Genocide transcends partisanship

I want to thank Tom Grey for posting this comment and share my response:

Tom - Thanks for your comments. You're right that Amnesty and HRW haven't called this genocide. You're also right that they should. But that doesn't diminish the importance of their work documenting the attrocities. In any case, Amnesty and HRW do not make U.S. policy, and if you're suggesting that President Bush's Secretary of State, or anyone in the Bush Administration, is calling this genocide, then I'm afraid you're incorrect. As of last night, Congress is calling this genocide, and I'm hopeful that the Bush Administration will follow suite.

Your remark that the U.N. is not highlighting this is also incorrect, although certainly, the U.N. Security Council is falling down on the job.

You seem to bring up the U.N., France, and Russia as if to suggest that I have some bias in their favor. It would take more room than I have here to detail my complaints against the foreign policies of other countries. (The Washington Post editorial I linked to rightly lambasts France on this issue.) But I am an American, and I have the power and the duty to hold my own government accountable, which is what I'm trying to do.

The United States, as the most powerful nation on earth, the nation that holds itself up as a beacon of freedom to all mankind, has a duty to excercise its power -- military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural -- to stop the crime of all crimes against humanity. Together, the American people can make that happen. But I doubt encouraging my countrymen to lobby members of the Russian Duma or the French Parliament would be particularly effective. Americans can move France or Russia or the U.N. Security Council to act by moving the U.S government to take the right stand in the right way, which is what is starting to happen.

As for my bias showing, I assume you mean my partisan bias. For the record, I have no interest in hiding my partisan bias (have you read my bio?), and I'm doing everything I can to help Bush find a new line of work. But genocide transcends partisanship. I make no bones about the fact that the Clinton Administration failed the people of Rwanda. I'm also proud to have been an American Air Force officer serving when we halted the genocide in Kosovo, which was on Clinton's watch.

I don't think it's clear that leading a humanitarian regime change in Sudan would help Bush electorally, but I'm more concerned with stopping genocide than with partisan politics. Whether or not he does the right thing in Sudan, there are plenty of reasons to vote against Bush.