The continuing hypocrisy of Susan Rice

Today’s Washington Post has an article about Susan Rice, America’s new Ambassador to the United Nations, and her recent statements outlining American policy towards that less than august institution. She promises a more amenable approach towards the UN and the “international community” and also, seemingly, towards a genocidal murderer, the President of Sudan.

Regarding the "ongoing genocide" in Darfur, Sudan, Rice said the U.S. priority for the moment is reinforcing a U.N.-backed peacekeeping mission to protect civilians. She expressed concern that Sudan's government may retaliate against international peacekeepers and aid workers if the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant on genocide charges for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

 This calls to mind, Susan Rice’s previous role as a “bystander to genocide”

At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. "We could believe that people would wonder that," he says, "but not that they would actually voice it." Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, "If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant."

The irony of the above quote is that it was written by Barack Obama’s close friend and foreign policy expert, Samantha Power , in a column she wrote for the Atlantic.

One additional paradox-or maybe it is not so paradoxical after all.

The New York Times raved about Barack Obama’s choice of Susan Rice as America’s Ambassador to the United Nations and specifically praised her for her strong views regarding preventing genocide, based on her experience with witnessing the genocide that occurred in Rwanda. The Times ignored Rice’s own words that seemingly placed domestic political considerations above the need to stop genocide in Rwanda.

What happened to the famed fact-checking of the Times?

While burnishing Susan Rice, the paper instead chose to publish other quotes she made that were a bit more “heroic” in tone and substance:

As she later described the scene, the hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing, hacked up bodies that she saw haunted her and fueled a desire to never let it happen again.

“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,” she told The Atlantic Monthly in 2001.

Susan Rice would go down in flames to prevent genocide? But opposes the International Criminal Court taking legal action against Sudanese President al-Bashir?

One more bit of double standards and moral relativism at work.

While she expressed a desire to work with the UN in alleviating the stresses the Palestinians are experiencing in Gaza, how about asking Hamas and the Palestinians themselves to renounce the Hamas Charter that calls for the genocide of the Jews? How about calling for the end of incitement towards Jews and Christians that is a feature of everyday life not just in Gaza, but throughout the Arab world, and in Iran? How about making that a condition for aid flowing to the Gazans?

Sending money to people who preach genocide and refusing to take legal action against a man committing genocide is not quite “going down in flames’ to prevent genocide.