Uganda Always Get What You Want
We’ve written about Uganda before, so we’re happy that John Edwards has found it in the atlas:
At a moment of tremendous global hardship — from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the killing fields of Darfur — it is rare to find hope. So when there is the possibility for peace, we must seize it. That’s why one of the world’s great tragedies, the conflict in Northern Uganda, deserves our attention.
It is perhaps the worst humanitarian catastrophe to have gone practically unnoticed by most of the world. The two decades of violence in Northern Uganda have had devastating consequences — nearly 2 million people have been run out of their homes and forced to live in overcrowded, squalid camps; tens of thousands have died; 30,000 children have been abducted by an organization called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and forced to fight as child soldiers or used as sex slaves. Hundreds of villages have been abandoned and destroyed.
To witness the ravaging of Northern Uganda is searing.
Yes, it is. No question.
But what does he intend we do about it–and do we do it before or after we do something about Darfur? And North Korea? And Burma? And all the other hopeless and benighted places on this earth? Edwards has some suggestions, to his credit, but they employ phrases like “publicly voice”, “must come together”, “fulfill…pledges”. I used to believe in this sort of thing, but part of becoming an adult is learning that you can voice as publicly as you like and fulfill every pledge–but people are still going to kill each other, no matter how bad you feel about it.