Misdirection on the Darfur Question, Again?
by Leigh Ranck
Another politician diverted the "Darfur Question" again last month, on June 2, 2007. The second democratic debate was held in Goffstown, New Hampshire and included Democratic candidates Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, and former Senator John Edwards. They clashed mostly over the war in Iraq; however, when the candidates were asked directly whether troops should be sent into the Darfur region of Sudan, where reportedly five hundred-thousand Sudanese have been murdered, no direct answer was found. Hillary Clinton quickly redirected the question and concentrated on the wording instead. Senator Clinton, who the American media is quickly spinning as the winner of the debate or at least the front-runner in the campaign, may have seemed in control by questioning the question, but did it really solve anything? Will a candidate please give a direct answer to the "Darfur Question?" An answer to the question of whether or not the United States should send military support, or will they continue to concentrate solely on a never-ending war in an oil rich country, Iraq?
The American public was reminded of how unreliable Senators really are. But the American public is so forgiving of its politicians: national blunder of Hurricane Katrina is forgiven in less than a year, the now crime-ridden and destroyed city of New Orleans left to fend for itself is forgotten, and the thousands of soldiers killed in Iraq are now just more names to the casualty list. The American public, ultimately, must claim responsibility for the lack of political attention on Darfur.
The public continues to allow the politicians to redirect, ignore, and side-step the "Darfur Question." Of course, there are more pressing issues that the American public is concentrating most of its attention on: rising gas prices, "the War on Terror," and the rising and falling economy. All of these issues directly affect the majority of the American public in their daily lives, but so does the lack of funding in American schools and rising violence amongst teens. The public ignores those things too. The killings in Darfur continually slip into that forgettable pile while gay marriage and immigration grab the front page headline.
It is true that some rare Americans care about all of the issues. Is it too much to ask for the candidates to concentrate on all the issues that will face them if they actually manage to be elected come November 2008? Darfur will unquestioningly be one of those issues seeing that George W. Bush continues to ignore the topic. The candidates seem to have taken a page from the President himself, discounting the question themselves. Senator Hillary Clinton may have won some election poll percentages by jabbing at the question's wording, but she could have also lost some votes by again side-stepping an important topic to the American public. When will Africa, and Darfur especially, be on the radar of most Americans? Will it have to come at the expense of more innocent lives? No valuable product like oil can be magically discovered and exported from Darfur for "Big Business" America to profit from at the natives' expense; is this the reason America has no time for Darfur? There is no easy answer. There is no easy fix. The United States can go into a foreign country with relatively no violence and create violence, yet, the US can not go into a region with hundreds of thousands of innocents being murdered daily, even to create peace!
What will it take? Will it take one of these candidates to change the American view point come the Presidential Inauguration in January of 2008? That is too much time for the people of Darfur to wait. Action must take place now. Questions must be answered. In the mean time, another candidate gets away with evading the important issues. Are changes to come? Will they come in time to save thousands of lives?
