I particularly appreciate Greg Garrison, of the Birmingham News (USA), for his passion of reporting the facts while telling the greater unfolding story of the lives “trapped within those facts.” Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case with many of the interviewers I have encountered ; it seems many reporters are more concerned with “being” the news and having a hard-breaking-name-making style than they are “reporting” the news.

One of the latter sort of reporters asked me : “Why did I think al-Bashir should have been indicted when George W. Bush was not ?”

My Answer : “I believe that the administration of the U.S. made many mistakes under President Bush. Furthermore, it is historically true that we have made many other sorts of mistakes throughout our history, going back to some of our earliest days. I also believe it is a commonly understood fact that Great Britain and other European Countries have made similar mistakes. In fact, I think that if we do an honest examination, we’ll all acknowledge that every civilization in history has been guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ in one degree or another.

“However, simply because we clearly see the failures and shortcomings of an imperfect system in a broken world, we cannot allow that to confuse the issue when we have one leader being held accountable for these crimes any more than we would say, ‘We should not convict one serial murder because we know others have gotten off.’ If we are truly about justice rather than creating chaos, we must keep focused on the question at hand and that is simply, ‘Now that he has been indicted, should we go all out to arrest al-Bashir ?’ The answer is emphatically YES, otherwise many innocent civilians, children, missionaries and aid-workers will die over worthless political posturing.”

Question : “Do you think that the danger for civilians, children, missionaries and aid-workers will significantly increase as a direct result of this indictment ?”

My Answer : “Yes, sadly I do. However, originally, we took the same passive stance with Hitler, and we all know where how that ended. Al-Bashir reminds me of the prophets that Jeremiah lamented against, ‘You say Peace, Peace when there is NO PEACE.’ I respectfully disagree with prominent leaders who are saying that while we know he is evil, we can rationalize with this man. You cannot rationalize with evil. I am not pro-war. Yet, I say we must not turn a deaf ear to the continual killing and enslavement of innocent people, especially children. It increases my own risks and the risks to our nearly 100 Sudanese employees. It increases the risks to our nearly 500 orphans and many widows. However, the alternative would be to continue to let Bashir build the roads and bridges that he is building into the South (making a direct bee-line for the Chinese to get the oil) so that his invasions meet muster in a much swifter fashion when the false peace collapses. We must ask ourselves, ‘Are we at PEACE simply because material progress is being made but the people are still persecuted, enslaved and starving to death ?’”

Final Question : “Do you have any other comment on this indictment ?”

My Answer : “Only that I find it extremely ironic that al-Bashir’s response to his indictment is ‘We reject Colonialism’ when he is the leader of a radical, invading Arabic (vs. African) Islamic regime that has seized complete control and forcibly dominates and oppresses the indigenous Africans of Sudan.”