ABSTRACT
During the 1994 slaughter of approximately 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, the US State Department spokesperson Mike McCurry famously declared that “acts of genocide” were occurring, but refused to formally declare the situation there genocide. This was one of the low points of President Bill Clinton’s eight years in office. His administration performed semantic gymnastics to avoid a difficult and painful truth, and, it was presumed, avoid an international obligation to take decisive action to end the killing. Ten years later, when the State Department boldly determined that genocide was occurring in Darfur – three remote provinces in western Sudan – President George W. Bush had an opportunity to demonstrate US commitment and resolve to halt mass suffering.1 Instead, US policy has looked weak and incoherent, while the crisis in Darfur developed into a regional catastrophe that threatens Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), one of the Bush administration’s few diplomatic achievements. What happened?
