Sudan

I have been trolling through the new and eclectic Huffington Post, and noticed this post by Joe Scarborough which I sorta agree with:

Fast forward eight years and you find that little has changed.

President Bush has called the crisis in Sudan genocide, but he has done little to stop it.

The United Nations has muttered about how the Sudan situation is unfortunate, but once again Kofi Annan has refused to do anything that will end the suffering on his home continent.

The European Union claims to be interested but too many member states have economic interests in the country.

So nothing gets done.

Meanwhile, children are slaughtered, young girls are raped, and entire communities are wiped out in minutes.

While the world does nothing.

How pathetic.

Joe unfortunately uses the post to attack the UN, the EU, and Clinton overmuch (and misses all members of the media not named Nicholas Kristof), but at least he has the decency to mention Dear Leader. But he doesn't really miss the mark by too much... the greatest travesty of the Clinton Administration BY FAR was his inaction during the Rwanda Genocide... nothing else comes close. It is a huge blight on his presidency, and to even use so banal a term is embaressing.

Sudan is Dubya's Rwanda, but unlike Rwanda, we are seeing the magnitude of it in real-time, and are fresh from the mistakes of Rwanda... in other words, we should really know better. The EU isn't willing to help out militarily (regardless of whether or not is would be difficult for them to do so as Kevin Drum discusses), so big shame on them. UN simply isn't cut out for that sort of mission; they support relief operations and perform a sort of mop-up duty. However, Annan hasn't been a leading voice on this issue by a long shot.

But regardless of the UN and EU as other entities, it is still the role of the US to be a leader, and just like with Clinton and Rwanda, nothing will get done without our leadership in this area. "Leadership" doesn't mean Iraq-style my-way-or-the-highway diplomacy, but this is a case where W's "moral clarity" beacon, defective as it is, should be going off like prom dress.

It all starts with us... Bush should be comfortable with that since it is a Christian catchphrase and all...