The Congo and Humanitarian Intervention, Being Arab in America, and Child Soldiers in the D.R.C.

Since August of this year a quarter million people have been forced to flee the Democratic Republic of Congo. Over the last decade an estimated five million lives have been lost. Sexual violence has been staggering. Yet the question of what the international community can do–there are already 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the Congo–and what the United States should do remain unanswered. Poet, playwright, and activist Eve Ensler who has traveled to the D.R.C. three times in the last 18 months says that one solution is to work with local grassroots organizations–movement building on the ground–and support them with the resources they need.

Benjamin Barber, a distinguished senior fellow at Demos and the author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole says that there is an inherent conflict between global rights of sovereignty and the principle of universal human rights. Can we invade a sovereign nation to defend human rights? Barber says in the end that it is a choice between doing nothing and doing something and that the Obama administration may be best equipped to rethink the issue of humanitarian intervention.    

Scott Ritter former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, says that the United States is not equipped to deal with conflict in the Congo–a  place of enormous complexity. And that intervention would require convincing a family in Poughkeepsie that they should send their son to Africa. He says that the perils of humanitarian intervention are too great unless victory is certain. International human rights activists Witness and Ajedi-Ka document the lives of child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo in their short film A Duty to Protect. Get involved here.

Another kind of peril. Being Muslim in America. The post 9/11 era has been a troubled one for American society and its treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans. They have been marginalized, maligned, and in some cases attacked. Even the presidential campaign was not immune from anti-Muslim bigotry. In fact, it became one of the contest’s recurring themes. Barack Obama was said to be Muslim, a rumor that has circulated for nearly two years—a whisper campaign that took off through email and the Internet. At a McCain-Palin Rally in Columbus, Ohio, a woman told John McCain: "I don’t trust Obama. I have read about him. He’s an Arab." McCain shook his head and responded, "No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man," but left it at that. No one in a position of power, with the exception of Colin Powell, has defended Arab Americans and criticized the scapegoating of an entire people. 

Brooklyn has the largest Arab American population in the United States and Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, has followed the lives of seven young men and women. He tells their stories in his new book, How Does it Feel to be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America.

Finally on tonight’s GRITtv: excerpts of Bassam Haddad’s Arabs and Terrorism and Jackie Salloum’s Slingshot Hip Hop.