Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chechnya, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; all are places that have gained infamy in recent years. They are places where people are suffering and dying every day. They are places that have been chosen by the news media as worthy of attention.
However, there are many places to which the media does not pay attention -- places where the same things happen. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge is still a dangerous threat to the government. Hatred directed towards Muslims in India seems to have been increasing over the past decade.
Hatred, Violence and Death happen. They happen whether the news media focuses on them or not. They continue to happen even after the spotlight has been turned off. Killers do not go home simply because the media has, and they kill even if the media never shows up.
But what is the media's responsibility in all of this? Can we expect and demand that the media provide extensive coverage to all who suffer in the world, and can we expect it to continue to cover a story when nothing changes? Many claim that this is precisely what should be expected.
This expectation is a fallacy; the media can play only a limited role. To blame it for our forgetfulness is wrong. The media can act only as a conduit for information and never as a means or source of action. It can help direct efforts of people to others in need, but others are still needed. So who are these others?
Some feel that it should be the United States government -- after all, it has military power, diplomats and amazing resources when compared to those of individuals. However, even this "solution" runs into several problems.
The biggest question is, why should the government intervene? Is intervention in the interests of the American people? In cases like Bosnia and Chechnya it would be ethical to get involved. But why should we spend money and lives in an attempt to force a peace on combatants who do not want it?
As many philosophers and all cynics would say, self-interest always supercedes ethics. Look at the places in which the government has intervened over the past fifteen years: Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Haiti. We have had interests in all of these so-called humanitarian missions.
The second problem is that we are severely limited in what we can do to help people. Take Bosnia as an example. The only way to create peace is to impose it by a superior military force, but how feasible is that?
So what do we do? Do we just throw our hands in the air and give up? No.
We must be guided by two words in all that we do in the foreign policy sphere. The first is compassion. We Americans are generally a compassionate people. We have always been more than willing to give aid to those in need. We saved millions of lives in Ethiopia in 1984, we saved many in Somalia initially, we have sent aid to Japan and we have helped each other in the series of disasters that have struck our own country.
We must allow ourselves to be guided by this compassion in our dealings with other countries. True, we cannot impose peace on the combatants in Bosnia, but we can provide supplies, and we can continue efforts to develop a viable peace plan.
In Chechnya, we need not intervene, but we can denounce the revolting loss of life instead of tip-toeing around the subject in order not to offend Yeltsin. He is a murderer, no longer fit to be a world leader, yet we support him. If compassion truly guided our foreign policy, then we would cease to do so.
Once we have begun to let compassion guide our actions, we must be consistent. For only by being consistent can we gain the moral authority to judge the actions of others.
Being compassionate and consistent will in no way be detrimental to our national interests and it will give us an added weapon in a struggle against violence -- that of moral authority, a weapon we do not have today. It is also a change that is made in an individual by that individual -- a change in which the media does not have to play a role.
