Darfur

Nicholas Kristof has an op-ed today in which he includes pictures of four dead victims of the janjaweed in the Darfur region of Sudan. This is rare, especially when the pictures are as brutal and graphic as they are. Nonetheless, I think Kristof was right in including, and right in suggesting that they might get people to act. He quotes the late Paul Simon talking about Rwanda in 1994, and I hope it's true about Sudan as well:

"If every member of the House and Senate had received 100 letters from people back home saying we have to do something about Rwanda, when the crisis was first developing, then I think the response would have been different."

I hope that every one of you with Representatives and Senators takes the time to drop an email or, even better, handwritten note to those people telling them about Darfur and indicating that you want the United States to take action to halt the ongoing killing there.

You can find your Senators here and your Representatives here. You can find additional information on Darfur here. You can find the Council on Foreign Relations' Africa site here. You can find the State Department's Darfur publication here.

I know it can be hard to find the time and impetus to write a letter about something as abstract as genocide on the opposite side of the globe. If Sen. Simon was correct, though, that simple act might be one means to stop the murder in Sudan. It's worth a shot, eh?