Not on Our Watch by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast Read Free Book Online Page B

Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Hotel Rwanda leaping to mind.
    ‘Everyone would probably be shocked. Some would be outraged. Few would act.’
    But her question sent me down a tour of tangents. Would footage from the Nazi Holocaust, if it were to have been strewn across some information highway equivalent to the Internet in the 1940s, have ended that genocide? It would have been as ghastly a sight as any horror movie that’s come out in the last 20 years, more so for being real. Could we have stood by so long then? When I was in junior high school I saw the Holocaust-themed documentary Night and Fog . It messed me up. The prisoners in those camps were on a one-way trip to death by work, starvation, medical experimentation, or execution, and everyone in that auditorium knew it but them. I wished I could go back in time and scream at them, ‘Those are not the showers! Rush those guards! They’re lying to you!’ I have never been as affected by images in my life save for a Frontline documentary on Rwanda I saw many years later. Moving pictures.
    But more recently, did news footage of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia play any role in the United States’ decision to intervene? 50 years after the rise of the Nazis, we were as a people familiar with the existence of ethnic cleansing, even if we didn’t know the particulars of the Bosnian conflict. Did the 1992–1995 audiences of news watchers in any way shame policy makers around the world to action, the echoes of Russia and Germany reverberating in their hearts and minds?
    Perhaps it is a quantitative question, however, and the numbers of dead and dying in this current ethnic cleansing are perceived as being simply too small to get involved. Or could it be the Darfurians’ international position that is the real impediment to action? The government of Sudan has simultaneously been labelled by the US an ally in the war on terror as well as a purveyor of modern genocide; the extreme opposition these viewpoints occupy has created a skewed impression. The US and other Western nations have also claimed that it is loath to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state, a fair-weather policy at best when, no matter the possible implications and political intricacies, the West does choose to intervene when a boon can be derived. What boon then beyond justice can be derived from Darfur? In the face of all this, what good could images really do?
    Cindy’s question also got me thinking about the 1935 movie Triumph of the Will, which Leni Riefenstahl shot, documenting the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Intentionally or not, that work promoted the perceived and then fully realised power of the Nazis. But could it in some way work in reverse? Could genocide footage from Darfur and Chad showing that the strength these purveyors of death enjoy lies in their ability to act with impunity—not from their power as a truly formidable force—could this inspire other nations to act? Would we challenge cowardice as readily as we were emboldened to face down tyranny?
    Though it seemed like only seconds I had been ruminating on all this, it must have been longer.
    ‘You falling asleep?’ Cindy asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Where’d you go?’
    ‘Everywhere.’

    9am now, post shower and cold cereal, and it’s time to make my way downstairs to load my pillowed-under eyes and oversized boxes into the waiting van. I board the already full bus that would be shuttling us to the airport and on to our private military escort plane. Several members of Congress are in attendance. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington State, has spent much of his time in Congress dealing with African affairs. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, is sitting near the back. Over her shoulder sits Diane Watson, another Democrat from California. Both of them are on the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Africa. Betty McCollum, Democrat from Minnesota, is here as well. She also has a seat on the Committee