The Darkest Invisible People

Much has been made of the recent Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. Republicans have clamored over how well Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are able to "stay on message" and get their point across to the American people. Democrats have praised Sen. Obama's regality and the way Sen. Biden comes off as a no-nonsense candidate looking to fix things on Main Street. However on the matter of foreign policy one place has been woefully ignored. The continent of Africa has received little to no meaningful attention and a sparse amount of rhetoric. The VP debate got things started when Gwen Ifill asked the question about Darfur. Sen. Biden responded with a suggestion about putting air support in place to cover African Union soldiers doing the peacekeeping work on the ground. This seems like a great suggestion, one that would should be immediately brought to the attention of the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. The ironic thing is, Biden is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. He has introduced one piece of legislation on the matter of Darfur. He called for multinational peacekeeping mission with enough size, resource and leadership to protect the civilians of Darfur. The interesting thing is that Sen. Biden is not a multi-national Senator; he is a United States Senator. His proposed legislation has no real effect on other sovereign nations. In breaking down this piece of legislation we see it really holds no water because it doesn't demand anything in the way of specifics from the United States. As a little sidenote there were 39 sponsors of this legislation, none named Obama or McCain.

Sen. Biden is not the only one who has turned a blind eye to crises on the continent. In the same VP debate, Gov. Palin claims that she had Alaskan state money divested from holdings that did business with the Sudanese government. ABCNews found this to be not true. They spoke with a state legislator who said "the [Palin] administration killed our bill." Gov. Palin has long list of issues she has shown herself to be uninformed on, but now we move into the dangerous place of lying about records. Palin's deputy revenue commissioner called the bill "well intentioned" and said it was "noble" but cleared up that "mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination." Clearly there was no long range threat to the citizens of Alaska financial security because the investments could have simply been moved from one holding to another. But apparently when money is involved, morality and Black faces just aren't "a good combination."

The issue of Darfur has essentially served as a one stop shop for matters on the continent of Africa. When addressing foreign policy Sen. Obama made it a point to visit several European nations, even touring parts of Asia on his trip to the Middle East. That is all well respected but when discussing Africa; Darfur seems to be the only place worth mentioning. This seems a bit outlandish considering the human trafficking tragedies that are taking place in Kenya. One would think Kenya would be of particular interest to Sen. Obama considering he has family roots there. He even has a brother still living there. In fact when American writer Jerome Corsi went to Kenya to dig up dirt on Obama, the Kenya government had him deported for what they called "not having a work permit". Here is Kenya looking out for Obama, and yet Obama has failed to at least mention the atrocities in Kenya. Sen. McCain is no better, in fact if anything he is worse. Repeatedly in the most recent debate did Sen. McCain echo how he would never let a Rwanda happen again. Yet right now, Equatorial Guinea is drawing huge oil revenues yet the people there are living in some of the worst poverty of the world. The leader of that country has such distrust in his people that the guards who protect him are from Morocco. Despite all of this Sen. McCain is silent.

McCain talked during the debate about how he stood against his hero Ronald Reagan when Reagan sent troops in to Lebanon. McCain focused on how he was committed to not using troops when the situation wasn't one of direct consequence to U.S. national security. With that I wonder why he was mum on his hero Ronald Reagan's invasion of tiny Grenada. As Reagan and his administration made it seem like Grenada posed a threat to the United States, a vast majority of the world saw it as intervention into a sovereign nation, which happened to be not only Black, but anti-U.S. In that same debate Sen. McCain brought up the United States' failure in Somalia. Many believe this to be the reason the U.S. was inactive in Rwanda. Sen. McCain talked about how the U.S. went to Somalia to be peacekeepers and ended up having casualties. Despite this, the Senator from Arizona continued to echo there will be no more Rwanda. Sadly what the candidates are either unaware of or neglectful to is the horrific transgressions taking place in the Congo. Journalist Glen Ford goes into detail about how in the name of diamonds and other precious minerals, up to five million Congolese have died. For a candidate where foreign policy is supposed to be his strength Sen. McCain is noticeably absent when it comes to international issues regarding Black faces. There is so much left to be desired by the candidates from the major parties and we haven't mentioned Haiti. The United States has had a particularly aggressive and hegemonic position to the island nation since it first threw off the shackles of enslaved oppression.

I recognize that there are a plethora of domestic issues that are of grave concern to many people in the United States during this election season. Homes are being foreclosed on, jobs are being lost by the hundreds of thousands, energy prices are astounding, oh and the collapse of modern capitalism is taking place before our very eyes. With all of these issues I don't expect that foreign affairs will dominate our debates, or campaign speeches. But when there is conversation about foreign policy, the conversation should be about more the European markets, and Middle East battlegrounds. And in this election with so many candidates promising change, it would be nice to have a candidate who changes the United States' national view of African people around the world. But maybe the U.S. can't do that because they could be the ones living in the “Heart of Darkness.”