A very secret war...

 

 

"What happens in Africa always seems to receive the short end of the news cycle..."

This past week or so, the attention of the world has been focused on Europe. What happened in Paris, the close call in Belgium, and suspected terror cells in Germany. As the saying goes, it "sucked the air" out of the news cycle. What little air was left, was spent on covering the carnage in Syria and Iraq. However, there is another war going on. It does get some press, but often not nearly enough. It is just as brutal as the ISIL conflict in Syria and Iraq. And just like Syria and Iraq, the bodies keep piling up.

I am addressing the lawless slaughter which continues today in Nigeria. The slaughter which is orchestrated and performed by the radical Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram. Similar to their ISIL cousins in the Middle East, this blood thirsty group will stop at nothing, and kill anyone who gets in their way. Men, women, children and babies are all fair game. They have been especially hard on the Christian population. Churches have been burned and innocent people killed while worshipping. This is an outrage of the highest order. The United Nations, which usually does nothing, should have put "Blue Helmets" all over Nigeria. They should be putting an end to this carnage. But they will not. The United Nations, as well as the rest of the world, remains a passive bystander. And people continue to die.

This is not the first time parts of Africa has burned and nobody did anything. Some remember 1994. It was a year in human history none should be proud of. In Rwanda, during a 100 day period between April and July, mass genocide of historic proportions took place. This event had nothing to do with radical Islam, but it was just as brutal.

Members of the Tutsi tribe and moderate Hutu tribe were hunted down like animals. They were hunted by the majority Hutus. Many weapons were used to perform this attempted mass extinction, including machetes. The world had a front row seat to the horror unfolding in Africa. And we did nothing. During that 100 day period, somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people died. Nobody will ever know the exact number. Many who did not die were left maimed or disfigured. And where was President Clinton and our military at that time? Focusing on a tin horn dictator in the Balkans. We ignored genocide in Africa in an effort to dethrone Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia.

Now don't get me wrong - Milosevic was a bad man and brutalized his people as well as neighboring countries. But he was "chump change" compared to what was going on in Africa. In April of 1994 when the African carnage first started, we should have done an immediate pivot. We should have left the Balkans and gone into Africa. The Hutus would have been no match for our modern day military.

Bill Clinton did say in later years he had regrets. Regrets that we did not do something to save innocent people in Africa. Regrets? Mr. Clinton, you can tell that to the tens of thousands of people in Rwanda living without limbs. Or to the children forced to grow up as orphans, living in extreme hardship. As far as I am concerned, our failure to act, to help stop this carnage, is an ugly stain on our history.

Today were are once again spectators rather than protectors. We watch helplessly as thousands upon thousands of innocents are taken prisoner or executed by this lawless group called Boko Haram. For what they have done to innocent men, women and children, they deserve the same fate as ISIL. The United Nations as well as the United States can no longer afford to be feckless in the face of human slaughter. We are better than that. We always have been better than that. And we should be now.