Posters throughout New York told me “millions are uniting to stop genocide” in Darfur. The Cornell Chronicle’s Krishna Ramanujan told me that a faculty workshop was “Cornell’s latest attempt to make a direct contribution to ending the genocide in Darfur.” Even George Bush calls the killing “genocide.” Not to ruin a good story, but the U.N. Security Council’s special committee on Darfur disagrees. And so does Nobel Peace Prize winning-Doctors Without Borders, who’ve spent more time there than anyone but the Sudanese.

At root in misunderstanding Darfur is racism and our so-called War on Terror. We’ve been told time and time again, especially by New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof, that “Arabs” are killing “Africans.” Like Al Qaeda in Manhattan, these Muslims are ravenous in Darfur. And because these oil-funded “Arabs” are killing “Africans,” it follows to some that this situation is most aptly termed “genocide.”

For Cornell, this particular crime merited selling $9,000,000 of investments, mostly in PetroChina, a Chinese oil company drilling in the Sudan. Our much-publicized “divestment” in September 2006 was not followed by any ethical investing policy, like the gigantic California Public Employees Pension uses to both make money and promote good corporate citizens. After meeting with Steven Golding, executive vice president for finance and administration, I went through Cornell’s portfolio at the Investment Office and found lots of arms dealers, mass polluters and union-breaking companies. In addition, he told me about Marathon and Total, two oil companies doing business in the Sudan from which we will not divest. Ms. Ramanujan at the Chronicle writes nothing about any “attempt[s] to make a direct contribution” to ending crimes against humanity elsewhere because, simply, there are none, especially relating to the biggest crime of our lives: Iraq.

Instead, Cornell and America remain very actively invested in a more heinous crime than the Janjaweed. We host a bigoted scholarship program (ROTC) and employ enlisted officers to train the unfortunate men and women who might die occupying Iraq. We invite bomb-builders Raytheon, Boeing and Northrup Grumman to career fairs, and invest in Shell and ExxonMobil. We’re part of the war effort — financially and politically. And Ms. Ramanujan’s Chronicle just ran a story praising engineering alum Earl Valencia for his work building missiles for George Bush’s adventures.

We act pious about Darfur to sidestep Iraq. Though the full-page ads make readers think a global movement has emerged to “Save Darfur,” the rest of the planet knows better that a far larger, stronger and most honest movement existed before President David Skorton turned to piety. Globally, 15,000,000 people marched in protest before the U.S. invaded Iraq, and since then, millions more have demonstrated wherever Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Cheney and the rest of the junta travel. During Bush’s most recent field trip to South America, demonstrators replaced the S in his name with swastikas. He can’t step outside in Indonesia, and Rice can’t leave Washington, without signs calling her an assassin.

Most Iraqis — across religious, geographic and political lines — want the U.S. to leave Iraq now. Surely Americans and Cornellians are far more responsible for the millions of Iraqi refugees, tens of thousands of amputees and hundreds of thousands of dead than they are for what’s happening to the Fur, Zaghawa and Massillet tribes. If Cornell’s Provost is really bent out of shape about Darfur, then surely she’s losing even more sleep over the ghastly Occupation of Iraq.

But we don’t find that in Cornell’s policies. Instead, we find a selective divestment and a faculty symposium and self-aggrandizement by the Chronicle. Maybe Cornell is just like other groups so piously defending the Sudanese: they hope the louder we condemn the over-simplified “genocide,” the less responsibility we have for using our endowments to fund and profit the shameless war in Iraq.

Many Darfur activists don’t even want to hear from the Sudanese. Instead, they accept that it’s just “genocide,” and that the Sudan has no history, no politics and one set of good Africans and another of armed Arabs. Though these distinctions are bogus (almost everyone in the Sudan is Muslim, black, lives in Africa and speaks Arabic), these labels remain because they fit into a larger mold. People pretend the “genocide” in Darfur is another front in the War on Terror — crazy Arabs killing ceaselessly, and only American guns can stop it. We only identify the killers in the Sudan as Arabs to imply their motive is cultural or religious.

It’s no matter to the “millions united to Save Darfur” that the conflict began — and will end — because of resources. Famine trigged the civil war, and it continues because the Janjaweed is funded by nomadic groups and the targets of their aggression are farmers. This war is about grazing rights verses farming rights in a semi-arid impoverished ecosystem. We’d never hear this from the campaigners, because their point is to reduce the conflict between good and evil, Arab and victim. Their shirts and banners are indicative — the Fur people, for whom Darfur is named, are treated like animals or an endangered flower: helpless and in need of our saving, threatened by an unceasing foe (Arabs, in this schema). By hitching our wagons to the voiceless, we prevent anyone in Darfur from answering the same question we deny Iraqis — “Do you want us to invade?”

Some campaigns to “Save Darfur” are bizarre, designed to hide the history of the Sudan and shove tragedy into a convenient frame: we’re asked support an “intervention” to stop an Arab “genocide.” By calling Darfur “genocide” against all reality, the campaigners demand military intervention, or “robust military action,” as John Prendergast told a Cornell audience last week. Has he learned so little from the Occupation in Iraq that he would repeat it?

There are many millions united, and they’re disgusted at all these crimes. Looking at Iraq, the millions see America as responsible. In Darfur, we’re the misled. Caring about dying Sudanese is a good thing, and we all have a moral responsibility to prevent deaths. But these efforts cannot diminish our guilt in Iraq, where we are politically and personally responsible for far more deaths and refugees than the Janjaweed are. President Skorton should divest in the Pentagon by withholding his taxes before expecting any applause for noticing that our endowment capitalizes some seriously heinous companies.

We cannot claim piety by occupying Iraq and ignoring truth in the Sudan. We should demonstrate for a prompt withdrawal of foreign belligerents in Iraq and stop reducing the Sudan to George Bush’s version of reality — Muslims v. Freedom. Before we “Save Darfur” we must stop Occupying Iraq.

Jeff Purcell is a graduate student in Africana Studies. He can be reached at jlp56@cornell.edu. Brutal Honesty appears Mondays.