"We have talked; we have sympathized; we have expressed our horror; the time to act is long past due."

These words appeared in a 1943 resolution by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee calling for the liberation of European Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

They need to be spoken again about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, before the conscience of another generation is stained.

Already, since 2003, an estimated 300,000 African Sudanese have been summarily slaughtered by their own Arab government in Darfur. At the same time, more than 2 million people have been driven from their homes in Darfur and forced to live indefinitely in refugee camps in other regions of Sudan or neighboring Chad. Refugees have been left to fight for sparse humanitarian aid while being harassed by government militias.

The United States has a responsibility to take definitive action to stop genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

According to a report by the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur released in January, "Government forces and militias conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement, throughout Darfur."

Alarmingly, the U.N. Commission found that "attacks on villages, killing of civilians, rape, pillaging and forced displacement have continued" despite its presence in the Sudan.

On Sept. 9, 2004, the United States declared through then Secretary of State Colin Powell that the atrocities committed by the Sudanese government amounted to genocide.

In a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Powell cited "a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers" and "that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility."

Powell was right about the scale of human devastation. He was wrong about who bears responsibility.

In a day and age when a person can fly anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours, when no First World closet is without textiles from at least 10 Third-World countries, when the Internet reveals precision satellite photos of every square mile on the globe at any time of the day to anyone interested, we all bear responsibility for the genocide that is taking place in Darfur.

Americans in particular, who still live in a democracy (despite the complaints of journalists and college professors), bear responsibility for seeking information about the genocide and provoking their government leaders to take action.

Tragically, the glaring majority of the civilized world has managed to ignore the atrocities of Darfur.

Print media have buried stories about Sudan in the depths of their publications. And, in 2004, NBC and CBS spent a total of eight minutes covering the genocide in Darfur (Harper's Index, October 2005). The fourth estate has failed to fulfill its watchdog role, thus forcing those interested in Sudan to turn to less accessible sources.

More and more, the situation bears stark resemblance to the genocide inflicted on Armenians by the Ottoman-Turkish government in the second decade of the 20th century. Despite a mountain of evidence exposing the horrors, including photographs of mass graves and execution squads, the United States held an isolationist stance during the Armenian genocide and allowed over one million Christian Armenians to fall by knife, bullet or worse to the Ottoman government. The country that is now Turkey still denies the genocide ever took place.

The world's reaction to the genocide in Darfur is also reminiscent of the reaction to the more recent genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. In Rwanda, more than 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered at the hands of the Hutu majority while the world watched on the evening news.

The United States never involved itself in Rwandan genocide. And the United Nations, who maintained peacekeeping troops in the region to prevent widespread violence prior to the genocide, abandoned the Tutsis and its purpose when the violence actually escalated.

Last Wednesday, Sept. 28, the U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland warned about Darfur, "If (violence) continues to escalate, if it continues to be so dangerous on humanitarian work, we may not be able to sustain our operation for 2.5 million people requiring lifesaving assistance."

We walk into the Holocaust Museum and out of Hotel Rwanda saying "never again." Yet, in the words of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "It is happening again."

Americans can only inspire their government to take action in Darfur by displaying popular sentiment in favor of such action.

We must write our congressmen to voice distress about the genocide in the Sudan.

We must organize demonstrations to show our leaders that we are unified in our humanitarian cause.

But first, we must accept responsibility. Then we must act.

--Carlo Romero is a letters senior. His column appears every other Tuesday, and he can be reached at dailyopinion@ou.edu.
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