On Darfur

- This is a column that I wrote for my campus newspaper in January. I figured I'd post it here.


December 11, 2006 – A man lay, gunned down by an unknown assailant, on the corner of Addison Road and St. Clair Avenue on Cleveland’s East Side. In his right hand, he clutched three dollars – bus fare for his trip home to the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood across town.

To many of us, this man represents merely another name & face, just another one of the 119 homicide victims in Cleveland last year.

But 26-year old Majok Madut signifies much more than just those killed in Cleveland. His voice is another one in the chorus of voices that have been silenced in the African nation of Sudan for over 20 years.

Majok Madut had the profound misfortune to be born into such conflict. He was one of the so-called “Lost Boys” – southern Sudanese youths whose families died at the hands of the oppressive northern government.

These Lost Boys endured immense hardships. They fled their war-ravaged villages at the barrel of a rifle and fled across the Sahara to Kenya without food or water. They survived by eating mud and drinking one another’s urine.

In 2000, the US government allowed about 4,000 of these young men to emigrate to America. Thirty-six of these Lost Boys found their way to Cleveland, including Majok. He was one of the 26 who remained here. Now there are 25.

These Lost Boys had escaped the ongoing civil war in Sudan. As 2.5 million innocent people died, the civil war was overshadowed by other international matters – including the genocide in Rwanda. Following that disaster that took the lives of around half a million Rwandans, the world community swore it would never again allow genocide to occur.

Well, less than a decade later, the raging civil war in Sudan gave way to a bitter conflict and, ultimately, genocide in Darfur. The United Nations estimates that at least 400,000 people have died since the conflict began in 2003.

What began as a battle for political autonomy by Darfuri rebels against the ruthless, government-sponsored Janjaweed militias has blossomed into a full-fledged genocide. The Sudanese military has begun to work alongside the Janjaweed to rape and murder helpless people and pillage the region.

President Omar al-Bashir has steadfastly refused to allow UN peacekeeping troops into the area. He recently went so far as to boldly claim that the humanitarian crisis in his nation is a fabrication of the imperialist West and that no more than 9,000 Darfuri have died in the conflict.

In 2004, the United States took the first step towards ending the slaughter. Congress declared the situation in Darfur genocide on July 22, 2004. Since that time, however, the US government has done nothing further to resolve the crisis.
Despite the countless horror stories that I have heard – of pregnant mothers being raped and murdered, of infants being scalded by boiling water, of villages being burned to the ground with people trapped inside – there still exists a tangible lack of interest about this in our nation.

Recently I gave a presentation to a College 101 class on Darfur with another member of B-W’s chapter of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND). The question we heard most frequently was not how we could help or what more could be done but, rather, why should we even care? The sentiment seemed to be: So what? People die in Africa all the time; we have problems here to worry about.

Now, granted, this is absolutely true. There are very real social problems here in America. I also agree that the US cannot waiver in its commitment to national security. The Bush Administration is correct in stating there is a concrete threat posed by Islamic extremism and terrorism in the world. This threat runs rife in countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

But the threat of Islamic extremism and terrorism is not unique to the Middle East.
Following his ascendancy to power on the back of a military coup, Omar al-Bashir established a harsh form of Sharia Law, a very stringent Qur’anic code. Under the guise of this code, he has cruelly repressed the Christians in southern Sudan and the native African tribes in Darfur.

Though the economy has boomed in Sudan due to ever-increasing oil profits, that money has not left the North, especially the capital of Khartoum, which is al-Bashir’s power base. Military spending accounts for over 70% of the national budget. The al-Bashir regime, despite constant denials, has continually supplied and supported the militant, radical Islamic Janjaweed militias. And, most blatantly, Osama bin Laden lived, trained, and received safe haven in Sudan during the mid-1990s.

If it is our national policy to oppose those nations who harbor terrorists, then why do we turn a blind eye to Sudan?

Now, I am in no way insinuating that I want the US to take military action against the Sudanese. That would be imprudent. I am simply asking that we step up and take an active role in ending this reprehensible genocide. It is both our moral obligation and in the best interest of our national security.

The genocide in Darfur hit home last month. But for the millions of innocent Darfuri in refugee camps and vulnerable villages in Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic and the surrounding areas, it is a reality every morning when they wake up. The question that we as a nation have to ask is: How long are we willing to sit by idly while people die?

Do You Realize How Many Chicken Nuggets You Could Buy for $2 Billion?; or On the Cost of the War in Iraq

An article by Ron Hutcheson of the McClatchy-Tribune news service appeared in The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer today. The article, which is in the Forum section of the paper, hits you over the head with it's headline - $500 billion appears in huge, red letters in the middle of the page. The article makes its message clear - with the estimated $124 billion price tag of the war funding bill looming large, the total direct cost of the War in Iraq is about to reach a half-trillion dollars. If one takes into account the estimated costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008, the total costs to date of those wars will reach $719 billion. That makes these wars, the two major fronts in the Global War on Terror, the second most expensive conflict in American history. By the time Bush leaves office (624 days and counting), the only war to outpace the War on Terror will be World War II. Granted, WWII cost $5.4 trillion, but I guess Bush is right to compare Iraq to WWII in at least one regard. (read the whole article here).

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times wrote a column on October 24 laying out the estimated total cost of the war, including both direct and indirect costs. The $500 billion number only accounts for the amount of taxpayer dollars that are going to fund the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But far more money is being wasted than just this. For example, more than 3,000 American soldiers have suffered severe head trauma in Iraq. These men and women will require intensive medical care for years; the estimated amount will range "from $600,000 to $5 million per person." We will also have to cover the future medical and mental health issues of the men and women fighting in the desert. I have seen statistics that more than 20% of men and around 1/3 of women coming home suffer from PTSD or some other sort of mental health issue. These costs will continue to add up and pressure a Veterans' Administration that is already stretched to its breaking point. (read Kristof's column here).

When one takes these estimations into consideration, along with the economic consequences of the war (such as the increases in oil prices worldwide), the TOTAL cost of the war adds up to a staggering amount. Joseph Stiglitz, last year's Nobel Prize winner in economics, calculated that the war will cost $2 trillion. That's TRILLION with capital T. Even two economists from the conservative American Enterprise Institute reached a figure of $1 trillion.

Let's try to put some of that into perspective, shall we? For every second we spend in Iraq, we spend $6,300. That's $380,000 a minute; $22,800,000 per hour; $547,200,000 per day; $3,830,400,000 per week; $16,416,000,000 per month; $196,992,000,000 per year. As Kristof explains, $2 trillion would be four times the amount needed to insure all uninsured Americans for the next decade. It comes to more than $18,000 per American household.

Using the numbers provided by The Cost of War website (courtesy of the National Priorities Project, find it here at costofwar.com) and my math - the website goes by the current direct cost of Iraq, which is about $425,000,000, so I multiply everything by 4 to get the cost up to $1.7 trillion - I have compiled a few more items for perspective sake. That money could have been used to provide 82,124, 560 students with full, four-year tuition to a public university. We could have hired 29,358,428 public school teachers for a year. We could have put 224,380,188 children through a full year of Head Start.

We could afford to pay off the portions of our national debt owned by Japan ($644.3 billion) and China ($349.6 billion) almost twice. That could cover 22% of the total national debt, which sits at around $8.6 trillion. For you supply-siders out there, that would be just about enough to pay the entire cost of the Bush tax cuts over the next decade.

So, what does an ill-conceived war cost? How about 3,350 lives and counting. Or maybe you would like to think about it in dollar figures, try the equivalent of the entire US national budget for a year. What can you buy for $2 trillion? A better life for millions.

John Hay Created the Open Door Policy, Senator Clinton Could Have Used the Help; or On Hillary Clinton's First Campaign Stop in my Hometown

Senator HIllary Clinton made her first official stop in Cleveland during her run for the White House on Saturday afternoon. She rolled into town following events in Baton Rouge and a speech at Wilberforce College in Dayton.

The junior Senator was here to speak about the state of education in America today. She stressed its importance, saying that "there isn't anything more important than education." Hillary was invited by Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), the representative of Ohio's 11th Congressional District and the co-chair of Clinton's national campaign. Also in attendance was first-year Cleveland Municipal School District CEO Dr. Eugene Sanders, who spoke of the challenges that we face here in the America's poorest city and stated that the "Cleveland schools are at a crossroads." (quotes courtesy of The Plain Dealer; read article here).

Clinton appeared at John Hay High School, an 80-year old school on Cleveland's East side which re-opened this year following a years-long $2 million renovation. The event took place in the school's auditorium, where the Senator gave a 17-minute speech in front of a seated crowd. The venue could hold around 750 people; there were about 350 in attendance.

Now, granted, I take this worth a grain of salt. It was a relatively low-key event at a high school auditorium. It was focused around one theme, rather than being a high-energy campaign rally . However, Bill Clinton won 60.8% of the vote in Cuyahoga County in 1996, the second-largest percentage of any county in Ohio, and beat George H. Bush 52.7% to 29.2% in 1992, in a margin that far outpaced his 43% showing nationwide. Shouldn't Hillary be able to fill more than half of the seats on a Saturday afternoon, especially in a city that has an African-American majority and whose Congressional rep helps run her national campaign?

When Barack Obama came to Cleveland on February 26, he brought people out of the woodwork. I showed up at 4:00, more than two hours before the doors opened; I was far from the first person there. Obama brought out over 4,000 people to his first rally here, filling the gym at Cuyahoga County Community College East Campus. They even had to create two overflow rooms to acquiesce the throng of people. Cuyahoga County Commissioners Tim Hagan (a long-time Clinton friend and supporter), Jimmy Dimora (also the county party chairman), and Peter Lawson Jones have all given Obama their endorsements.

I can appreciate the fact that Ohio will hardly play the role it used to in this primary season, given the number of large states moving into February. But we are considered the swing voters in essentially every election. Perhaps this is indicitive of the two different campaigns that Clinton and Obama are waging - Clinton with her established, experienced setup and Obama with his grassroots groundswell? I just feel like Hillary's stream of support is beginning to run dry, while Obama appears to have nearly unlimited reserves which he can tap. He has already garnered the endorsement of a Harlem-area politician.

Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion. Maybe this whole thing is just a fluke. But last time I checked, 4,000 > 350. Do the math.

Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; or On the Poll Numbers in April

Hillary Clinton started the month of April as the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic Presidential nomination. Now, granted, the first primary won't happen until the Iowa Caucus on January 18th (256 days from now; if I can figure out some more html, I will add a countdown to the blog), but pundits continued to insist that if Obama, Edwards, or someone else didn't do something fast, she might pull away like Secretariat. Well, Hillary may bear a striking resemblance to the famous Triple-Crown winner, but she is not pulling away by any means.

According to a Rasmussen poll released Monday, Obama has passed Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters. In the poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 4%, Obama now leads by a "statistically insignificant" 2% margin at 32%-30%. John Edwards lags behind in third at 17%, and no other candidate has more than 3%. Clinton holds a slight lead among white voters, while Obama has taken a 16% lead among African-American voters.

This is a far cry from one month ago. On April 2, Hillary led 33%-26%-17%. That lead had shrunk to 5% the following week, 2% two weeks later, and was a deadheat at 32-32 on April 23. Obama's lead is stronger than Hillary's as well. Thirty-three percent of voters said they would definitely vote for him in the general election. He also holds a lead in favorability, with a 59% favorability rating and 32% unfavorable mark. Hillary sits at 50%-49%; that is a testament of how polarizing and divisive she is.

Read more here: Obama leads Clinton

Fundraising clearly played a role in this shift. When Hillary revealed that she had raised $26 million during the first quarter on April 2, it was widely assumed she had command in the money race. However, just two days later, Obama's camp disclosed that he had raised $25 million, of which at least $23.5 million will go towards the primaries, which is more than Hillary. Obama also raised that money from more than 100,000 donators, more than twice as many as Clinton. This went to show that his grassroots efforts are working quite well.

Clearly, this race is still way too close to call, and anyone who says that they know who will win has his or her head so far up his or her ass that there is no light available. This should be an interesting several months.

Happy 4th Birthday, "Mission Accomplished" Banner!

Mission Accomplished! Er, sorta.

Yes, that's right. Today is the fourth birthday of the "Mission Accomplished" banner. In other words, four years ago today, President Bush descended onto the USS Abraham Lincoln wearing his flight suit, then delivered his speech, in which he said "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." This marked the official end to major combat operations.

Now, Flight Commander, er President Bush took some heat for the theatrics of the day, but most of the problems stemmed from the banner. The White House insisted at first that the Navy and the crew members of the USS Lincoln created the banner. This administration has never been big on accountability; they took Truman's "the buck stops here" sign and made it "the buck stopped on the way here; go back into the hallway, take a left, walk down the corridor, turn right, head down the steps, veer left, walk about 20 feet, then head into the third door on your right, and you will find the buck" mentality. They later admitted that they made the sign, but still say that the crew members clammored for them to put it up. Well, that makes it all better.

Total US military personnel fatalities since May 1, 2003: 3,205
Total US wounded since 5/1/07: 24,548

Total # of Bush vetoes to war funding bill with timetables for withdrawal: 1

I guess this isn't such a happy birthday afterall.