The American Spectator

Special Report

Strategic Compassion in Darfur

By Daniel Allott on 3.24.06 @ 12:06AM

(Page 2 of 2)

A welcome start would be for the administration to insist that the UN enforce an arms embargo against Sudan and punish scofflaws (such as China and Russia) that continue to supply Khartoum with the money and weapons that fuel terror. The U.S. should demand the release of an unpublished UN study listing those countries that ship weapons to the Sudanese government. Mr. Bush should publicly denounce the Arab League's decision to hold its annual summit in Khartoum, scheduled for the end of March. To allow the summit to take place would not only encourage the Sudanese government to continue the genocide against its people but would be an economic reward for a country guilty of the worst human rights abuses.

Most important, President Bush should continue to call on NATO members to provide equipment, training, transport and soldiers to the peacekeeping in Darfur until enough UN troops are available for deployment, which will take at least six months and as long as a year.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the White House's reluctance to engage Darfur more actively derived from a foreign policy calculus that placed strategic military interests over humanitarian ones. But, Mr. Bush's quiet metamorphosis on Sudan demonstrates that in the face of genocide the best strategy is also the most compassionate.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Foreign Policy, Law, Military, Iraq, Russia, United Nations, NATO, Africa