Speech

Remarks by Ambassador Joseph A. Mussomeli Reception for "Dream for Darfur"

Phnom Penh
January 19, 2008

The American writer and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, once criticized those who characterized genocide as insanity and mass murderers as madmen.  It would be equally valid for us to criticize those who think those countries where genocides have occurred as somehow aberrant places inhabited by unusually violent or evil people.  The sad truth is that genocide and mass murder have very little to do with madness and everything to do with being human. 

Most of those who participate in the slaughter are not evil, sadistic people.  The real horror of genocide is that those who perpetrate the killing are for the most part common, average, law-abiding people.  The ingredients for genocide are rather mundane: a strong respect for authority, a passionate adherence to ideals, apathy, and cowardice.  Mundane qualities that when mixed together create a potent, deadly reaction.

Law-abiding people, idealistic people, people with a strong if distorted sense of justice, people who are too busy with their everyday lives, people who dare not risk their own safety and comfort.  Somewhere in those short phrases we should all see ourselves.  And it is the ordinariness of the people who perpetrate and ignore these evils that should worry us.  How is it especially that the very ideals that make us more human compel us to cruel, inhumane acts?  How many have died in the name of Justice, Freedom, Equality, and God?  The loftier the ideal, the easier, the more legitimate, the killing becomes. 

So today we honor those who have died.  We remember those who have been forsaken by the very laws and ideals that should have protected them.  We pray that somehow, at some time, we will attain the wisdom and compassion and courage that will ensure these horrors cease.   In the Bible there is a proverb that “fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”  I have always interpreted that to mean that humility is essential to wisdom, to really understanding life.  For as long as we presume what we do is right, we are capable of any horror.  For as long as we believe that obeying a higher human authority renders us blameless, we risk these horrors.  For as long as we refuse to accept that we are fallible, for as long as we hide behind law and diplomatic niceties, for as long as we lack the courage to see the pain around us, and for as long as we hide before our television sets and lull ourselves to distraction with our iPODs, and busy ourselves with our daily living, these tragedies will continue.