GENOCIDE AND DIPLOMATIC POLICY
By Michael Abramowitz And Peter Baker

Washington Post
Oct 15 2007

President Bush has found himself in a morally and politically ambiguous
position on what may be one of the most vexing questions that can face
an occupant of the White House: When does carnage rise to the level of
"genocide"?

He came out forcefully last week against a congressional resolution
labeling as genocide the killings of hundreds of thousands of
Armenians between 1915 and 1923, even though most historians agree
with that conclusion. Yet Bush continues to describe atrocities in
Darfur as genocide, even though many experts, including some in his
administration, doubt that the situation there of late qualifies.

In a weekend interview, Vice President Cheney said he did not agree
with the firing of Donald Rumsfeld . . . (By Gerald Herbert —
Associated Press)

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Underlying those decisions are political dynamics as much as technical
definitions. The administration worries that the Armenia resolution
could imperil relations with Turkey, a key U.S. ally that has hinted
at all manner of retribution, such as barring the U.S.

military from transferring goods for the Iraq war through the Incirlik
air base. By contrast, the administration has little concern about
alienating what it considers a loathsome regime in Sudan and does
not want to retreat from a principled stance.

The White House acknowledges little contradiction between the positions
Bush has taken on Armenia and Darfur. "A genocide has taken place in
Sudan," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said by e-mail last week.

"If the United States always waited for the rest of the world to act
in Africa, more people would already have died of HIV/AIDS, malaria
and TB, more people would have less food, and more innocents would
have died in Sudan."

Johndroe added: "What happened nearly 100 years ago in Turkey and
Armenia is tragic, but is an historical issue that needs to be worked
out by those two countries, not the United States Congress, which
has a lot of other legislation it needs to take up at the moment."

Bush staked out this position despite the consensus among historians.

"It’s the clearest case of genocide apart from the Holocaust,"
said Ben Kiernan, who directs the Genocide Studies Program at Yale
University. Conditions today in Darfur, while not close to ideal,
are much less violent and more chaotic than the simpler situation
three or four years ago, when government-backed Arab militias were
responsible for much of the violence as they menaced defenseless
African villagers, experts said.

Indeed, the rest of the world has never fully embraced the U.S.

decision to call Darfur genocide, not necessarily because anyone thinks
the violence is acceptable — except perhaps the Sudanese government,
which denies much of it — but because the legal designation of
genocide requires evidence of intent to wipe out an ethnic or racial
group.

Diane Orentlicher, an expert on genocide at American University’s
Washington College of Law, said the debate misses the mark. "One of
the mistakes we have made in recent memory is we have performed legal
gymnastics to avoid using the word ‘genocide’ when describing real-time
atrocities," she said. "That misses the point of the [international]
Genocide Convention — which is, if you wait until it’s legally certain
that a genocide has occurred, you have waited too long to prevent it."