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Last Updated: Apr 7, 2008 - 7:12:25 PM |
ERIC REEVES is Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith
College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has spent the past eight
years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing
extensively both in the US and internationally. www.sudanreeves.org
Reviews:
?Not a single person in the world has done as much for Darfur as Eric Reeves.
Combining passion, reason, black humor, legal acuity, and political
savvy, Reeves sends us all off in search of our ?better angels.?What
you have in these pages are the brilliant, fierce, rigorous writings
of a one-man-lobbying machine who is singlehandedly responsible for
saving hundreds of thousands of lives.?
? Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize winning author of
?A Problem from Hell?: America and the Age of Genocide
Professor, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government
?
No one has covered the Darfur genocide more thoroughly and knowledgeably than
has Professor Reeves. He has been the thorn in the conscience of
policymakers, scholars, journalists and readers of The New Republic
for several years with his erudite and provocative writings. This book
collects the best of them with highly readable essays. Historians will
rely on A Long Day's Dying for the in-depth analyses and critical
judgments of every step taken, and not taken, during the years of
atrocity crimes in Darfur. Place this book in the Oval Office.?
? Professor David Scheffer, Northwestern University School of Law
(former U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, 1997-2001)
?During the massive media reporting of the disaster in Darfur no one
has been more prolific, determined, and dedicated to reveal the
genocide in Darfur than Eric Reeves. Well-informed, carefully
researched, and extremely readable, A Long Day?s Dying will be
required reading for anyone seeking to understand the enormity of this
tragedy in the killing fields of Darfur.?
? Robert O. Collins, Professor of History, Emeritus
University of California Santa Barbara
Preface by John Prendergast:
Senior Advisor, International Crisis Group
Co-Founder, ENOUGH Campaign (enoughcampaign.org)
Co-Author with Don Cheadle Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End
Genocide in Darfur and Beyond
The first time I became aware of the ?Eric Reeves Phenomenon? was when
I worked in the Clinton White House. We were putting in heavy
overtime hours trying to address the various fires that were burning
in Sudan, but Eric?s level of commitment put us to shame. No matter
what we did to try to isolate the regime in Khartoum, it was never
enough, according to Eric. He was right then. And he continues to be
right now.
The record of the international community, ?led? by the United States,
is as abysmal as Eric?s writings have exposed it to be. When
ambiguity has served the Bush administration?s agenda of coddling the
regime in order to maintain its access to intelligence about al-Qaeda,
Eric?s voice has rung out clearly, providing witness to the hypocrisy
of a president who uses the word genocide but then desecrates the
Genocide Convention by doing nothing to stop it.
I cannot add anything to the comprehensiveness and clarity with which
Eric has documented and analyzed the tragic events of the last four
years in Darfur. I can, however, tell you that once you have read
this you will be armed and ready to do battle with the indifference
and inertia that prevents a more meaningful response to the mass
atrocities being perpetrated in Darfur today. You will have no excuse
? once educated ? to turn your back on a dying Darfur. You will have
no choice but to enter the policy battlefield which sees a distracted
international community pitted against a growing network of citizens
(dare we call it a movement?) internationally who are trying to force
their governments and relevant multilateral institutions to respond to
the crisis.
It may seem too little or too late, but letters must be written, calls
must be made, and our voices must be heard by elected officials if
they ignore Darfur and other mass atrocity cases: ?We?re mad as hell
and we?re not going to vote for you anymore!?
The lack of a response to the Darfur crisis is a stain on humanity?s
conscience. But it is not too late. Two and a half million
Darfurians are still languishing in displaced and refugee camps,
extremely vulnerable to the same sources of violence that rendered
them homeless in the first place. We need to press the U.S. and other
governments to make the perpetrators pay for their crimes, to press
the Chinese and Russians to lean on their business partners in
Khartoum, and to help bring a measure of peace and protection that
Darfurians have lacked for years.
I?ve worked in the White House, the State Department, the Congress,
the UN, and for NGOs in African war zones for twenty-plus years. I
know from experience that the only way governments around the world
are going to respond is if we turn up the volume against genocide and
mass atrocities. Use what you learn from Eric in this book and write
letters to your elected officials, go to rallies, meet with your
representatives, join organizations, raise funds?.. Do something!
With no action, hundreds of thousands more Darfurian lives will be
extinguished. With more letters and more calls, we have a chance to
stop the horrors in Darfur. We cannot afford to ignore that grave
responsibility.
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