Demagogue

Although no formal vote was taken yesterday, 12 of the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council voiced support for prosecuting perpetrators of the Darfur atrocities at the new International Criminal Court.

Who were the three Security Council members who balked at this approach?

For starters, there is China -- the loveable folks of Tiananmen Square fame. And then there is Algeria. In the 1990s, Algerian security forces and their civilian allies organized militias that arrested and “disappeared” thousands of people. As Human Rights Watch notes, "Not one security force agent accused of participating in an act of 'disappearance' has been charged or brought to trial ..."

Last, but not least, there is the U.S. Is anyone in the Bush administration squirming uncomfortably at the knowledge that their ICC dissent places them in such special company?

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published this editorial today about the Bush administration's proposed UN resolution on the Sudanese conflict:

... the hard questions about the new resolution concern Darfur, Sudan's western province, where the Bush administration has determined that the government's policies amount to genocide.

The draft resolution includes a useful call for targeted sanctions against suspected war criminals but sidesteps the most urgent challenge: to get a significant peacekeeping force into Darfur.

Darfur is as big as France, and its notional cease-fire is being monitored by an African Union force of about 1,000. The force has no mandate to go beyond monitoring to protect civilians, and it has limited logistical capacity.

... Last weekend Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan both spoke positively about possible NATO involvement in Darfur.

NATO's participation would have to be authorized by the U.N. Security Council, which raises the possibility of a Chinese or Russian veto. But if these countries want to ignore Mr. Annan's appeal and oppose a robust civilian protection force, the Bush administration should at least force them to do so openly. It should not be circulating hollow resolutions that cave in preemptively to Chinese, Russian or even French objections.

Some 300,000 people have died in Darfur so far, and the dying shows no sign of letting up.