The Bush response to a real "Islamo-fascist" threat

In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell famously described what was happening in Darfur as "genocide," with the caveat that the U.S. would not intervene militarily because we had "no vital interests" in the region. For the past two years that realpolitik twist of logic has underpinned U.S. policy in Sudan. The claim of "no vital interests" seemed credible because of the sanctions imposed by President Bill Clinton in 1997, when he added Sudan to the State Department's list of states sponsoring terrorism. These sanctions, which are still in place, include heavy fines and jail sentences for U.S. citizens doing business with Sudan.

Powell's startling use of the word genocide suggested at the time a moral forthrightness lacking in his European counterparts, even while the "no vital interest" caveat assured Khartoum's leaders that we would not interfere. President Bush used the word in an address before the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2004, saying that "the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide."

Strong pronouncements. In hindsight, however, these can be seen as a carefully scripted pre-election sop to conservative Christians who had long complained about Khartoum's attacks on Sudanese Christians in the south during the civil war.

After the 2004 elections, the administration fell silent on Darfur, even as the slaughter continued. In early March 2005, Khartoum stopped granting visas, effectively preventing foreigners from witnessing the ongoing carnage. Two top officials from the NGO Doctors without Borders were jailed for "treason" simply for delivering a report in the Netherlands on Khartoum's use of rape as a military weapon. President Bush kept silent.

Without leadership from the Oval Office, Congress spent most of 2005 dickering over the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act. In its original version, the bipartisan bill had formidable teeth. It provided a broad new set of sanctions, in addition to the existing Clinton-era ones which had been limited to trade. The new sanctions would have put the U.S. government on record as seeking a UN resolution embargoing arms sales to Sudan, establishing a no-fly zone over Darfur, seeking unspecified measures affecting "the petroleum sector in Sudan," and guaranteeing humanitarian aid workers' access to those suffering in Darfur. Even more to the point, additional sanctions would target individuals in the Khartoum government who were responsible for the genocide, freezing their assets abroad and imposing travel restrictions on them -- exactly the sort of hamstringing that such men fear, especially if they are likely to be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.

Taken together, these powerful sanctions, if approved by Congress and then adopted by the UN Security Council might conceivably have stopped the genocide in its tracks. Whether it all could have gotten past the Security Council is questionable. Russia and China are selling weapons to Sudan; China, Britain, and France are heavily involved in exploiting its oil resources. Indeed, considering that U.S. firms were already prevented from trading with Sudan under the 1997 sanctions, such a resolution from the U.S. might have appeared self-serving.

But the relevant question is this: Did President Bush support the bill?

The answer is: Quite the opposite. Under pressure from the White House, virtually all the sanctions were seriously weakened or eliminated in Congressional committee. The reference to a possible embargo aimed at the petroleum sector was deleted. The provisions for targeting individuals were replaced by a single provision giving the President discretion to refer individual war criminals to the International Criminal Court, a highly unlikely prospect considering the administration's hostility to the ICC. In its final form, the bill was toothless. It offered modest funding -- guilt money -- to the under-funded African Union mission in Darfur, and little else.

The President, by failing to support a bill that would certainly have defined the nation's moral position, and might even have saved tens of thousands of lives, was choosing to appease, not confront the very "Islamo-fascists" against whom he rails in the abstract.

This was the same George W. Bush who, shortly after taking office, had scrawled the phrase "Not on my watch!" in the margin of a briefing paper that referred to former President Bill Clinton's inaction during the genocide in Rwanda. That phrase has been interpreted by Samantha Power and other writers as Bush's declaration that he would never countenance such a horror during his presidency. If so, then his retreat during the past two years is all the more pathetic. A different interpretation can, however, be offered for that scrawl. It can be seen as an expression of relief that Rwanda happened on somebody else's watch.