This is an excerpt from today's NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff.
"Ten years later, it's a useful exercise to wonder how many of us would have the courage Mr. Wilkens showed. Yet we don't have to wonder idly how we would respond to such an African genocide - one is unfolding, right now, in the Darfur region of Sudan, and once again we're doing next to nothing. The World Health Organization estimates that 10,000 people are dying there each month, and again the response around the world has been abject moral failure.
Colin Powell's visit to Sudan was an excellent first step, but President Bush has remained passive. As for John Kerry, he averted his eyes from Darfur for months, but last week he finally demanded action against what he termed genocide.
The U.S. needs to send massive aid shipments and take much tougher steps, like issuing an ultimatum that will lead to a no-flight zone over most of Darfur until the Sudanese government disarms the genocidal Janjaweed militia. That would get Khartoum's attention.
To respond to this genocide, we don't need to stand up to drunken killers with machetes and AK-47's, as Mr. Wilkens did. Yet we, as individuals or as a nation, still can't muster the will to take minimal steps to save lives, like providing adequate food, water and medicine, and browbeating Sudan into halting the killing.
If readers want to help, I've listed some actions they can take on
www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, Posting 520 (but please don't send money to me). Moral choices lie not only with those who, like Carl Wilkens, risk death to help others, but also with the millions of ordinary people who are spared the risks but still face a basic decision: Do we try to save lives, or do we simply turn away? "