I agree with Bush
It's a pretty rare day when I can say that, but every now and again his administration actually does the right thing.
President Bush has decided to implement a plan to pressure Sudan's government into cooperating with international efforts to halt the violence in its troubled Darfur region, where his administration said almost three years ago that genocide was taking place.
. . .
The timing of today's announcement appears certain to anger U.N. diplomats, who have been reporting progress in negotiations with Bashir and have been aggressively lobbying U.S. officials to delay sanctions. Sudan's official news agency reported Saturday that Ban has agreed to travel to Khartoum to negotiate a deal on a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur.
Normally, I'm all for negotiations rather than more coercive measures and ramping up of pressure. Darfur has already been declared a genocide by the US. Even Bush would be hard pressed to make the situation worse. The government in Khartoum has been using the negotiations to stall for time while its forces continue its slaughter and displacement of millions.
Bush's hands aren't totally clean in this. The US opposition to the International Criminal Court has kept the UN from bringing up the perpetrators of the violence up on crimes against humanity charges there, and collectively everyone has been sitting on their hands for far too long while this has went on and on.
So any action against the regime in Khartoum is good news. Unfortunately as the article notes, the US already has a harsh sanctions regime in place since Clinton imposed tough measures for their support of bin Laden. It will probably take action by China to make any difference. Hopefully a way can be found to make them take that action.
