Demagogue

Terry George has this op-ed in the LA Times

For several years I struggled to make a film called "Hotel Rwanda." It tells the story of one man's heroism during the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which, in a mere 100 days, almost 1 million people were slaughtered. It was immediately followed by a savage war in Congo, where the death toll stands at more than 3 million people. Ten years on, that war still smolders. What has been the West's response to this enormous humanitarian disaster? It can best be described as criminal. I do not use that word lightly. There is a legal obligation under a United Nations convention that if a signatory nation recognizes genocide taking place it must act. No country or army intervened in Rwanda until it was too late. And no Western power has intervened in the genocidal slaughter underway in Darfur, Sudan.

The Washington Post reports that the EU and the US are fighting over where to try cases arising from the genocide in Darfur. The EU wants them heard in the International Criminal Court, but the US hates the Court and would prefer to see the creation of an international tribunal akin to the one created for Rwanda

But [Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes] cautioned the Europeans not to force Washington into vetoing a Security Council resolution calling for the cases to be referred to the ICC. "We don't want to be pushed into a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on the ICC," he said. "We are willing to have a discussion about a range of possible options."

Humanitarian agencies are warning that extreme insecurity are hampering their ability to deliver food to those in West and North Darfur.