A Donkey for President Bush

May 12, 2007

by Jane Wells

In his most recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof argues that what is needed to galvanize President Bush and the public to do something about the genocide in Darfur is a suffering puppy.

Kristof referenced a number of scientific studies that explore how and why decent people (fail to) respond to genocide, famine and poverty. A single child or animal is more effective than actual facts and statistics about suffering or even a group of starving children. With bewilderment Kristof reminds us that when he first started writing about the genocide in Darfur "A single homeless hawk (Pale Male of New York City) aroused more indignation than two million homeless Sudanese".

Yet indifference and donor fatigue can dissipate with the right prompt. So, what would be the pivotal prompt that could get America to stand up and respond now? Some wags have suggested that if only Anna Nicole Smith had died in a camp in Chad, or perhaps if Paris Hilton had been arrested drunk in Darfur, the media attention would have wrought some change.

There aren't many cute puppies roaming Darfur these days, but I'd like to present a Darfurian donkey to President Bush and the American public:


His scars are the result of burns. He was burned while his owner's home was ransacked in the village of Alliet. A witness untied him from a tree so he could escape the flames, but Government of Sudan soldiers tied him up again so he could not run away. He was left to slowly die from festering burn wounds, tethered, helpless and without food or water.

Welcome to his world America. His name is Eeyore.