation, made during the 60 Minutes segment, is especially repulsive because it shows how little the White House values life in general, ineffectively trading a life for a life is no fair trade at all.

But collective guilt will not plague us if this ever ends. No, we will again feel collective shame. The shame we tried to brush off after Rwanda. The shame we tried to sweep under the rug after Cambodia. And we deserve this, this shame that haunts the world over our apathy to allow fellow mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters to die at the hands of men who have the ability to view human beings as animals.

Recently, I have been reading Primo Levi’s haunting last work, The Drowned and the Saved. He committed suicide shortly after he finished the work in 1987 as he was able to see history repeated in Cambodia while the world wrung its hands and said, “What can we do??”

The most interesting chapter Mr. Levi writes is that on Shame. The shame the survivors felt after liberation. The shame of knowing what they had to do in the camps to survive, and the shame of knowing they had been “diminished” by the world. Interestingly, Levi draws a line: prisoners were victimized by the Nazis, but they were diminished by the world.

“And there is another, vaster shame, the shame of the world. … And yet there are those who, faced by the crime of others or their own, turn their backs so as not to see it and not feel touched by it … deluding themselves that not seeing was a way of not knowing, and that not knowing relieved them of their share of complicity. … Never again could it be cleansed; it would prove that man, the human species – we, in short – had the potential to construct an infinite enormity of pain, and that pain is the only force created from nothing, without cost and without effort.”

~Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

How unfair, that survivors will feel the same shame of the world?

You can check out more of the 60 Minutes segment on Darfur by clicking on the following link: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

Security Council Must React Strongly to Expulsion of UN Envoy

New Press Release from Human Rights Watch Africa

(New York, October 23, 2006) – Rising violence in eastern Chad and Darfur highlights the immediate need for the United Nations Security Council to strengthen civilian protection by the UN mission in Sudan following Khartoum’s expulsion of the UN secretary-general’s special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, Human Rights Watch said today.