Former President Bill Clinton has said on a number of
occasions that the single greatest failure of his administration- his personal greatest
regret- was his failure to intervene in the massacre of three quarters of a
million people in Rwanda back in 1994.
He is on record saying that with ten thousand troops, he could have
saved three hundred thousand lives! Imagine
the weight of knowing that you could have prevented that many gruesome deaths
and you did nothing!!
Fast forward to today.
The entire world has converged on France to support free journalism and
freedom of speech in light of the horrific terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the French
satirical magazine. Fourteen people were
killed in a gross attack on, not just journalism, but the very tenets upon
which civilization is built. Leaders
from around the world came to show their support in defiance of the terrorist.
Representatives
from a myriad of governments spoke forcefully against the Islamic terrorist and
all that they represent for this heinous attack. Among such noble champions of freedom,
civility and common sense, speaking out against the bad guys was the President of
Nigeria, Goodluck
Jonathan. All of which would have been appropriate had
it not been for one little teeny tiny issue.
Boko
Haram massacred as many as two thousand Nigerians just days before the
Paris attacks and Goodluck Jonathan never even mentioned them!
It boggles that mind that dignitaries from around the globe can descend upon France in solidarity over seventeen people, while the massacre of two thousand goes virtually unnoticed. The massacre in Nigeria came in the wake of the very same Boko Haram kidnapping two hundred school girls last April, most of whom they have presumably sold into slavery. We know they haven’t all been sold because the big brave men of Boko Haram have been using these little girls as involuntary suicide bombers. The outrage over the kidnapping of the little girls that so quickly dissipated, never even materialized in the first place over this latest atrocity by these mad men.
I’m no expert on foreign relations so I can’t say what the
impediments are to some sort of international intervention in Nigeria. But I do know this: the kind of evil
represented by Boko Haram cannot go unchallenged. Nor can we assume that it will somehow be
contained on the continent of Africa.
Evil, like Ebola, spreads
throughout the entire human community when it is not checked.
We also know that Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has
been less than enthusiastic in his fight against Boko Haram because Jonathan is
a Christian and Boko Haram primarily
attacks Muslims. While the west has
fallen allover itself to demand that reasonable Muslims condemn the radical
knuckleheads, maybe it’s time the Christian community took a bit of its own
medicine.
Why hasn’t the Christian community acted more forcefully to
pressure Jonathan to step up to the plate to protect these innocent people from
Boko Haram? If he cannot protect them,
why hasn’t he asked for assistance in this fight? Why has he not condemned and confronted this
evil for what it really is? It seems a
bit hypocritical to me that the West can lambast all of Islam for not strongly
denouncing terrorists enough, while the Christian community is silent as the
Christian leader of Nigeria somehow fails to mention Boko Haram when speaking
out against terrorism.
www.williamgriggs.net
www.williamgriggs.net
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