OurPledge

Key excerpts from UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s public statements on the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Hat tip to Save Darfur for compiling this record.

ON THE NEED TO ACT

“The Bush administration has remonstrated for five years about the genocide in Darfur. Yet we have imposed only the mildest of sanctions, and we have given only lip service to standing up a [joint] African Union-United Nations force. The imperative has to be to pressure the regime to stop the killing, and to allow the A.U.-U.N. force to deploy effectively.” [National Journal, July 12, 2008]

“If any progress at all has been made on the subject of Darfur, it is that we in the United States have gotten past the debate about whether this is, or is not, a genocide. To regress, to re-open this issue, is to further slow-roll any action, to reduce any sense of urgency, and to allow more and more people to continue dying. Make no mistake: Darfur has been a genocide. It continues to be a genocide. And unless the United States leads the world in halting the killing, it will remain a genocide.” [Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 11, 2007]

“There are only two ways to end a genocide: to apply powerful enough pressures or inducements to persuade the perpetrators of genocide to stop; or to protect those who are the potential victims of genocide. A negotiated solution would do neither, though it is necessary, ultimately, to resolve the underlying conflict.” [Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 11, 2007]

“How can the administration explain to the dead, the nearly dead and the soon to be dead people of Darfur that, at the end of the day – even when we declare that genocide is occurring, even when we insist repeatedly that we are committed to stopping it – the United States has stood by for so long while the killing has persisted.” [Testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, February 8, 2007]

ON THE USE OF FORCE

“History demonstrates there is one language Khartoum understands: the credible threat or use of force. After 9/11, when President Bush warned states that harbor terrorists, Sudan recalling the 1998 U.S. air-strike on Khartoum, suddenly began cooperating on counter-terrorism. It’s time again to get tough with Sudan.” [Washington Post Op-Ed with Anthony Lake and Donald Payne, October 2, 2006]

ON OUR MORAL OBLIGATION

Regarding her experience in the government during the Rwandan genocide: “I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” [The Atlantic, September 2001]