Angelina Jolie in Darfur
Not so recently ago, on December 10, Angelina Jolie published an interesting op-ed in Newsweek criticizing President Barack Obama for his inaction in Darfur. During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama publicly promised to take decisive measures to stop this genocide, lend logistical support for international troops and never abandon people, who are dying in Darfur. Endorsed and supported by numerous human rights groups, modern age thinkers of Samantha Power’s caliber, he invigorated idealist students across America and the globe, eventually to become nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize just 10 days after being sworn in as the 44th President. Nowadays, over one year after serving in the office, even Hollywood, which played a mighty role in elevating Barack Obama’s celebrity status, is implying that the issue of Darfur was used by him merely to broaden his political base. Historically, the same thing did Bill Clinton in 1992, when he was publicly promising to stop Serbian concentration camps in Bosnia but he actually never did until 1995, when the fall of Srebrenica prompted broad international outrage and unexpectedly strengthened political position of Bob Dole, Clinton’s most serious opponent in 1996 elections.
One of my friends recently said that people go into politics mainly because of three reasons. The first one is because of their ego and personal political ambitions. The second one is to make money and such people eventually become corrupt (like, for example, infamous ex-governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevic). The third reason is to go into politics because of the sense of righteousness (one may hardly find such politicians but supposedly they do exist.) At this point, it is clear to me that many people who supported Obama’s candidacy did so because he projected an image of a politician with that particular sense of righteousness, which he promised to deliver in many critical matters, Darfur genocide being one of them. Today, however, those who backed him in 2008 because of their desire for righteousness may find themselves tricked and exploited for political reasons. Angelina Jolie’s op-ed is rather just a beginning of a wider discontent with Barack Obama’s ignorance of his own promises – ignorance of the righteousness that he preached.
My personal dissatisfaction is also with some other issue. It is a bit sad and hard to accept to see international opinion and focus shifting so fast away from the issue of Darfur to some other international problems, which for the time being happen to be more trendy and marketable. Presently, public opinion is mainly focused on combating the climate change and is pushing other pertinent issues aside. Since combating the climate change became so popular in the media, the most significant politicians make extended efforts to appear, for instance, at the Copenhagen Conference or comment on it rather than to travel to the United Nations to urge fight for basic human rights. Preventing the climate change is driven by people’s self-preservation instinct so it’s more appealing and widespread than the fight against genocide, which is driven by a sense of righteousness of a couple of Hollywood actresses and human rights organizations.
It is true that behind every corner there is a human right to fight for. One may fight for human rights in America the way Barack Obama did while being a community organizer in Chicago. One may fight for human rights in Russia, the way Gari Kasparov and others are doing today. Everywhere, there is something to fight for. The difference is, however, that there are some situations in which one activist or group of organizations will be unable to achieve anything or to preserve any human right without extensive help of international community. Such situation has fully developed in Darfur where 300,000 people were already exterminated and 2.7 million became refugees. And it is somewhat bothering that the people most concerned about it are powerless actresses like Angelina Jolie, and not powerful politicians like Barack Obama, who happened to publicly promise to stop the Darfur madness if elected the President.
Sebastian Aulich
