Clooless

I think Nina Shea gives George Clooney a little too much, um, credibility in this essay about his cluelessness re:Darfur, but I’m with her on the idea that maybe it’s not Bush’s fault.

I’ve been pretty quiet about Darfur lately, mainly because I’m beaten down by the idea that it’s all too late. People mobilized last weekend, but tomorrow’s the second anniversary of my first post about this stuff, inspired by Samantha Power’s work to publicize the genocide.

Again: it took two years for people to gather in DC to say that we need to stop the genocide. Without, of course, any real plan beyond “pressuring the government.” But it’s not going to happen. Multilateral diplomacy was an utter failure not because of George Bush, but because of China and India’s oil interests in Sudan. Other countries have a very strong interest in not stopping what’s going on in Sudan, while the U.S. has self-imposed sanctions on the country.

The African Union isn’t capable of keeping peace in the region. The UN allowed Sudan to serve on its Human Rights Council, which should give you enough of an idea of what a joke that institution is. The Security Council faces an automatic veto from China, which needs oil more than it needs the people of Darfur alive.

About 7 months after I first wrote about this stuff, a friend of mine asked me about it, because it was going to be a topic in a journalism exam she was taking that weekend. Her premise was, “If the neocons felt that invading Iraq was so important, why are they so quiet about Darfur?”

I tried telling her that, in my opinion, the U.S. has been out in front on this, but that most of the rest of the world would rather it just went away, but that didn’t satisfy her real premise, which was to make sure “it’s all Bush’s fault.”

Anyway, now George Clooney’s on the scene. I feel about this largely the way I felt about The Passion of the Christ; if a guy who wasn’t Mel Gibson made that movie, no one would’ve cared. I guess no one’s asking Noah Wyle or Julianna Margulies how they’d ‘solve’ the genocide in Darfur, but I guess Clooney was the smart guy on ER:

So when Clooney urges a “multi-national” peace keeping force going into Darfur, he must be envisioning a large and powerful army legitimized by the inclusion of troops from other Muslim and Arab nations and sanctioned by the United Nations’ Security Council. And Bush would then have to be blamed for failing to persuade the Arab League and China to vote against their own economic interests in order to defend the human rights of insignificant, impoverished African tribes against the oil-rich Khartoum regime.

Never before has either China or the Arab League based its foreign policy on altruism. It would be remarkable if these dictatorships suddenly sacrificed self-interest in order to defend human rights that they routinely disregard within their own borders. It was the presence of China and various distinguished members of the Arab League on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights that discredited that body and caused it to be disbanded earlier this year. For this group, “never again” has no meaning. Clooney’s “solution” is preposterous.

Yet Clooney does not seem to have any intention of criticizing these countries–in his view, attribution of blame is to be reserved almost exclusively for the Bush administration. Rarely does he criticize any other government by name–not even the government of Sudan, the author of the genocide. His discussion of the facts of Darfur focuses on the victims and on the United States, not on the perpetrators in Sudan and their abettors in China, the Arab League, and the U.N.

Read the essay. I’m gonna go watch some hoops.