AFTER the Holocaust more than 60 years ago, people asked how could we let it happen, how could the world's nations remain silent?
They also promised to never again be bystanders when others were attacked because of prejudice and blind hatred.
Well, the "never again" is happening right now. Who would have imagined that in 2008 similar stories of cruelty and despair would be coming out of Africa?
Indeed, the silence about the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region - the first genocide of the 21st century - is deafening.
The Italian poet Dante once wrote: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for people who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
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It is happening again because in our modern politically correct world it has become taboo name the true culprit. It is happening again because those who do speak out against the perpetrators of this humanitarian crisis are branded "racists," "bigots," and "Islamophobes." It is happening again because our governments are more concerned with avoiding offense than saving lives.
If you want to end the genocide in Darfur, if you would like to see the end of most world conflicts, if you want terrorism brought to a virtual halt, you must be willing to define the enemy. It takes no stretch of the imagination nor does it require any expertise of foreign policies. It only takes simple common sense.
The hottest places in hell are, no doubt, reserved for our liberal left and conservative appeasers. For them, neutrality in the face of an inhumane, barbaric enemy is preferable to the loss of an ill informed voter or self-serving lobbyist. And if we allow that to continue, we are no better.
Inferno XXVIII, Verses 13-36.
The Eighth Circle. Fraud
The Ninth Trench. Sowers of Discord
No cask, indeed, by loss of middle-board
or stave, is opened as was one I saw,
split from the chin to where one breaketh wind;
while down between his legs his entrails hung,
his pluck appeared, and that disgusting sack,
which maketh excrement of what is swallowed.
While I on seeing him was all intent,
he looked at me, and opening with his hands
his breast, he said: "See now how I am cloven!
Behold how torn apart Mahomet is!
Ali in tears moves on ahead of me,
cloven in his face from forelock down to chin;
and all the others whom thou seest here
disseminators were, when still alive,
of strife and schism, and hence are cloven thus.
There is a devil here behind, who thus
fiercely adorns, and to the sword's edge puts
each member of this company anew,
when we have gone around the woeful road;
because, ere one return in front of him,
the wounds thus made have all been closed again.
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
perhaps to put off going to the torture
adjudged thine accusation of thyself?"
Then again, Islam is the oldest remaining totalitarian system and it inspired many of the infamous strategies and actions implemented by Nazis and Communists. So maybe I'm wrong.