Nate knows the answers to his own questions. I believe Iraq was fought as an attempt to show the Muslim world that we can strike anywhere in the world we want with overwhelming force, in the belief that that would cow them into not supporting terrorism and threatening our oil supplies. It was an exercise in power, not really fought over WMD or to topple Saddam or even to install democracy in a country where people can’t even spell it; those were all just excuses used to create and sustain a pretext for invasion.

Even if Sudan were front-page news like the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, there would not be sufficient support for military action to end it. There was barely enough support for us to intervene in the Balkans, which was a European disaster and therefore much closer to our interests, and in Haiti which is just next door. There was no support for our action in Somalia when it got a little ugly, there was no support for action in Rwanda, little support for action in Liberia (and then only on a small scale, just protect Americans); and those were all widely-reported situations. So it should be no surprise that given the lack of news coverage on Sudan that there is no prospect of Americans supporting military intervention. At base, most of us just don’t care about those people. It’s sad but true.

That’s the case with the newspaper where I live. The entire front page every day is covered with a big headline that says “Bush Lied and Should Be Removed From Office”. There is simply no room for stories about Sudan.

When will people realize that having negative opinions about the decisions made by the president leads to genocide? People just don’t see the truth!

The reason for lack of press coverage – most of the press has only one goal right now: the removal of George Bush because he “lied”.

Powell recently went to the Sudan and tried diplomatic solutions – little coverage in the press.

France, ever the defenders of freedom in the world, have publicly stated that they believe this is an internal problem. The UN focuses most of its resolutions on Israel, not on situations like this.

What do we do? Talking to them doesn’t work. UN action = US action because much of the world has disarmed and is ineffective at dealing with situations like these (see UN/France actions in Rwanda, Ivory Coast)

What I’m truly surprised at is that the media hasn’t seen this as another opportunity to hit Bush by saying that because we are tied up in Iraq we can’t take care of this.

there are a couple projects I know of under way to try to raise awareness on the issue. One is up:

http://www.pasionofthepresent.com

check it out. help out.

Populace is a noun.

Populous is an adjective (as well as a great classic computer game).

Sorry about that.

– Neil Wehneman

I don’t have an answer as to why the media chooses not to cover it in detail. Perhaps the American media don’t view a connection between those events and the American people.

If the current (or future) administration took a stronger position on the issue of Sudan or other African nations, we’d probably have more news coverage.

I believe Mark Fiore said it best in this Flash cartoon.

– Neil Wehneman

So if you know anyone in television…. My own solution for now is to try to raise awareness in the community I know — I’d like to see more discussion on the blogs, for example. Also I recommend you call your reps. Many of them have supported legislation calling this a genocide, but thanking someone doing something right may be ask important as anything, letting your reps know you’re behind them in pushing this forward, that it IS a priority. I’d love to hear other ideas. I’m hopeful that we will do something — but its going to take lots and lots of personal connections.