Defining Moment For House GOP, Pres. Bush

[NATO AIR]

Defining moment for a party increasingly losing its soul and its heart.

I really wish Sen. Brownback would put Bush on blast for this, because at the heart of all this is Bush betraying the evangelical community that has supported him the most and is only asking for him to lead on this issue.

Apparently, we're back in 9/10 mode. Let's not address the serious issues of the War On Terror, like rendition (see the excellent Weekly Standard article opposing rendition here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/582xauup.asp)
or whether its worthy to ignore and literally support genocide in order to make progress in the war on terror. Heavens forbid we define ourselves so we know what we need to do to win and how much of our ideals and laws we have to ignore to do it.

When Sudan is the new failed state of the moment and we have to send US troops to hunt down the terrorists who just nuked New York or committed suicide bombings in trains and bridges across America, please remember it was the glorious House Republican leadership and Pres. Bush who arrogantly and ignorantly failed to address the circumstances that would allow it to happen.

So let's hear from one half of the bipartisan team that got 98 senators to agree to help stop genocide in Darfur and reduce the threat of a failed state in Sudan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/letas-stop-maki_1.html

05.09.2005 Sen. Jon Corzine

How to Stop a Genocide
I just saw first-hand how terrorists are made. Mix together a genocide, a civil war, oil, a failed state, and non-intervention by the global community until it is too late. And voila.

My name is Jon Corzine, and I’m one of the two US Senators who represents the state of New Jersey. Most people don’t really know what a Senator does. In my case, among other things, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to prevent this country from being attacked. My state was hit hard by 9/11, and preventing another catastrophe is paramount in my job description.

Last week, I went to Iraq and Chad. I visited troops in Iraq from my home state. These soldiers are professionals in the most magnificant sense of the word, prepared to give their lives to protect our country.

But why did I also go to Chad? Well, because while Iraq is a war-zone, Chad is right next to another war-zone, the Western regions of Darfur in the Sudan, where genocide is tearing a country apart and creating the conditions for a new failed state and breeding ground for terrorists.

Here are a couple of interesting facts about the Sudan. First, there’s oil there. Second, Osama bin Laden used to spend time there before venturing to Afghanistan. Third, a fundamentalist strain of militant Islam is quite strong within the political culture. To top it all off the country is buffeted by civil war, and a brutal genocide. Over 2 million people have been displaced by the government trying to kill or starve them by preventing humanitarian aid from coming through.

There are real, pragmatic reasons for intervening to ameliorate this situation, but first I want to make the moral case. That case is simple. Stopping the slaughter of an entire people is the greatest moral challenge of our time. Evil on this scale is unimaginable to most, which is why historically we do not act on genocide until it is too late. But this time we can act, and stop this new holocaust. And we should. In the wake of demanding democracy in the Middle East, our nation's value system requires it.

But even if you put aside the moral case for ending genocide for a moment, consider our own interests in the matter. The failed state that is being created in the wake of this horrific crime will be a hotbed for global instability. I was there, and I saw what’s happening. As I stood in the refugee camps of Eastern Chad, into which hundreds of thousands of desperate people are pouring over the border, I realized how dangerous to America the situation has become. Not only is Darfur a lawless part of an unstable state, but the conflict there is destabilizing Chad.

The refugees, even when they are receiving food and shelter, have nothing to do. Resentment is building. And Eastern Chad, which has insufficient resources for its own population, cannot accomodate the refugees for long. We must stop this genocide, and we also must bring about a long-term political solution to this crisis. With two million people in refugee camps in Chad and camps for displaced persons in Darfur, we are creating the conditions for the collapse of law and order in an entire region and, potentially, for terrorism.

So what can we do? What’s remarkable about this crisis is that it’s not that difficult a task to resolve the situation. The people perpetrating the genocide don't have a massive conventional army. They may stop if they think there will be consequences to their actions. The warlords are betting on our inaction, and so far, their bet is paying off.

I sponsored a bipartisan bill in the Senate that passed called the ‘Darfur Accountability Act’ to impose consequences and threaten these warlords. This bill would provide the tools to stop the genocide, including sanctions against those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity, an arms embargo against the government of Sudan, and a no-fly zone over Darfur. It also calls for the appointment of a Special Envoy, whose job it would be to work with all the parties to bring an end to the crisis. Without this level of engagement, I am deeply afraid that the situation will fester and more terrorists will emerge who may threaten our country. Last week, the Republicans in the House, with the support of the Bush Administration, neutered this bill by stripping out the most important provisions.

This fight does not end here. I’m going to keep blogging on this topic, and in future posts I’ll let you know how you personally can help the situation.

 

[NATO AIR]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/sudan-suffering-in-silenc.html

05.10.2005

Joe Scarborough

Sudan Suffering in Silence
It is hard to turn away. It is even harder to keep staring.

The daily images that stream out of Sudan are heartbreaking. The scale of suffering seems unprecedented.

But it is not.

This has happened in Africa before. A million Rwandan citizens were hacked to death in the mid-1990's.

But the United Nations did nothing.

A few years later, genocide struck the African continent again in Sudan.

That's right. The same Sudan that is once again in the grip of a brutally efficient killing machine.

The situation got so bad by 1997 that I worked together with human rights groups and former New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal to get the word out across America that millions were being persecuted.

Once again, the United Nations did nothing.

Reports out of Sudan eight years ago told of children as young as eight years old being crucified for their parents' beliefs. Other young boys and girls were sold into slavery for as little as $15.

Things became so bleak that the United Nations and the Clinton Administration did, well, nothing.

In fact, when I tried to pass a resolution through Congress calling for sanctions against the murderous regime, Clinton's State Department fought it with all their might.

The Congressional Black Caucus fell in line with the White House by refusing to endorse my Congressional act that condemned slavery in Sudan.

Can you imagine that?

We still hear many members of this caucus tying challenges in the African American communities to a system of slavery that ended 160 years ago but when faced with supporting the abolition of a slave system existing in their lifetime, they showed the moral courage of Thomas Jefferson.

Amnesty International was so concerned about the two million Sudanese victims that they did, well, nothing.

An Amnesty representative told me they could not support my bill because it concerned Christian persecution. They said they didn't take sides in such disputes.

Huh?

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.