A Wimp on Geno­cide — New York Times:

Pres­i­dent Bush does­n’t often find com­mon cause with Cuba, Zim­bab­we, Iran, Syr­ia and Venezuela. But this month the Bush admin­is­tra­tion joined with those coun­tries and oth­ers to evis­cer­ate a forth­right U.N. state­ment that nations have an oblig­a­tion to respond to genocide.

It was our own Axis of Medieval, and it reflect­ed the feck­less response of Pres­i­dent Bush to geno­cide in Dar­fur. It’s not that he favors chil­dren being tossed onto bon­fires or teenage girls being gang-raped and muti­lat­ed, but he can’t both­er him­self to try very hard to stop these hor­rors, either.

Ms. TfK and I went to see Nick Cage in “Lord of War.” I was expect­ing a lighter take, based on the adver­tis­ing and the review I linked. It had some fun­ny moments, and it’s sold as a com­e­dy, but we both came away try­ing to fig­ure out some of the moral issues the movie raised. Indeed, some of the jokes failed because they came too soon after par­tic­u­lar­ly chill­ing moments.

The major issue that Cage – a com­pos­ite char­ac­ter drawn from five major gun-run­ners – con­fronts is the moral­i­ty of sell­ing guns, ammo, and heav­ier equip­ment to the worst dic­ta­tors and mur­der­ers in the world. He dodges the accu­sa­tions of com­plic­i­ty by argu­ing that 

• he’s good at it
• some­one else would do it if he didn’t
• sell­ing guns is just like sell­ing any­thing else

All fair points, but it’s still the case that, if peo­ple like him weren’t cir­cum­vent­ing arms embar­goes, it would be more expen­sive for the butch­ers of the devel­op­ing world to car­ry out their dirty work. The blood isn’t on Cage’s hands except what­ev­er sticks to the dia­monds he’s paid with.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when Bush joins the worst of the world in water­ing down a renewed com­mit­ment to avert­ing geno­cide, he isn’t per­son­al­ly cul­pa­ble for the hor­rors in Sudan, but he’s in a posi­tion to pre­vent tragedies, and there’s no way to be neutral.

As Bush said once upon a time:

I don’t believe there’s many shades of gray in this war. You’re either with us or against us; you’re either evil or you’re good.

Which is it?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Bush, geno­cide, movies, pol­i­tics, Dar­fur