Oh, my god ...

If you haven't already seen this, you must go over to Blue Girl, Red State and read her account of a friend's relief work in Darfur. An excerpt:

She finished her mission in Chad, then went to Zimbabwe for three more weeks before she came home. She brought home a pretty good case of PTSD. What she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale ... beyond the nightmares of most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name, leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children after the camps: Prostitution.

... And women are the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only attacked, the men are killed.

It is criminal that we are not intervening more strongly in Darfur. This stuff happens there every day. I cannot even imagine existing in that kind of hell. This is the kind of thing that makes me pessimistic about the future of our species.

(cross-posted at Bitch, PhD)