Why do Americans care about the genocide in Darfur, while Germans don’t? Because Americans are not afraid to tell good and evil apart.
On the Global Day for Darfur last Sunday, 120 demonstrators made it to the streets of Berlin. This demonstration was all that happened in Germany. Vigils and demonstrations In the United States drew thousands of participants, from the big rallies in San Francisco, New York and Washington to the small events in hundreds of cities.
We Germans can be lazy when it comes to supporting those in need, and quick to attack those who are most vulnerable. It is already a national sport here to criticize Americans for seeing things “only in black and white.” This may often be true, but the case of Darfur reveals that there are instances where balanced judgement is impossible. As the campaign of racist incitement between “Arabic” and “African” tribes claims 400,000 lives, a German intellectual writes that those who call for an intervention to end the slaughter do not understand the complex relations between the Darfuri tribes. It is hard to imagine a bigger insult for those who are committed to stop the genocide. Even so, such “balanced” opinions are widespread among those German intellectuals who deign to say anything at all about Darfur.
For the record: When people are murdered on such a scale, it is pure evil. There is no dialectic in it, and it has to be stopped by any means necessary. It helps to have a border beyond which one clearly distinguishes between good and evil. Not to draw such a line ends in the disgusting moral relativism that is endemic to the debate in Germany.
The thousands of Americans who protested to end the genocide prove that old-Europe intellect does not necessarily lead to proper ethical standards.
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Daniel Fallenstein works as Social Media Manager at Fairplanet. He is responsible for maintaining the corporate weblog for Fairplanet as well as the weblog of the website for (Rettet Darfur).
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May 4, 2007
Christoph Suess, Freelancer, Silver Contributor (41)
I think that you are absolutely right regarding your judgement on Darfur. However, I think that we should be realistic: does Germany including the majority of Germans have the will to put their sons and daughters in harms way in order to end the conflict? Or do we want to spend millions of Euros in that conflict? Is there a realistic chance of solving it at a modest price? I guess the answer is no! The truth is that as long as it does not affect us directly, yes, perhaps we feel bad when we hear about the things that are happening there, but that still does not mean that we have the conviction and determince to actually change something on the ground. If the 90s taught us and the USA anything, then this is that we should not intervene without conviction. The result would be that there would not be ANY support any longer among our population to get involved ANYwhere. Germany is not yet ready to take its "responsibility to protect", to suffer major casualties for humanitarian reasons. There are still painfull discussions ahead of us in the years to come. Yugoslavia was a first step in the right direction, but we still have to learn a lot. And yes, we can learn that from the US, Canada and its courageous populations.