Sometimes you have to read a paragraph twice to make sure the writer meant to say what they said. Such was the case earlier this week regarding
this article written by Jeffrey Gettleman in the New York Times about the civil war in Sudan:
"Both sides, according to many analysts, are more pragmatic than they are often given credit for. Despite being portrayed as careless brutes in many Western countries, the Islamist cabal that controls Sudan, starting with Mr. Bashir, has shown surprising elasticity." [emphasis mine]
Let's see if we can get this straight. The president of Sudan, Mr. Bashir, and his well-funded, government-backed Janjaweed militias are responsible for 200,000 to 300,000 deaths and the displacement of 3 million refugees. He has been cited for human rights abuses by hundreds of watchdog groups and charged with war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Even
Time magazine has said of the Sudanese president's Islamist regime:
"Amid the chaos, the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir continues its brutal crackdown, aggressively attacking rebel redoubts, indiscriminately killing civilians and razing entire villages."
Yeah, sounds like pragmatism to me. And that doesn't even include the well-documented
rapes and child beheadings. So how could this regime be unfairly portrayed as careless brutes by anybody, let alone the West? Even activists on the Left have been willing to call out the Islamist northern Sudanese government as "evil." Such tepid writing by Mr. Gettleman is either the worst case of moral relativism ever or the result of new NYT sensitivity training to placate the international Muslim perspective (which can easily be summed up as "Israel is behind this to divert attention from their own crimes.").
Do we have to start placating the Al-Qaeda perspective now everytime we mention 9/11? This isn't objectivity in reporting. This is whitewashing the truth, blurring right and wrong in the name of political correctness.
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