Putting things into perspective

The jury’s in. No one need fear that Sept. 11, 2001, will ever be forgotten. The horrendous events of that day obliterated the complacency of a nation.

I have genuine sympathy for the victims of this tragedy.

We would be gravely mistaken, however, to reference this date as the epitome of inhumanity and loss, because that same month, eight African nations were embroiled in the deadliest conflict since WWII, the Second Congo War.

While the bureaucrats declared an official end to the conflict in 2003, widespread violence persists throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The International Rescue Committee declares that 5.4 million people have perished between since 1998 as a direct result of the conflict.

We must put Sept. 11 in perspective.

That’s equal to the number of casualties in the World Trade Center collapse every two days for 10 years straight.

Warring factions in the Congo continue to scramble for the mineral resources beneath their feet. These minerals are smuggled out of the Congo to become components in the modern technology of our cell phones and computers; Technology that is the backbone of modern society.  

It would be an oversimplification to accuse Western multinational corporations of sole responsibility. There is no question, however, that these behemoths of commerce aid and profit immensely from the ongoing instability in the Congo.

Rape has become a weapon of war in the Congo – rape that stretches the imagination’s idea of brutality.

Thousands of reported cases include women who were gang raped, often penetrated with sticks and guns. They suffer fistulas, which are tears in the vagina that lead to incontinence and infertility.

Tens of thousands of child soldiers have been recruited at gunpoint by local militias. Carrying AK-47s not much smaller than themselves, these traumatized youths are influenced to kill and rape individuals the age of their parents and grandparents.

According to other U.N. studies, some of these militias have even been accused of cannibalism.

In light of such atrocities, we are forced to ask ourselves an unflattering and immensely difficult question: Why do we care so little?

A paradigm of nationalistic and selective compassion persists in the United States.

We are led to believe it is reasonable to apportion out our sympathies according to lines drawn on a map or the pigment of skins. We are led to believe that our compassion may die at the Atlantic and Pacific.  

The life of a fellow American is worth no more than that of any other human being. To say we are more valuable than others would be ethnocentrism that spits in the face of humanity.

It is not my intention to trivialize the very real suffering that occurs within the borders of my nation, and I will readily admit that I have lived a life largely untouched by tragedy.

But our suffering, our economic woes, our fear of terrorism, our price at the pump and, yes, even Sept. 11 are a drop of water in humanity’s collective ocean of misery. To suggest America’s problems are more deserving of our sympathies than those evils suffered by many living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an insult to common sense.    

News of the horrors in the Congo and elsewhere should elicit the most basic of human emotions – outrage. Unfortunately for many, nationalism thinly veiled as his dishonorable brother patriotism stands in the way.