Oh Oh

Below this post is one on the situation in Sudan.  It talks to a Humanitarian Crisis.

Now we have George Clooney, a Hollywood actor who does not really stand out in my mind, teamed with John Prendergast, a co-founder of the Enough Project, writing an OpEd in The Washington Post on the developing situation in Abyei.  The writers do not coddle the leader of Northern Sudan.

President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, is escalating bombing and food aid obstruction in Darfur, and he now threatens the entire north-south peace process.

I am impressed that Messrs Clooney and Pendergast have their own intelligence operation going, putting up commercial imagery of military activities, to include military buildups, under the name Satellite Sentinel Project.  Given that they have the ability to get out the information on atrocities, the chance of public outcry trumping mid-level bureaucratic insight and long term planning goes up.

You didn't want those striped pants dandies making those decisions anyway, did you?

But, we should all think through the steps along the escalation ladder.

We are not advocating military intervention.  But the evidence shows that incentives alone are insufficient to change Khartoum’s calculations.  International support should be sought immediately for denying debt relief, expanding the ICC indictments, diplomatically isolating the regime, suspending all non-humanitarian aid, obstructing state-controlled bank transactions and freezing accounts holding oil wealth diverted by senior regime officials.

If all else fails, there is still the option of committing US troops to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands more in Sudan, but at the cost hundreds of Sudanese and dozens of US lives.  An intervention in Sudan to separate North and South would not be like an intervention in Haiti for earthquake relief.

Incidentally, the two OpEd writers blew a bouquet to Senator John F Kerry as well as President Obama.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

UPDATE:  I was upbraided off line for being a little too flip about the Department of State types ("those striped pants dandies").  As this person points out, "...we blew it in 2004-3005 by not allowing the Misseriya, Darfur, Beja, Umma, etc to participate."  The truth is that the Department of State experts have been at this a very long time, trying to avoid the genocide ongoing in Darfur and not having success.  My comment was meant to be ironic and to put in stark contrast the views being pushed up from the middle bureaucracy in the Government toward the President and the impact of outside pressure groups.

Regards  —  Cliff