by Rusty Humphries
George Clooney wasn’t at the Oscars Sunday night.  Where was he?
Apparently, Clooney was in Darfur - and he was planning to report back
to President Obama about his trip.  So far, so good; there are many
issues in Darfur that need to be addressed right now.  There’s only
one problem: Clooney and the Hollywood phonies don’t want to address
the real problems in the region.

If you’ve ever heard my radio show (which is heard on 260+ radio
stations as well as XM and Sirius), you know that I respect
intellectual honesty.  If Harry Reid does something right, I praise
him.  When George W. Bush was wrong, I showed little mercy.  But being
fair-minded doesn’t mean spreading criticism equally.  When I watch
the left engage in their politics, it is more often than not wrought
with intellectual dishonesty, for which I have little patience.

Hollywood loves to spout off about Darfur.  They plaster “SAVE
DARFUR!” bumper stickers on their Priuses.  They shout “SAVE DARFUR!”
at rallies.  It’s become the battle cry of the left.  But do they
really understand what saving Darfur entails?  Do they really
understand what’s happening on the ground in Darfur?

Last year, I decided to find out the truth about Darfur.  I had the
opportunity to go to the region to help with humanitarian aid.  It was
an eye-opening, horrendous experience.

First, the history you won’t hear from Clooney and his ilk.  Darfur is
a region in Sudan.  About 30 years ago the Arab Muslims in the north
decided they that wanted to implement Sharia law throughout the entire
country.  The problem was that there are a lot of people in Sudan who
aren’t interested in Sharia law: the folks in the south are generally
black Christians.  So the Muslims started a war in which about 2
million people were killed or displaced.  The Arabs in the north
enslaved many of the blacks from the south — a barbaric practice which
continues to this day.  Today, the war is at a stalemate.  South Sudan
is working on a cession plan.  The citizens of southern Sudan are much
poorer than those in the north because oil revenues tend to be given
much more freely to those who follow Mohammad.

But not everyone who follows Mohammed gets a slice of the pie.  As the
fighting in the south began to subside, the desperately poor people in
the region known as Darfur - largely black Muslims — wanted to get
some help too.  Oil was found in Darfur, and the black Muslim citizens
of Darfur asked the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum if they could
share in the newly-discovered oil wealth.  The Arab Muslim government
answered quickly and forcefully: hell no!  And because the black
Muslims in Darfur had the nerve to question their Arab Muslim
brothers, they were declared kuffar - ingrates and rejecters.  The
Arab Muslims labeled them less than human, which means that they are
now allowed to be slaughtered and enslaved.

I knew this history when I visited Sudan.  I didn’t know just how
awful it would be.  While I was there, I met thousands of people who
had recently been slaves.  We found a group of young men and women who
had been released - and they didn’t even realize they were no longer
slaves.  They had the clothes on their backs and a piece of paper
stating where they came from — that was it.

The heartbreaking moments that are burned in my memory are those of
the children.  I have two young girls, 14 and 8.  They want what every
little girl in America wants: computers, iPods, dolls, clothes from
Hollister.  You know what the status symbol of a kid in Darfur is?  An
empty plastic water bottle!  Why?  So the kid can take water with him
to play.

I met a little 10 year old boy whose mother had been a slave.  She had
escaped with her family about 2 weeks earlier.  The boy’s father was
probably the slave owner.  The boy had a bone that had been sticking
out of his leg for as long as he could remember.  He was going blind
in one eye; I’m not sure if he had bathed that year.  But he was
happy, always smiling.  He loved going to his church and singing.  I
had a camera and was showing him how it worked.  I noticed him looking
at the empty water bottles, so I reached over and gave him a full
bottle and a package of beef jerky.  The look on his face … it was
like I gave him the greatest present anyone ever opened on Christmas
morning.  He was dancing and running around the area, showing his
mother this gift.  I just thought I was giving him some water and
jerky — but to him it was something he never dreamed of.  I sure hope
that boy is alive today.  But I wouldn’t bet on it.

That’s the situation on the ground.  But why do things continue to
deteriorate?  Where’s the international community Hollywood is so fond
of?

The international community is fostering this genocide.  The Chinese
receive a large percentage of their oil from Sudan, and so turn a
blind eye to the slaughter.  The Russians, who still want to have a
role as a major superpower, supply weapons and air support to the Arab
Muslim government.  The Arab Muslim thugs who run Sudan receive
support from Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, all of whom want to help
their Arab Muslim brothers against the kuffar.

You might recognize this unholy alliance of dictatorships,
thugocracies and rogue states.  It’s the same unholy alliance we
fought in Iraq.  If George W. Bush had listened to Clooney or Obama
and left Iraq precipitously, we might be seeing Darfur-like slaughter
in Iraq.  Muslims killing Christians in the name of Islam.  Muslims
fighting Muslims over oil rights and revenues, to sell to the Chinese
and Russians.  There would be murder, mayhem, and slavery in a place
where now, at last, peace could be dawning on the horizon.

Where is the UN, you ask?  The United Nations Clooney loves so much?
I asked the same question to some UN apparatchiks I met in Juba
(southern Sudan).  “Why isn’t the UN stopping this?” I asked.  Here
was their answer: “We can’t go in unless the government of Sudan
invites us in.” You heard that correctly: the Arab Muslim government
in Khartoum is slaughtering and enslaving their own people and the
U.N. won’t stop them because the human trash committing these crimes
won’t ask the U.N. to stop them.

This is the international community represented by George Clooney and
Angelina Jolie.  This is the UN beloved by Bono, Drew Barrymore, Selma
Hayek, and Reese Witherspoon.  I hope my young beef jerky-loving
friend will be alive to see their next flop movies, TV shows, and rock
tours.  Again, I wouldn’t bet on it.

So here’s a note to George Clooney, Academy Award Winner Sean Penn and
the other Hollywood morons.  You’re right when you say “SAVE DURFUR.”
But you’re not going to save Darfur by making movies or holding rock
concerts.  Here’s the hard truth: you save Darfur by following George
W. Bush’s example in Iraq.  If you hadn’t spent all your time and
moral capital opposing George W. Bush’s war of liberation in Iraq, we
might be done there by now, and we could get on with the business of
actually saving Darfur.