"Never again!"

“Never again!” was the world’s response to Nazi Germany’s slaughter of over four million European Jews during Hitler’s Holocaust. “Never again will genocide plague the global community while we have the resources to intervene!” declared America and other of the world’s industrialized nations during this bloody chapter in history.

In 1996 these same countries turned their heads to the instigated bloodshed that took place between Rwanda’s Hutus and Tutsis which resulted in the deaths of nearly one million men, women, and children. The global community turned a deaf ear to the cries and to the pleas of those who could offer them nothing in return for deliverance. While Tutsi women and children were raped and butchered by Hutu men equipped with foreign guns and machetes, the world was immobilized by a single question: is this truly genocide? “Not on our watch!” the U. S. maintained afterwards, despite our government’s inactivity and indecisiveness due to Rwanda’s dearth of materials that would make U.S. intervention worthwhile.

The year is now 2008 and history is one again repeating itself. And once again, the world is standing by and watching (and in some instances assisting) the genocide that is currently taking place in the Sudan. Over half a million black Darfurian men, women, and children have been systematically annihilated by Arab janjaweed who seek to ethnically cleanse the region of its black inhabitants. I’ve come to realize that in today’s global society it’s not about values, rather it’s about whose lives have value. The world will continue to face war and violence as long as there is money to be made and power to be procured; history has proved this to be true; history is proving this to be true. The world said “Never again will there be genocide,” after the Holocaust, yet Rwanda happened and Darfur is currently happening. The United States said “Never again!” to injustice after Vietnam and yet we now find ourselves fighting an unjust war that finds its roots in insatiable greed. “Never again!” we like to say. Never again will there be peace.