The “urgent and prime objective” and its consequences

children, scary-eyed and brain-damaged by undernourishment, hobbling towards us, old hags of 40, teenage polio victims paddling themselves along on bits of packing case, deformed and toothless faces smiling grotesquely as they begged, young bodies scarred, broken and hideously regrown. John Le Carré from Marcus Bleasdale – The Rape of a Nation

Apparently, we overlook such horror when we return ‘failed’ asylum seekers.

Apparently, the need for the Congolese to vote in flawed elections is more pressing than the creation of mental and physical support networks for a shattered population.

Apparently, these people are too stupid to organise any semblance of a normal society.

Apparently, these people deserve such trauma. Isn’t that right, Pat Robertson?

Apparently, the exploitation of the DRC’s resources for our own greed is more important than any positive economic investment in the country.

Oh, shit I forgot – these people have such low human capital that they couldn’t possibly meet the productivity targets required to create our unneccessarily large and wasteful profit margins anyway.

Apparently, the aid organisations are there to only alleviate suffering. Certainly seems that way as they compete to stamp their logos over the flimsy tents of the sick and decaying, safe in the knowledge that they can return to their compounds with plentiful food and the healthcare that they deny to those they profess to help. Safe in the knowledge that the salaries they command are positively contributing to a sense of self-satisfaction and ego-building.

As we sit here and bemoan our luck at the mediocre jobs we hold, the relationship woes that drive us into seeking therapy and self-help, and even the snow for restricting the use of our cars, think about Mirindi Euprazi and others like her:

“They forced my son to have sex with me, and when he’d finished they killed him. Then they raped me in front of my husband and then they killed him too. Then they took away my three daughters.” She hasn’t heard of the three girls, 13, 14 and 17, since. A small woman, she speaks softly and without visible emotion, but as she describes being left naked while her house burned, she raises a hand to cover her face.

Thank you Belgium. Thank you America and your glorious promotion of democracy and freedom. Particular thanks to the CIA for decades of irrational fear, murder and war crimes in the name of protecting your wonderful populace from the horrors of Communism and Islamic fundamentalism. Thank you for being complicit in the assassination of a democratically elected leader in Lumumba. Thank you for Mobutu. And Pinochet too. Thank you for Cambodia. Thank you for defending humanitarian principles all over the world – you’ve done a great job.

We should care but we don’t. We shouldn’t forget but we do.