We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.
Philip Gourevitch may have been writing about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but the title could just as easily be applied to the countless victims in Darfur, Sudan. With more than 400,000 people dead and 2 million displaced, our generation is forced to admit for the first time in our adult lives that genocide is transpiring in our midst and even worse, that we are doing very little to terminate it.
We all know this is genocide. Our own government even said so in September 2004, more than 16 months ago, and yet still has done close to nothing. The entire world knows what is happening-once again-on the African continent and refuses-once again-to make any serious attempt to halt the calculated slaughter of an entire people.
From a political standpoint, I admit that I am a strict interventionist. I even believe that with the support of the international community, sufficient troops and a plan for the aftermath, we could have and should have invaded Iraq in order to topple one of the worst dictators of the modern era. But this is not and should not be a partisan issue-just ask Senator Sam Brownback or New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. In the case of Darfur, a U.S.-led NATO force of ground troops is the world's only hope, especially when you consider the fact that the U.N. is a bureaucratic sham of an organization and that the high and mighty E.U. failed to intervene when ethnic cleansing was being carried out in its own backyard.
Thus, it is up to the United States to prove its mettle as a beacon of freedom and actually promote human rights abroad by coming to the aid of innocent Africans. Ideally, I would love to see the nascent African Union solve this problem on its own, but it is simply ill-equipped to handle a mission of this magnitude. Perhaps one day down the line, the AU will be able to handle its own humanitarian crises, but a paltry 7,000 troops cowed by Khartoum is woefully insufficient.
During President George W. Bush's first year in the White House, he wrote in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, "Not on my watch." It is up to us, university students at Duke and across the nation, to make the president live up to his word.
I have to admit that like the vast majority of the students at Duke, I have done close to nothing to halt "the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world." But a pin on my backpack and attendance at a recent awareness session pathetically qualify me as a leading activist on the issue.
There has not been a single editorial, op-ed or even letter on Darfur on The Chronicle's editorial pages since March of my junior year-and I am about to graduate.
Like the national media, we have been far too preoccupied with seemingly more pressing issues, such as the Duke Obsrvr.
And during the next six months, I have no doubt that you will hear more about Debra Lafave, the 24-year-old bottle-blond Florida teacher who had sex with her 14-year-old student, than you will about the government-sponsored death squads terrorizing Darfur. But our own previous superficiality does not mean we are incapable of refocusing our efforts and beginning to devote ourselves to this dire situation.
I am not saying no one has been doing anything on campus. To the contrary, there is a small and committed coterie of students who have been obsessing over this issue for the better part of the last two years. But their efforts have waxed and waned during the past three semesters due to the lack of popular support from the rest of the student body. As the national advocacy movement gears up for the "Million Voices for Darfur" rally in Washington, D.C. April 30, Duke students must do everything within their power to raise awareness and truly honor the principle of "Never Again."
Educated at a Jewish parochial school, I have been learning about the Holocaust since kindergarten. I visited the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem when I was 7 years old and have read Elie Wiesel's Night every other year since the eighth grade.
But I will not be able to bring myself to commemorate Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) this year if I do not get involved in our campus's burgeoning struggle to end genocide.
I urge you to begin by visiting www.savedarfur.org and then to become a foot soldier in this epic battle against true evil.
Adam Yoffie is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Monday.
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