Nina Shea adds some perspective to the American response to the Dharfur genocide in a fine piece at National Review Online. Here is a portion of her essay:
On Thursday, the United States made human-rights history. Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying to a packed Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room on Thursday morning, reported that in July the United States had launched an investigation into charges that the Arab Islamist government of Sudan and its proxy militia of Arab tribesmen, known as the Janjaweed, were responsible for carrying out atrocities against the three African tribes of Sudan's western province of Darfur. He said that despite denials and attempts to obfuscate by Khartoum, the investigative team found "a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities (killings, rapes and burning of villages)" against the non-Arab villagers and that 74 percent of those victims interviewed reported that the Sudanese military forces were involved in the attacks.
Powell's next statement was breathtaking: "[T]he evidence leads us to the conclusion that genocide has occurred and may still be occurring in Darfur. We believe the evidence corroborates the specific intent of the perpetrators to destroy 'a group in whole or in part'. This intent may be inferred from their deliberate conduct. We believe the other elements of the convention have been met as well."
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.
Moreover, in taking efforts to stop the genocide, the administration is going well beyond what is required under international law. The convention does not require parties to take any specific action other than to end their own responsibility for the human destruction. Nevertheless, the 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 entire article bears careful reading. As I read through it one question that came to mind was, Where are all the millions of protestors who were so concerned about the welfare of Iraqis prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Why are they not overflowing the streets of European and American cities demanding an immediate end to the genocide? Is it because the victims are black? Is it because they're Christians? Or is it because the left doesn't really care about oppressed people at all unless they can be used as a cudgel to beat the United States over the head with? Take your pick.
Then a second question occured to me as I reflected upon this awful situation. If it should require that we insert military forces into Sudan to bring about an end to the slaughter being perpetrated by the Islamic government in Khartoum, would the left object? Or would they argue, like they did before, during, and since OIF, that we have no business jeopardizing the lives of innocent civilians in order to save them from being murdered by their oppressors? Elie Wiesel, in giving his acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, said this:
"Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."
If only the New York Times and the Washington Post read Wiesel.
A final question: Will Bush get credit for this historic demarche from his leftist critics in the MSM? The answer here is easy: Probably not. The liberal elite media is following their marching orders from the DNC and has become riveted, like a cat fixated on a moth fluttering around the ceiling, on Bush's National Guard service of thirty three years ago. They can't allow themselves to be distracted by the extraordinary events taking place in the world today as long as there's a chance that they'll be able to discredit Bush with his supposed National Guard derelictions. These are the sort of people Christ referred to when he spoke of straining out gnats while swallowing camels.
Confronted with a man who has accomplished the extraordinary feat of liberating 50 million people while simultaneously waging a global war on terror and pulling us through an inherited recession that was pushed even deeper by the devastating blows of 9/11, the media carps not about his current deficiencies, whatever they may be, but instead they obsess over whether he showed up for every one of his weekend Guard meetings more than three decades ago. These are not serious people, some of them may even be teetering on the brink of psychological pathology, but in any event they are certainly not the sort we want advising us on matters of great moment in the years ahead.