Military Intervention Required to Stop Genocide in Sudan

SUDAN IS RWANDA, NOT IRAQ: Immediate Military Intervention is Required to Stop Genocide

We call on President George Bush to seek immediate multilateral military intervention in Sudan to enforce the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and on Senator John Kerry to support that move. Dying people can not wait a month, and then another month, while the UN Security Council dithers. We also call on Congressional leaders to request that the president reconvene Congress to approve US participation in multilateral intervention.

The disgrace of allowing another easily preventible massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent people should not be allowed to occur merely because the United Nations Security Council has failed to act, or because governments are facing an election. All contending parties in the American elections need to support action.

Many Americans may be reluctant to support another US military intervention while American troops are engaged in the costly and controversial military occupation of Iraq. But events in the Sudan are unlike those in Iraq, where the facts and the motives behind United States intervention still are not agreed upon. The aftermath of intervention also should proceed differently. If it should become necessary to overthrow the government of Sudan, based on a determination that the government is responsible for instigating the genocide, then the subsequent occupation of the country should be multilateral, under auspices either of the United Nations or of the African Union.

In August, 2004, there is no question that genocide is being perpetrated in Sudan, as there was no question that it was being perpetrated in Rwanda in 1994. The failure of the world's most powerful nations to lift a finger to stop the genocide in Rwanda is today a blight on the conscience of mankind, a shame perhaps greater than the Nazi holocaust, because genocide in Rwanda easily could have been prevented, as it can be now in Sudan.

If the United States announces its immediate intention to intervene, several other nations should volunteer to send military contingents, so that only a small number of American troops would be required. Intervention to stop flagrant genocide should begin to mend US world prestige and US ties with major allies, regardless of who will be president the next four years.