A serious diplomat, Jan Pronk, seeing the genocide around him— and knowing history will rightly convict him of facilitating genocide—has done the minimum and spoken out about the Sudanese government’s disintegration, and the desperation that will lead to a renewed wave of janjaweed “cleansing attacks” on the minority populace.
The UN, and most particularly Kofi Annan knows this is genocide because we have experienced an earlier one nearby.
But the UN cannot even give the pogrom its proper name–genocide–because of Chinese support for their Sudanese oil suppliers. The Sudanese are now trying to distract the world community with assertions that the UN is being misled by a Jewish conspiracy.
Claims against Jews and their “American toadies” are now the cover for this new genocide. (See this Sudan Tribune piece)
The UN is failing to stop the second African genocide in a generation and now the perpetrators and their enablers are blaming those who would stop them as puppets of a Zionist plot. Americans might dismiss such an outrageous claim, but it is one that is allowed to take root in much of the rest of the world.
We can lament that American credibility is so diminished and its moral authority so wasted that this is allowed to happen. But that does not exempt Americans from doing at least as much as Jan Pronk has done to bring pressure on the world to intervene. This is an issue on which President Bush has spoken forthrightly. See his statement on the White House website.