Who Really Cares About Darfur? Certainly Not The Obama Administration

Just about a year ago, The New Republic published a long and well-documented indictment of American and international policy around Darfur. The article was by Richard Just, one of our most gifted and scrupulous writers and editors. The piece was called "The Truth Will Not Set You Free." It made something of a stir even though it was published in the middle of a campaign defined by slogans. Joe Lieberman took the article to John McCain. Someone (now high in government) whom I do not feel free to mention took it to Barack Obama. But the stirring didn't quite move the principals, although they both pointed out that earlier in the campaign they had issued a joint statement precisely about Darfur. Oops, I almost wrote "Biafra" whose dread and forgotten fate I fear also will be Darfur's.

Now, again, Just has written a desolating essay about Darfur and the ugly cynicism of paying lip service to the cause but doing nothing. Worse, disguising the realities. It will be published in out next print edition (to which you may subscribe here) and thereafter on the web (but only thereafter).

We've also had the benefit of carrying the pathbreaking writings of Eric Reeves who was quite literally the first person to address the question of Darfur as a challenge to western civilization.

He's got a devastation of an op-ed in this morning's Boston Globe, "The phony optimism on Darfur." There's another one of Obama's highly touted "special envoys," this one Scott Gration. What he proposes is that we normalize relations with Khartoum, "including," as Reeves characterizes it, "lifting sanctions and removing Sudan from the State Department list of terrorist-sponsoring nations."

Read the piece. If you don't weep or get angry you have a heart of stone.

More Articles On: Barack Obama, Darfur

COMMENTS (55)

08/06/2009 - 11:36pm EDT |

The review article last year by Richard Just was truly superb. If only a single piece could move mountains and galvanize the world into action. I have much appreciated Eric Reeves' writings on Darfur in TNR. I too remember Biafra. I was just coming of age and getting acquainted with the wider world. Scott Gration was an awful choice as our envoy to Khartoum. Never again? Again and again, as TNR noted apropos Darfur.

08/07/2009 - 3:08am EDT |

Can you even begin to imagine the apoplectic reaction from the right wingnuts if Obama sent the U.S. Army into Sudan and our soldiers started coming over in body bags?

You tell me: How many would have to die before the Dittoheads were marching down the Mall in D.C. with pitchforks in their hands?

Also, what was the position of The New Republic when Washington began enforcing the Monroe Doctrine by putting one thug regime after another into power in Central and South America?

Is there no end, no limit at all to the flagrant hypocrisy in here?  

Where the hell did you get your American History textbook, from a Crackerjack box?

george

08/07/2009 - 10:07am EDT |

From the article: "He ignores the basic truth about these men: during their 20 years in power they have never abided by any agreement with any Sudanese party...."

? There's a truce in southern Sudan that - although stretched by both sides - has avoided the kind of open warfare that was going on there 10 years ago, with the last northern Sudanese troops leaving the area 18 months ago. That doesn't count?

08/07/2009 - 10:42am EDT |

SMac, you are not only a discombobulated leftist but you are also an apologist for the genocidal Khartoum regime. As for the Sudanese government adhering to the January 2005 agreement, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army begs to differ. A spokesman for the SPLA , Kuol Diem Kuol, said two years ago (Aug. 6, 2007) that the Sudanese army had not withdrawn form the oil areas in the south, per the January 2005 agreement. You are an easy mark, aren't you? And yes, I believe that Khartoum has traduced their word. What a surprise. The SPLA rebels aren't angels but Khartoum has caused terrible suffering in the south that has abated, at the expense of the Darfuris.

08/07/2009 - 11:52am EDT |

liberal reformer: The Sudanese army withdrew, as I said, about 18 months ago. Presumably, if the central government had "...never abided by any agreement with any Sudanese party...", the Sudanese army would not have withdrawn from southern Sudan at all.

Given that while the war was going on, there were literally hundreds of thousands of people being killed by war and famine annually, I presume you'll agree that the cessation of warfare, as the result of negotiations between the central government and the multiple SPLA/SPLM factions, was a good thing?

Incidentally, take a look at Wellings K, Collumbien M, Slaymaker E, Singh S, Hodges Z, et al. 2006. Sexual behaviour in context: a glo ... view full comment

08/07/2009 - 12:33pm EDT |

Sadly, the United States has little credibility to offer on this or any other pending humanitarian crises brought on by a repressive government willing to murder or allow the murder of its citizens.  Contrary to all reason and common sense, it has allowed North Korea to build a nuclear weapon and only half-heartedly tries to prevent that country from disseminating nuclear weapons technology. Our officials when speaking of Iran talk more about what will happen when Iran is capable or does obtain a bomb than what can be done to prevent it.  Finally, our President is about to give a medal to a woman who has condemned the United States as a racist and unjust society and led a world con ... view full comment

08/07/2009 - 12:37pm EDT |

Darfur is yet another example of islamic psychotics mass murdering infidels - first Christians and now anyone that's not islamic.

Ever since the 2008 election, Darfur has disappeared off the scope of the news.  Liberals and the media used to use it to attack Bush.  Now, they'll excuse mass murder to protect their precious president from inaction.  For shame.

08/07/2009 - 12:42pm EDT |

iambgious,

You're a complete idiot.  The "right wingnuts" are the ones that advocated military intervention in the first place.  Maybe then, millions of lives would have been saved with western soldiers taking out that pathetic sudanese islamic government.  Why don't you ask yourself why the sudden call for any action over Sudan has died down the instant Obama got elected?  Even his envoy is putting on his happy-thoughts t-shirt and proclaiming an end to violence and normalization of relations with the sudanese government.

08/07/2009 - 12:48pm EDT |

jwl2672: The populations on both sides in Darfur are Muslim. Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit... all Muslim.

08/07/2009 - 1:00pm EDT |

And,it hardly needs to be added, jwl2672's aim here is killing Muslims, not doing anything particular in Darfur.

08/07/2009 - 1:37pm EDT |

Perhaps the US could have intervened militarily in Darfur (together with some kind of multi-national force) if it wasn't already committing great amounts of men, materiel and money to Iraq and Afghanistan.  Let's face reality, for once -- there is no political will in the US or anywhere else to intervene militarily in Darfur, and precious little money to commit to such an intervention, certainly not while Afghanistan is a battlefield.  Unfortunately, the US is not in the position to greatly expand its global military capabilities, raise taxes to fund them and deploy its troops wherever necessary like it did during World War II and the Cold War.  The neocons believed that we co ... view full comment

08/07/2009 - 5:10pm EDT |

SMac: You are a classic paranoid. Cf. The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. You just were victimized by a glitch. I have had problems posting any number of times in the sixteen months that I have been commenting at TNR.

08/07/2009 - 5:11pm EDT |

Your post is judicious and eloquent, wild.

08/07/2009 - 6:54pm EDT |

SMacEachern2 said:

"liberal reformer: The Sudanese army withdrew, as I said, about 18 months ago."

Don't you ever get tired shilling for horrendous African regimes?

No sensible person can take anything you say seriously after your apologetics for Mbeki and Sudanese genocide.

08/07/2009 - 7:55pm EDT |

J. Dyer:? I'm not sure how describing something that happened makes me an apologist. Why, exactly, do you think that there has been a decrease in levels of violence in southern Sudan in the last 10 years? Is it magic? Or is it still the early 1990s, when many tens of thousands of people were dying there every year? What's the reason for it? Is the civil war still going on there?  If not, why has it stopped? What's your explanation?

08/07/2009 - 10:31pm EDT |

I know this is a lot to read, but be anice boy and  do give it a try, Mac:

".....If there is anything the Darfur literature makes clear, it is that the prime cause of the genocide is the national government. Not ancient and immovable tribal hatreds among Darfuris, but a particular regime in Khartoum. The historical studies show that while Darfur has seen tribal tension for centuries, these conflicts were nothing like the one that is now taking place. This was partly because Darfur's tribes lacked modern weaponry, but it was also because they had systems in place for containing conflicts--protocols that called for negotiations between tribes and for payment of compensation to prevent ... view full comment

08/07/2009 - 10:52pm EDT |

ndmackenzie commented on the Just article:

-- This is a welcome, and long overdue, article on Darfur. My main quibble with it is the way that Just excoriates "liberal" activists for their failures while ignoring the right completely. I hope TNR takes Just's comments to heart that its usual Darfur commentator, Eric Reeves, "writes in a sustained rage" and finds other writers on this topic. TNR's coverage of Darfur to date has been pretty much a one-note tirade - which is not necessarily the most effective way to help us understand the problem.

And I haven't read anything in the last year to change my opinion about TNRs coverage of Darfur.

08/08/2009 - 12:53am EDT |

Thank you for posting part of Richard Just's review article and the link to his entire piece from last year, jackson. You don't suppose that SMac is a paid flack for Khartoum, do you? By the way, what happened the discussion of the essay on Thomas More by James Wood? I saw some time back that basman was going to post on it but then I never saw his musings.

08/08/2009 - 5:33am EDT |

Good Lord, a Marty piece I can do nothing but wildly applaud.  And I think Just is on target with his attacks on liberal activists because the right has always been dragged into humanitarian interventions save *some* neocons (there was far less enthusiasm for Clinton's efforts it Bosnia and Kosovo than for Iraq).  To hear, as I did, human rights activists say privately that 2005-6 that supporting a no-fly zone in Sudan would implicitly endorse George W. Bush's war in Iraq was sickening.

08/08/2009 - 10:16am EDT |

"You don't suppose that SMac is a paid flack for Khartoum, do you?"

I don't know, LR, there are two Macs here and each of them supports tyrannical rule in the name of "liberation."  

08/08/2009 - 10:19am EDT |

"By the way, what happened the discussion of the essay on Thomas More by James Wood? I saw some time back that basman was going to post on it but then I never saw his musings."

I am ready to start discussing the Wood essay any time.

I have been posting on More's Utopia, here

blogs.tnr.com/.../should-we-have-to-read-the-bard-before-hearing-him-more-on-shakespeare.aspx

And there is no reason why we can’t also discuss the essay on the same thread.

08/08/2009 - 11:41am EDT |

I am not able to post on that thread, jackson. When the number of comments approaches or exceeds one hundred - and there are currently one hundred and three posts there - the page is white below the last comment. Could we have the discussion elsewhere so that I can participate? Thank you very much.

08/08/2009 - 12:07pm EDT |

"Could we have the discussion elsewhere so that I can participate? Thank you very much."

Of course, let me propose another one and if it's not to your liking suggest one yourself.

blogs.tnr.com/.../further-thoughts-on-an-untenable-distinction.aspx

08/08/2009 - 12:10pm EDT |

...I am not able to post on that thread, jackson....

LR it's not that bad.

Just scroll to the bottom of the thread you'll find that the last 10 posts or so are only UTOPIA. As far as that discussion is concerned just ignore the before posts. And all those dedicated posts are between J. Dyer  and me.

I got sidetracked: what was the Wood essay were going to look at?

Please remind me.

08/08/2009 - 1:25pm EDT |

basman said:

"...I am not able to post on that thread, jackson...."

It doesn't matter to me.

I'll leave it up to LR. Wherever he wants to post is ok with me.

We were going to discuss the first essay in  Wood's book which, by chance,  deals with  Thomas More.

08/08/2009 - 3:07pm EDT |

J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur. Your objective here appears to be to evade the existence of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the central government in Khartoum and the various factions of the SPLA/SPLM in southern Sudan - because the existence of the CPA (which was laboriously negotiated, over about 15 years in all) raises the possibility of a diminution of violence in Darfur that doesn't necessarily involve overthrowing an Arab government and killing a lot of Arabs. Since - like Peretz and jwlwhatever - killing Arabs is the whole point of the exercise for you, with th ... view full comment

08/08/2009 - 4:41pm EDT |

SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

08/08/2009 - 4:41pm EDT |

SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

08/08/2009 - 4:49pm EDT |

SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: Excellent! I make a claim about the treaties that ended the civil war in southern Sudan, and you counter with.... an article about Darfur."

You are full of it, mac.  

The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government.

If any western government had been guilty of even one tenth of such carnage you would have called its legitimacy into question a long time ago. The fact that they ended the killings for now changes nothing. It's still the same murderers in power.

“You all hate the UN”

Who is you, Mac the Bigot.

“and you think all Africans are incompetent,”

Where did I say that, big ... view full comment

08/08/2009 - 8:32pm EDT |

J. Dyer: "The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government."

The question is exactly whether there is still a civil war in southern Sudan. If there is not - and there isn't, although it's still a violent place - we have to ask ourselves why not. However, as I said, that would disturb your agenda and that of Martin Peretz... which has nothing to do with Darfur, and everything to do with pulling an Iraq2003 in Khartoum. And so you do not want to hear anything about the situation in southern Sudan today.

08/08/2009 - 9:04pm EDT |

SMacEachern2 said:

"J. Dyer: "The issue isn't the civil war in Southern Sudan it's the carmage unleashed by the Sudanese government......However, as I said, that would disturb your agenda and that of Martin Peretz... "

Spare me your conspiracy thinking.

"The question is exactly whether there is still a civil war in southern Sudan."

There was no "civil war" in the South there was wholesale slaughter of people there by the Sudanese government.

You are shameless shill for a murderous regime.

08/09/2009 - 2:36am EDT |

Thank you, jackson, that link is fine. The original one that you suggested would have been okay by me, I just couldn't post there. Basman, I believe you misunderstood me. When there are so may posts, the screen goes white and sometimes cuts off in the middle of a post. I am unable to comment in such situations because the Leave a Comment section is missing. Jackson, you are entirely correct about SMac; he is a shill for Khartoum. So what if the civil war in the south has wound down? It was in the interest of the Bashir regime to do so. The SPLA has violated the peace accord in any case.

08/09/2009 - 2:37am EDT |

Correction: I measnt to say above that the SPLA has charged Khartoum with violating the 2005 peace accord.

08/09/2009 - 9:08am EDT |

LR, I am ready for the discussion any time you are.

Hopefully, Itzig will join us there too.

There is no reason we can't have two simulataneous discussions going on two threads.

08/09/2009 - 9:33am EDT |

liberal reformer: "So what if the civil war in the south has wound down?"

Nice to see how your real concern for Sudanese people shines through.... That civil war killed almost 2 million people between 1983 and 2004, and you ask 'so what'? If the ending of the genocide in Darfur deprived you and yours of the excuse to fantasize about overthrowing the government in Khartoum, you'd be saying 'so what' about Darfurians as well.

08/09/2009 - 11:40am EDT |

"Nice to see how your real concern for Sudanese people shines through.... "

In your posts they do, mac.

You put you emphasis on a civil war which is still ongoing, though at a lower level, while ignoring Darfur which you believe along with the Sudanese government that the claims of mass killings are exaggerated by Zionists.

It's all a zionist plot, you see.

08/09/2009 - 11:50am EDT |

You are one piece of work, SMac. Any sentient, cognizant, intelligent person would comprehend that when I wrote the "so what ...." comment , it was in the context of debating you over the malignity of the Khartoum regime. I was very relieved when the civil warned burned itself out. You are a shill for the disgusting Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir and, therefore, you attempt to turn the tables on your critics with your ridiculous postings.

08/09/2009 - 12:44pm EDT |

J. Dyer: "You put you emphasis on a civil war which is still ongoing, though at a lower level, while ignoring Darfur which you believe along with the Sudanese government that the claims of mass killings are exaggerated by Zionists."

Right. Which is why in the post before that I refer to the genocide in Darfur.

Enough. The two of you know nothing about Sudan, nothing about Darfur, nothing about Africa, and what's more, you don't actually give a damn. Go back to your mutual pleasuring, and have fun.

08/09/2009 - 1:25pm EDT |

Resentful Mac reveals himself:

"Enough. The two of you know nothing about Sudan, nothing about Darfur, nothing about Africa, and what's more, you don't actually give a damn."

Just because mac spent a couple of summers digging for piss pots in Africa doesn't make him an expert in that region.

Besides only an ignorant fool like mac would think that one could "know" all of Africa.

It's like saying that because I spend some time in India I am an expert on China as well.

Mac would do better to go on with his self-pleasuring.

08/09/2009 - 1:41pm EDT |

What is the book of essays in which Wood's essay on More can be found?

08/09/2009 - 1:43pm EDT |

okay found it: James Wood. “Sir Thomas More: A Man For One Season.” in The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. (New York: Random House, 1999), [www.luminarium.org/.../wood.htm].

08/09/2009 - 1:46pm EDT |

l.r. one thought: though I am happy to chat with you at any functional site, if you get to the thread via windows instead of firefox you don't experience the cut off-- or at least I don't.

08/09/2009 - 1:54pm EDT |

Now I have that Wolfe site marked so I can go there readily.

Let's rock.

All I need to do is get the essay and read it, which I'll do as quickly as I can. I volunteer to do its precis and evaluation og it as a piece of crticial thinking.

I'll let you know when I have it.

08/09/2009 - 2:20pm EDT |

Good news bad news:

good news/ I just bought hte book on line (used);

bad news/ it's going to take 1 week or 2 for me to get it.

So if someone else wants to go first at the dedicated site, be my guest.

if you want to wait, I'll proceed when I can.

08/09/2009 - 6:19pm EDT |

SMac: I will put up my knowledge of Africa against yours any day of the week. Some people do have a cursory acquaintance with a topic that they declaim on but I have studied Africa intensely for many years. You just don't like the fact that jackson and I have your number, that we are on to your shilling for tyrannocrats (yes, my neologism, which came to me as I was typing this) and to your dotty leftism, so you have to demean our knowledge. As jackson said, going or even living somewhere is no guarantee of sagacity as regards a country. Paul Hollander detailed the idiocy of political pilgrims in his wonderful book by that name (Political Pilgrims, that is), whereby leftists went in search of ... view full comment

08/09/2009 - 7:30pm EDT |

P.S. SMac: Have fun fellating Omar al-Bashir. I hear that he doesn't pay well, though.

08/09/2009 - 7:47pm EDT |

-- I will put up my knowledge of Africa against yours any day of the week. Some people do have a cursory acquaintance with a topic that they declaim on but I have studied Africa intensely for many years.

I am always struck by the lack of self-awareness of the right-wing nitwits posting on The Spine.

08/09/2009 - 8:09pm EDT |

ndmackenzie said:

"I am always struck by the lack of self-awareness of the right-wing nitwits posting on The Spine."

Here comes the other Mac.

I am always struck by how deluded right wing supporters of Islamo Fascists like the Macs are, and in Mackenzie's case supporters of antisemites like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Their calling others "right wing" is a grotesque joke.

08/09/2009 - 8:18pm EDT |

There is no more right wing Jew hater here than mackenzie!

08/09/2009 - 8:19pm EDT |

There is no more right wing Jew hater here than mackenzie.

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