Scott Gration is an embarrassment. As Barack Obama's special envoy to Sudan, Gration has a dual mission: to help win justice and peace for the nearly three million Darfuris who currently live in camps after being subjected to genocide by Sudan's government; and to prevent that same odious government from initiating another slaughter in southern Sudan, where a 2005 peace agreement is looking more tenuous by the day.

In an editorial, TNR calls on Barack Obama to fire his Sudan envoy, Scott Gration:

• Obama’s Sudan Envoy Is an Embarrassment. Fire Him. by The Editors
• Is Barack Obama Causing a Real Estate Boom in the West Bank? by Sarah A.

A few things stand out upon a first reading of Obama's official Sudan policy announcement, TNR's copy of which is pasted below.

One is the stark language it uses regarding President Omar Al Bashir's indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The policy explicitly states that the United States will support "international efforts to bring those responsible for genocide and war crimes in Darfur to justice" and says that "accountability for genocide and atrocities is necessary for reconciliation and lasting peace." Until now, the United States has been extremely cagey about the ICC indictment, to the point where our Sudan envoy, Scott Gration, has made it sound like we're interested in deferring accountability indefinitely in order to improve relations with Khartoum. I've heard that Hillary Clinton's deputy, James Steinberg, was pushing to ensure that our policy didn't undermine the ICC ruling during the policy review process. The change is a good thing: International justice continues to be imperfect, but one should not be allowed to commit the worst crimes in the world and get away scot free.

The second interesting thing is the role that counter-terrorism plays in the policy. During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Sudan hearings last summer, Gration and Senator Russ Feingold got into an fairly hostile dispute over the value of Sudanese cooperation on intelligence and counterterrorism issues--with Feingold arguing that the value of Khartoum's intel cooperation is vastly overblown, and that the issue had often been raised as a way for Sudan's government to avoid accountability for human rights violations. Since all of the data on such cooperation is secret, the two ended the exchange by vowing to discuss the matter further in a "secure" setting.

For months, the White House has been saying that President Obama would personally roll out the results of his administration's long-delayed Sudan Policy Review, which will officially set the direction of U.S. policy for Darfur and South Sudan, a region that will soon decide whether to become an independent country. (Update: Click here to read the text of the actual policy and my analysis.)

Now, the review is finally here. It will be announced by Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and the U.S. envoy to Sudan, General Scott Gration. Obama does not plan to attend, most likely because the president's political handlers don't want to further associate him with a policy that has been an ongoing public-relations disaster. That's a shame, because it signals to the world and the government of Sudan that Obama himself is not particularly engaged on the issue, and it's a sad contrast to the deeply concerned speeches Obama gave in front of Save Darfur groups before he became president. (He even co-wrote an introduction to Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond, by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast.)

While we won't know the exact contents of the review until we hear today's announcement, the initial press leaks make it sound like a consensus document. It does not include many of the most dramatic policy prescriptions advocated by Scott Gration, who has often spoken about lifting sanctions as soon as possible and otherwise incentivizing Khartoum without applying much in the way of pressure. (He has described his preferences thusly: "We've got to think about giving out cookies. … Kids, countries--they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.") For instance, the review does not provide for Sudan's removal from the list of designated State Sponsors of Terrorism, it does not call for an immediate lifting of sanctions without a quid pro quo from Khartoum, and it does not authorize Gration to negotiate directly with Sudan's president, who has been indicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The review also does not adopt Gration's preferred description of the violence in Darfur—he wants to call it "the remnants of genocide," but the policy review is said to maintain that genocide "is taking place" in Darfur.

President Obama designated George Mitchell his special envoy to the Jews and the Arabs because he had experience with them. Of course, Mitchell's familiarity with the Middle East was the familiarity of utter failure. No matter. Obama couldn't have sent George Tenet again ... or, God forbid, Anthony Zinni. And he wouldn't dispatch Dennis Ross, who knows far too much that wouldn't have fit with the president's own delusions.

Another reason, perhaps the decisive reason, for dispatching Mitchell was that he had resolved the "Irish question," dating back all the way to the mid-19th century, or "the troubles," which it has been called since the twenties.

An intriguing article in the New York Times by Mark Landler, whom I slighted unfairly last month, is headlined, "Clinton Has Warm Words for Ireland and Britain." I will get to Hillary's warm words for Ireland below. But what struck me was her "assuring the British that they still had a special relationship with the United States." The U.S. has had a "special relationship" with Great Britain since the War of 1812, save for a few hostile but feeble interventions by London on behalf of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

For one, Prime Minister Gordon Brown couldn't get a one-on-one meeting with Obama either during the General Assembly in New York or at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. But that's just a slight. To be sure, Washington was offended by the sneaky arrangements made by the Labour government with Scotland and the tyrannical Gadhafi regime for the release of the Libyan security official who was responsible for the Lockerbie murder of 270 people, 189 of them Americans.

Hillary Clinton has become the president's secretary for women's affairs, and she's done a good job at it--within the severe limits of what realistically can be done to protect females from sexual violence in war zones.  On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council met, with Hillary in the chair, and as the Associated Press put it, "adopted a resolution ...

• Class War in Obamaland: Can the Coalition Hold? by Thomas B.

While Scott Gration's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August was deeply uninspiring, in the weeks that followed, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan did manage to make some fitful progress. He prevented a violent resolution to the issue of territorial rights in the oil-rich region of Abyei, and he at least tried to get Khartoum into talks with resistance and civil society groups from Darfur. It seemed that his efforts to engage Khartoum were falling short of total disaster.

But things have since gone downhill: Gration's attempts to jump-start the Darfur peace process have sputtered. Even as Gration has called for the U.S. to lift sanctions against Sudan, Khartoum has reneged on much of the previous progress made in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), and it is again sponsoring violence against Southern Sudan, using armed militias. Meanwhile, Khartoum is taking advantage of Gration's goodwill and demanding rule changes that will undermine the crucial popular referendum and the election mandated by the CPA. No wonder that Gration is losing the trust of leaders in Darfur and South Sudan—even as he seems to have convinced Khartoum that he is on its side.

Now, in a mind-blowing statement in today's Washington Post, Gration seems to dispense with the idea that pressures of any sort can influence Khartoum: "We've got to think about giving out cookies," he explains. "Kids, countries--they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."* It's unclear where all of Gration's goodwill toward Khartoum is meant to lead. Few people believe his strategy is going to work--common sense suggests that it won't--and now, it looks like few of his initiatives have produced anything resembling sustainable success.

With apologies to Winston Churchill, President Obama may not have presided over the beginning of the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week in New York, but he seems finally to have marked the end of an embarrassing beginning to his Middle East diplomacy.

Look, everything I know about the top U.S.

Uh-oh:

Allegations of voter fraud in Afghanistan may be creating a rift between the United States and Britain.

Appearing on the BBC, US special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke had remarkably different things to say about the situation in Afghanistan than British Foreign Secretary David Miliband did.

President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are reportedly planning to meet next month on the sidelines of a UN conference in New York. An international Arab-Israeli peace summit might follow, which Israeli diplomats have already nicknamed “Obamapolis” after the most recent failed attempt to re-launch negotiations, the Annapolis Summit. The disappointment and skepticism felt by most observers is not unreasonable; in what has become almost an annual ritual, peace talks are “relaunched” with much fanfare and enthusiasm, only to yield little in the way of substantive progress. 

Yesterday the BBC reported that Obama's Af-Pak point man Richard Holbrooke had an "explosive" and "dramatic" confrontation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over reports of widespread voter fraud in Afghanistan's August 20 election.

At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Sudan, questions came up about an open disagreement between General Scott Gration, Obama's Darfur envoy, and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, over whether Sudan is currently committing genocide.

I'm always skeptical when someone criticizes an Obama official for "naively favoring carrots over sticks" in our dealings with another country. Too often, such complaints are cover for demagogues who consider any negotiation appeasement. Yet it's becoming harder and harder to deny that this is a more or less undistorted description of the approach being taken by Barack Obama's Darfur envoy, Major General Scott Gration.

On Wednesday, Barack Obama appointed retired Air Force Major General J. Scott Gration as his special envoy to Sudan. In 2001, when the envoy position was first created, the job entailed brokering a peace deal between Khartoum and rebel groups in the south. It subsequently mutated to include halting Darfur's genocide and reversing President Bashir's expulsion of humanitarian aid workers. So, what does Gration's appointment mean for Darfur policy now?

In the current issue, I write about Afghanistan's shaky future as the country tries to overcome years of violence and a devastating dependence on opium trade. The books and testimony below help to illustrate a place whose history is fraught with tragedy--but where a cautious hope for a better life is beginning to take hold.