Needed: A Lady Astor Moment on Darfur
I'm with The Moose: it seems just bizarre that the world community, including most particularly my own country, is dumping billions of dollars on the Khartoum government without any explicit guarantees of an end to the genocide in Darfur. I know, I know, it was part of a deal to end a seemingly endless civil war that took many lives as well, and yes, I know the "reconstruction aid" is theoretically conditioned on action by Khartoum to stop the carnage in Darfur. But still.... couldn't we have a slightly stronger appropriations rider on this money?
Since our current president is a man of such legendary moral clarity, who is allegedly so willing to speak the truth no matter what those furriners think of us, perhaps he will emulate Lady Astor, who during a 1931 reception in Moscow, reportedly greeted Josef Stalin with the question: "When are you going to stop killing people?" The question needs to be asked of the Sudanese government every day, and if we're not willing to militarily intervene to stop the killing, the Bush administration should at least go to the trouble of making sure we aren't subsidizing it.
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