Wes Clark and John Prendergast have an important Op Ed in the Boston Globe today about our failures in Dafur, and what we need to do to help end the suffering.
For nearly three years, President Bush has watched from the sidelines while senior officials in his administration have searched for solutions to the catastrophe in Darfur. So the president took a lot of people by surprise -- especially members of his own foreign policy team -- when he recently called for NATO to help protect civilians and stabilize the security situation there. But Bush's unscripted remarks on Darfur are consistent with his erratically implied policy of siding with oppressed people against their oppressors.
His administration has yet to form a united front on Darfur because of competing interests at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA. Bush needs to pull together these disparate players and create a real policy to end atrocities, punish human rights violators, and create sustainable peace.
More on the flip..
Clark and Predergast lay out a plan:
Military planners at the Pentagon need to work closely with this lead nation to plan the mission and provide military assets that enhance the force's ability to respond quickly and aggressively to attacks against civilians. Like many policies, there are countervailing interests and concerns. The US military is heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are still some resources available. A choice must be made to do our part to protect innocent people from tyrannical leaders, ethnic cleansing, and human rights abuses in this part of the world too.
The CIA also will have concerns, though for different reasons. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sudanese military intelligence officials have cooperated to some degree with the United States on counterterrorism. No doubt, they had their reasons for doing so. In fact, these same officials -- notably the head of military intelligence and friend of the CIA, Salah Abdullah Gosh -- have orchestrated a terror campaign against civilians in Darfur. The Bush administration has called this organized slaughter genocide.
Gosh was Osama bin Laden's handler when the Al Qaeda leader lived in Sudan in the 1990s, and he is no doubt useful. But Gosh is also very likely a war criminal whose policies are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Darfurians.
More details at the Boston Globe