Calling evil by its name

Through Passion of the Present: Both the Senate and the House last night passed resolutions declaring the crisis in Darfur genocide. They passed them unanimously. Good. Next step is a declaration from the President. There is some debate as exeplified by this article about the appropriateness of calling this genocide before there is hard evidence of it. I would hope that the world would be more interested in stopping people from being killed rather than counting the bodies afterwards to see if something should have been done. It seems clear that enough people are dying that it requires outside intervention. Outside intervention to save people would be facilitated by a declaration of genocide. Ergo, declare genocide. Moreover, clear definition could defeat its purpose of saving lives by giving killers, whoever they may be, security to kill X number of people so long as they don't kill X+1 people.

Also, for some more background on the crisis take a look at this at P of the P which includes an excerpt from this article. And for more general info this article pointed out to me by someone at that site is a good summary and includes this:

An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people have been killed. USAID reports that over 300 villages have been destroyed. Infrastructure has been devastated to the degree that reconstruction may be impossible. Over 1 million people have been internally displaced and over 160,000 refugees have fled to eastern Chad.

In the surprises section for today:
Sudanese critical of genocide resolution

....."But what is equally obvious is that the American public thinks that it is genocide and therefore getting Congress to rule on this was a politically expedient way of mollifying public opinion while circumnavigating the legalities," he added.

I'm not exactly sure what he means by circumnavigating the legalities unless he means that since only the Congress is declaring it a genocide and not the White House that it's not really legally genocide. I do take issue with his contention that this was a way of mollifying public opinion. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Now that the Congress has called it genocide they will be under yet more pressure to act in a meaningful way to stop it. Having declared that it is genocide they have obligated themselves to do what they can to help. If not, they will be in the unenviable political position of having consciously allowed, by their own definition, genocide.

.....Yasir Abdullah, a journalist from northern Sudan, said the U.S. Congress and administration did not understand the roots of the Darfur conflict and were dealing with it very superficially.

"They are biased and have their own agenda. Sanctions will not harm the government, they will harm the people. Have they not learnt this yet?" he told Reuters.
.......
Ismail said the Sudanese authorities expected to send 6,000 policemen into Darfur and 3,000 of those were now ready to work.

But a rebel spokesman in Darfur said the new policemen were Janjaweed in disguise, issued with uniforms and new weapons.