Letter to the Editor: Fail to see logic

By Sun Advocate

Editor:
I trust I am not the only one seeing a number of inconsistencies in Ben Cohen’s article, “Contrasting tragedies,” in the Sept. 28 issue of the Sun Advocate.
He states that after World War II, ” 130 countries promised to prevent genocide if it occurred anywhere in the world ever again.” Why then were there not 130 countries willing to confront Saddam Hussein over the genocide in Iraq? Surely there were many articles published and first person accounts over many years of the killing not only of minority groups but also of those who found disfavor in Hussein’s eyes.
Mr. Cohen wants our president to plead with the United Nations to save the people of the Sudan. Has he forgotten that Kofi Annan and Colin Powell went to the Sudan together to assess the situation? What has come of that effort? I have yet to see the United Nations taking any significant steps to alleviate the suffering there. Actually, this is not the first time that there has been genocide in the Sudan. Where was the outcry, from those 130 countries, the United Nations, our previous president, or even the Rev. Jesse Jackson when Muslim Sudanese were killing Christian Sudanese?
Where were the United Nations or those 130 countries that felt so strongly about genocide when the Tutsis and Hutus were killing each other in Rwanda? Did they think that was just a harmless disagreement among countrymen? What about Nigeria, Liberia, and the Cote d’ Ivoire? Ask the survivors of the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia what was done to help them and by whom. Ask Indian minorities in our neighbor to the south, Mexico, about genocide. They might not define it for you but they certainly could describe its characteristics.
Mr. Cohen rails against President Bush for going to war in Iraq and yet he wants him, in essence, to do that in the Sudan. He seems to think the United Nations which failed to support us vis-a-vis Iraq would do so vis-a-vis Sudan. I, for one, fail to see the logic in either of these lines of reasoning. I have great sympathy for those who are suffering currently in the Sudan, but I think Mr. Cohen, if he cannot come up with a better assessment, should stick to making ice cream.