Friday, March 24, 2006 – Last Updated: 6:39 AM
Stop another holocaust

Post and Courier
Chalston.net
X-Sender: Asbed Bedrossian <asbed@usc.edu>
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Close to a million people were killed in Rwanda in 1994 when the
dominant Hutus turned against the Tutsis. The slaughter that went
unchecked should have ensured that at the first signs of genocide the
United Nations would act to prevent yet another human tragedy.

Not so. Genocide has been proceeding in the Darfur region of Sudan as
if there had never been a commitment by the international community to
make the vow “Never Again,” after the Jewish Holocaust, mean
something. To date, the United Nations has shrunk from its
responsibility to intervene and the United States, overstretched in
Afghanistan and Iraq, is in no position to act unilaterally.

Over the past three years, during which at least 300,000 people were
killed and two million displaced from their homes, the United States
was at the forefront of diplomacy aimed at persuading the Sudanese
government to rein in its murdering militias, known as the Janjaweed,
and to cease the “ethnic cleansing” of the black Christian population.

Eighteen months ago, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
declared that the Arab government was carrying out a campaign of
genocide against the people of Darfur and was using rape as a
weapon. President Bush has repeated the charge of genocide, as has
Congress.

A campaign mounted by the American Jewish World Service called
“Million Voices for Darfur” calls on people around the world to remind
President Bush that during his first year in the White House, he wrote
in the margins of a report on the Rwandan genocide, “Not on my watch.”
American Jews are organizing a mass rally in Washington on April 30.

Last month, the president called for a mission to Darfur under “NATO
stewardship, planning, facilitating, organizing, probably double the
number of peacekeepers that are there now, in order to start bringing
some sense of security.” The Associated Press reports that after a
visit with President Bush in Washington Monday, NATO Secretary General
Jaap De Hoop Scheffer told reporters: “I am quite sure, as I told the
president, that when the U.N. comes [to ask for help], the NATO allies
will be ready to do more in enabling a United Nations Force in
Darfur.”

The president was quoted as saying the African Union must ask the
Security Council to put its mission in Darfur under a U.N. flag. When
that happens, he said, NATO can move in with U.S. help “to make it
clear to the Sudanese government that we’re intent on providing
security for the people there and intent upon helping work toward a
lasting peace agreement.”

Evidently, President Bush has not forgotten the words, “Not on my
watch,” that he scribbled on the Rwandan genocide report.