Though it plays like an elementary school geography bee question, it carries significance far greater: Where is the United States?
And as the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan tragically enters into the midst of its sixth year, the question remains stronger than ever. But the answer is weaker: We're in Iraq.
Last week was the 5-year anniversary of the beginning of the Darfur conflict. What makes this milestone noteworthy is that just more than two weeks from now, we will see the 5-year anniversary of our country's presence in Iraq.
Two regions. Two seemingly unending conflicts.
With the U.S. committed to stopping both conflicts, oddly enough each of them is spreading and widening in scope. Darfur has hit a new level of complexity, according to Sunday's New York Times, as the janjaweed militia's scorched-earth destruction, under the approval of Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, continues to plague villagers and the disaster spreads into the southern region of Sudan.
Iraq, meanwhile, continues in its "quagmire" status with insurgents still putting up a fight and taking lives across the land — nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and thousands upon thousands of Iraqis.
And while the conflict in Iraq has proven to be one of our country's most polarizing issues, there is almost universal support for the U.S. taking a greater stance in ending the Darfur bloodshed.
The Darfur genocide — as the U.S. itself has termed it — has been discussed among politicians across the nation. It has sent countless activists into action. It has been protested on college campuses here and elsewhere. It even spawned one of the first Facebook.com super-groups: 400,000 Faces. Yet, here we sit. Still.
What makes this so confounding is that President George W. Bush himself said in December 2003, "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations."
Yet both Iraq and Sudan fall under this category. And while Bush and his administration have gone to extraordinary measures to push the U.S. into Iraq, and have made grand pronouncements about helping the suffering Sudanese, the Darfur massacre has fallen by the wayside.
Back in 2001, Bush declared that the U.S. would not tolerate any genocide.
"Not on my watch," he said.
Well, we have watched the previous five years have pass under his watch, and rape, torture, displacement and murder continue to plague Darfur.
How many more years will we have to wait?
