Tuesday, June 29, 2004

From the BBC on Sudan (it’s all about the conditional tense – all emphases added)

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has warned Sudan to end attacks by Arab militia in Darfur where a humanitarian crisis has beset African villagers.

Speaking in Khartoum, he said the UN Security Council could act if violence continued in the region where about one million people have fled their homes.

Mr Powell is to visit Darfur in person on Wednesday to witness a crisis he said could develop into genocide.

[…]

"Unless we see more moves soon in all these areas, it may be necessary for the international community to begin considering other actions, to include Security Council action," Mr Powell said.
Here's a safe bet; take the U.S. continuing to sit on its hands and the points.

# posted 8:54 PM

Monday, June 28, 2004

This past Saturday I went to see President Clinton and get a signed copy of his book at one of the two signings he did in Los Angeles. It didn't go well. If you want to read my little rant about the morons that own Eso Won books and how they wasted my time along with several hundred others, click here.

# posted 11:04 PM

Sunday, June 27, 2004

Continuing with the unintentional “Bush is an idiot” theme of today, be sure to check out Fred Kaplan’s piece in Slate on this administration’s entirely predictable reversal of its mostly non-existent North Korea policy. Here are some juicy bits

This week, after 20 months of doing nothing about North Korea's drive to build nuclear weapons, President Bush finally put a proposal—a set of incentives for disarmament—on the negotiating table. The remarkable thing is, the deal is practically identical to the accord that President Clinton signed with Pyongyang in 1994—an accord that Bush condemned and scuttled from the moment he took over the White House.

It's good that Bush has at last realized that diplomacy is the only way to solve the crisis. But he's come a bit late to this epiphany. North Korea has greatly strengthened its hand in the interim. Two years ago, its 8,000 fuel rods were padlocked under international inspection. Now, they've been reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium.

[…]

Bush has stunningly mishandled this confrontation. He has allowed North Korea—the most rickety spoke on his "axis of evil," a dangerous regime by any measure—to reach the crest of becoming a nuclear power. He has dismissed numerous opportunities to nip this disaster in the bud. And now he comes up with an old formula that evades the recent shift in the balance.

In short, by his own careless arrogance, the president of the world's most powerful nation has allowed himself to be outmaneuvered by the very model of a modern tinhorn dictator.
Be sure to check out the rest.

# posted 4:09 PM

That interview with Irish television – not George W. Bush’s finest moment (does he have those?). One thing I learned: Europe = France.

Q Mr. President, I know your time is tight, can I move you on to Europe? Are you satisfied that you are getting enough help in Iraq from European countries? You have come together, you are more friendly now -- but they're not really stepping up to the plate with help, are they?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think, first of all, most of Europe supported the decision in Iraq. And, really, what you're talking about is France, isn't it? And they didn't agree with my decision. They did vote for the U.N. Security Council resolution that said, disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. We just had a difference of opinion about when you say something, do you mean it.

# posted 3:27 PM

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

The Bush administration has never had any solid reasons for opposing the International Criminal Court. Its objections basically amounted to sovereignty issues and paranoid visions of a court running amuck. But today it was forced to abandon its U.N. resolution which sought another year of immunity for American servicemembers.

It’s interesting that in two ways the U.S. has both demonstrated a “justified” fear of the court and at the same time shown that such fear is unwarranted. If the Abu Ghraib prison abuses constitute war crimes, it wouldn’t matter because Iraq isn’t a signatory to the ICC (but what if they become one after the transfer of power? Hmm…). But Afghanistan is. So what’s to stop Afghanistan from bringing a case for war crimes for say the deaths of innocent civilians or detainee abuses? The complementary provision. If the accused state makes a good faith effort to investigate the alleged crime, the court has no jurisdiction. And it seems that the U.S. has done this both in Afghanistan and Iraq with regards to detainee abuses at least.

But of course, the debate has never really been about supposed weakness in the workings of the ICC. It’s about reluctance to give up an ounce of American sovereignty to an international institution and exaggerated fears of universal jurisdiction.

# posted 11:20 AM

Sunday, June 20, 2004

The Washington Post editorial page on Sudan

The Darfur killings do look very much like genocide. The U.N. Convention on Genocide defines it as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" by, for example, "deliberately inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." In keeping with this language, the Darfur violence has been targeted at a group defined by its black skin, with the objective not merely of looting land or cattle but of physical destruction. Aerial maps, interviews with refugees and reports from the region show that villages with ethnic African populations have been singled out for destruction; in one area, U.N. fact-finders came upon 23 African villages burned to the ground, while ethnic Arab villages, some separated from an African one by as little as 500 yards, were unscathed. Moreover, the refugees from the burned villages now face death not as some byproduct of conflict; their extermination is a main objective of the death squads and Sudan's government. The death squads attack refugees who venture out of their camps in search of food or firewood, and the government deliberately hampers international humanitarian efforts to deliver relief supplies. After a rebellion began in Darfur early last year, the Sudanese regime appears to have decided that, by wiping out a large fraction of the civilian population, it could deter copy-cat rebellions elsewhere.

Whatever label one attaches to these killings, there is a moral obligation to do everything possible to stop them. To ignore slaughter on this scale is to subscribe to an intolerably cramped view of Western interests, one that would drain foreign policy of its moral content, undermine its support among voters and damage the West's reputation in developing countries that already seek to paint high-minded Western rhetoric as hypocritical. The Bush administration, to its credit, understands this. But its strategy is out of kilter with the crisis on the ground.
It’s an interesting phrase “Whatever label one attaches to these killings…” Despite following this with ideas of "Western interests," the previous paragraph seems to mirror what the State Department is now debating: Is this genocide? Who cares? Don’t lend credence to the phony debate over whether genocide is the threshold for intervention. Mass murder is mass murder whatever the motive. It’s nice to see more attention from the mainstream media on this issue. But shame on the WaPo for buying into the immoral “is it really genocide” argument.

# posted 5:58 PM

Friday, June 18, 2004

From the NYT editorial page:

"The United States and the U.N. secretary general have strongly condemned the vicious ethnic cleansing campaign [in Darfur] sponsored by Sudan's government, which threatens hundreds of thousands of people with starvation before autumn. That's not enough. The situation demands strong action."

# posted 9:57 AM

The Center for American Progress has a great summary and commentary on the Bush administration's utterly disingenuous semantic game over the bogus Saddam-al-Qaida link. Check it out here.

# posted 9:57 AM

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Nicholas Kristof eerily suggests that another A Problem from Hell by Samantha Poweradministration may be wringing its hands over whether the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians can actually be classified as “genocide” – this time in Sudan. Samantha Power (whose outstanding book, describes the Clinton administration’s similar hand wringing over Rwanda, is still featured to the left) also made this point in the NYT two months ago. The International Crisis Group has published a report on the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. The report has an excellent background on the conflict as well as recommendations for the international community. Here’s an excerpt

Since it erupted in February 2003, the conflict has claimed some 30,000 lives, but experts warn that without a rapid international response, what UN officials have already called the worst humanitarian situation in the world today could claim an additional 350,000 in the next nine months, mainly from starvation and disease. Many more will die if the direct killing is not stopped.

The international response thus far has been divided and ineffectual. The Sudan government has gained time to pursue a devastating counter-insurgency strategy against two rebel groups and a wide swathe of civilians by playing on those divisions and the desire of leading states not to put at risk the comprehensive peace agreement that is tantalisingly close between Khartoum and the SPLA insurgency on what for 21 years has been the country’s main civil war.

# posted 10:51 AM

From the LAT: "Spy Work in Iraq Riddled by Failures."

# posted 10:16 AM

The [bogus] Saddam-al-Qaida connection.

George W. Bush: I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda…

Proof: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda

Kindergarten logic from the President of the United States.

# posted 9:50 AM

Monday, June 14, 2004

As Mr. Spock might say, fascinating.

# posted 10:12 PM

Sunday, June 13, 2004

Check out James Traub’s piece on Iran’s nuclear program. It’s the cover story of this week’s NYT Magazine.

# posted 11:35 AM

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Read Slate's Fred Kapalan on how Reagan won the Cold War (the article is more nuanced than that).

# posted 1:22 PM

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Ronald Reagan didn’t "win" the Cold War. Russia and the Idea of the WestHere’s a great read that might convince you. You can read review essays here and here. I’m fortunate enough to know the author and count him as a mentor and he makes a powerful, very well documented case.

Last night Aaron Brown began a segment on his show saying “A good way to start a barroom fight among historians is to say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Well, that's not totally true. A good way is to hide the sherry but it's a start.” But the segment was utterly disappointing. Brown quoted only Robert Dallek, who is not a Cold War historian

ROBERT DALLEK, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Yes, Reagan played a role, made a contribution, but I don't think it's fair to say he won the Cold War. He contributed to the victory in the Cold War but you got to give Harry Truman credit and Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson.

That was it. The total of the “debate” that historians have, at least as much as Aaron would allow. Is it too soon after the death of Reagan to have an honest debate?

# posted 6:19 PM