Sudan's Darfur region

International News Article | Reuters.com

This whole situation just baffles me to no end. So far there are 50,000 dead in Darfur as Muslim militias supported by the government try to wipe out the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM.) So, while this is raging on in Sudan and people are dying, what is the mighty UN doing? NOTHING. Well, they are asking the participants to please stop. Does this carry any weight with the Muslim militias (Janjaweed)? Not really. While the government is in Nigeria discussing the situation with international comittees and the U.N. they are just continuing the violence. Is the JEM listening... well as long as the muslim militias are still shooting at them... they really don't have much incentive to disarm.

The idea of an arbitrating body for the world is great but, the really dangerous people the UN is supposed to protect peace loving people from are learning to exploit the bureaucracy of that body very effectively. While the UN is debating and playing politics and being sensative to the needs of the world, the killing continues unabated. These rogue nations have one guy who goes to the U.N. and bloviates about national security and sovereignty and introduces a mountain of legal hurdles to stall any actual action until the conflict is resolved, or crushed, or covered up and the original point has been made moot. Once genocide has been completed, for example, what's there to discuss with the U.N.? Sanctions aren't going to bring back the dead.

There's a prevalent snippet of wisdom that floats around the dark corners of a bureaucracy: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission." You see it in the architectural profession a lot when dealing with the government. For example, here in Lexington, there is a case working its way through the system involving Home Depot. Apparently there were zoning or leasing prohibitions in place at Lexington Mall to prevent the building of free standing structures on the mall's property. In violation of this provision, a Home Depot went up very quickly and started doing business. That was at least three years ago... The courts have decided that the Home Depot was built ilegally... but what do you do now that it's there and open? Will the courts make them tear it down? Or is that punishment too severe for the crime? The last ruling ordered the structure to be taken down and of course it's being appealed... But while all this is going on, there is a Home Depot there and it's making money. In reality there isn't much to a Home Depot building. It's a lot of concrete floors and a steel structure with some exterior walls. Putting them up and taking them down is a fairly simple matter. It is reasonable to believe that Home Depot has already made enough money from this store to build a new one and then some. If they have to take it down, so what? They've made their profit already.

Essentially Home Depot is exploiting the system's ineffectiveness to achieve it's ends just as many rogue nations do. This seems to arise from a difference of world views. For example, Islam and Judaism see the world very differently than Christians or Buddhists or Hindus. For Semitic cultures like Jews and Arabs the world is headed to the end of history and there will be judgement on the whole of creation. Your God is going to come down and judge your actions. He has given you orders thousands of years ago and you have to fulfill them. In this world view, the ends justify the means. It is OK to slaughter women and children and innocent civilians because you are doing it for the greater glory of God or Allah... or so the extremist view holds.

Exploiting the goodwill of those who would stop you is well within the playbook here. Christianity differs from it's cousins Islam and Judaism in that it received a healthy dose of Hellenistic philosophy in it's conception. It fuses the linear time model with the cyclic time model. The means are an end in themself. You cannot justify a means with an end because the end is predicated on living a certain way that includes universal love and the disolution of boundaries between people. Buddhism also incorporates this ideal into its theology.

So, while the well intentioned UN is a great tool for mediating between Christian, Hindu and Buddhist nations, it cannot penetrate the thick skins of cultures which do not share that world view as it stands today. One fifth of the world is Muslim today, that's a big fraction of the world to be abusing a system which is supposed to be keeping peace. Until the U.N. recognizes it's failures in this area, the middle east and the Muslim world will continue to be a troubled place... and the U.N. will continue to be ineffective there.