Every dog owner knows this … if you are responsible and loving and devoted and invest every ounce you have of those things into your dog, the return you receive is tenfold, no, hundredfold. And even better?
You receive so much there is even some of it left over to hold onto when your dog has actually left you behind in life.
With that. Some words from some people (kind of) who are smarter than I:
“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”
– Unknown
“Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There’s so little hope for advancement.”
– Snoopy
“You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Ask of the beasts and they will teach you the beauty of this earth.”
Kim Philby is likely the most famous spy in history. Treachery is the subject of My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy, the 1968 memoir of Philby, the double agent who headed the Cambridge Five spy ring that fed British and American WWII and Cold War intelligence to the Soviet Union. Philby became a communist and Soviet agent in the 1930s, then joined MI6 and rose to be head of British Counterintelligence before seeking asylum in Moscow in 1963 (where he lived until his death in 1988). This is Philby’s riveting tale of spycraft which offers a rather unflattering picture of the British secret service, and also addresses why he remained committed to communism. It is an amazing story. While his biography neglects to invest space on some of the horrific loss of life to the English and Americans because of his spying, it does reflect a behind the scenes look of someone who didn’t consider himself a traitor but rather a patriot (all depends on your perspective). But in reading it you wonder how someone could remain sane maintaining the duplicity necessary to be a successful spy at such a high level.
So. I had lunch with a high school friend I hadn’t seen for over 25 years (and it was a lot of fun) and she mentioned one of the guys in our high school had produced the documentary “Darfur Now.”
It is a documentary about the atrocities in Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan. It poses a fundamental question: How do you respond to an event such as a government-sponsored mass murder of part of a country’s civilian population?
The United Nations has estimated that by 2007, 200,000 people had been killed and 2.5 million displaced in Darfur.
The truly heartbreaking documentary takeaway is that “You see that kids really are just kids.” And there is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness.
In the movie, the official voice of the Sudanese government belongs to Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, who scoffs at the notion of a genocidal campaign against the people of Darfur. The conflict is an internal matter, he insists, and has to do with the apportioning of scarce resources.
Sudan has refused to comply with the International Criminal Court’s recent arrest warrants for Ahmad Harun, Sudan’s minister of the interior, and Ali Kushayb, a leader of the Janjaweed militias, for crimes against humanity.
I guess I share all of this because in my own little world this is an unacceptable action against humanity.
But I honestly don’t know what to do about it.
Does America send troops?
Does America shirk responsibility and pass it along to UN?
Is it even our role to take care of this?
I wrestle with this. And I could argue both sides. In the end I land on, if we don’t do it who will? Sort of like if I see a crime happening across the street (like a child being beaten by thugs) and I have the power to do something and I don’t, am I not complicit to the crime?
Maybe more importantly to me as a person as I think about this:
How would I be able to go to sleep that night if I did nothing?
Darfur is a horrendous example of what is happening outside our borders but it makes you start thinking. Like. You wonder if things like the holocaust wouldn’t have happened if more people had stood up and done the right thing. In the end I guess we also have to wonder what we would have done in that situation. It is difficult when you talk about theoretical life versus real life. Unfortunately, Darfur is real life. The here and now.
Anyway. It is sometimes easy to ignore these types of things happening outside our borders.
Out of sight out of mind
It is very easy even in the age of YouTube and cellular images to just not see what is happening elsewhere.
Because we have our own problems.
Recession. (And all the stuff that comes with it).
Our soldiers dying in Afghanistan (and do we want to send more somewhere else)
Maybe worse is ignorance. Where is Darfur? Does it really matter? And, of course, our overall perceptions of undeveloped African countries.
If we haven’t been there it is often easy to think of some of these places like horse and buggy countries. Absolutely some of these places have rural areas with spotty technology and living support (we forget how large some of these places are geographically because maps kind of lie with regard to size and stuff).
So. In the end I have no answers just questions. However. I do have a suggestion even more important than watching Darfur Now. A way to give yourself real perspective.
How can you gain perspective? Oh. It’s easy. Evil shows its price tag.