A reader points to this story on what the U.S. has been doing to help fight the genocide in Sudan. Excerpts:
The significance of the administration’s action cannot be overstated. This marks the first instance that a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention, the most fundamental of all human-rights treaties, has formally charged another party with “genocide” and invoked the convention’s provisions while genocide has been in progress. In the past, the convention and the term “genocide” have been applied only retroactively by state parties, long after the violence ended. Former President Bill Clinton underscored this recently when he apologized for his administration’s inaction to stop the 1994 genocidal massacres of the Tutsis in Rwanda.
[T]he United States is taking the lead in trying to rally the international community to exert pressure on Khartoum, all the while continuing America’s unilateral economic sanctions.
The United States is also providing some 80 percent of the humanitarian aid and other support to keep Darfur’s 1.5 million refugees alive. While many other nations have so far failed to make good on their pledges, the U.S. is exceeding its aid commitment.
The European Union has hedged from using the G-word about Darfur. In the late 90s when it dropped the word “slavery” from the U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution censuring Sudan’s atrocities in the south, the EU representatives argued that such harsh terms have no place in diplomacy. But it was with just such bluntness that President Bush laid blame squarely on the regime back in 2001 for crimes against the southerners (he called the crimes “monstrous” and compared them to the Holocaust).
It is now up to the other members of the Security Council to seize this historic moment. On its response to the U.S. resolution rests the fate of the three African tribes of Darfur — and the world’s solemn promise to act to stop genocide.
The world may have made a solemn promise to stop genocide, but other than that “the world” doesn’t seem interested in, y’know, DOING anything.
If any heavy lifting is done, you know who’s going to be doing it. We are, with perhaps some help from the Coalition of the Reliable, for which we will promptly be cursed by those who will accuse us of interference, of doing it for the oil (does Sudan have oil?) and all the rest of it.
Do you think Secretary Powell might – just possibly – be able to *shame* Old Europe into doing something useful for a change?
“does Sudan have oil?”
Yes, Sudan has oil.
And even if it didn’t, like Afghanistan, you just know that it would be all about “oil pipelines”.
[sacrasm off]
The Sudanese oil fields are run by the Red Guards terrorist organization from the Middle Kingdom.
Yes, why the outcry now, for the Darfur region, but never for the Christian and animist south?