Looking (Vice) Presidential on Darfur

Darfur made a brief appearance in last Friday’s Vice-Presidential Debate. The moderator asked Joe Biden (D) whether he supported an intervention with US troops. As is customary in presidential and vice presidential debates, Biden side-stepped the question. Instead, he mentioned his 2005 visit to a refugee camp in Chad – “I’ve seen the suffering, thousands and tens of thousands have died and are dying” – and spoke of the need to impose a no-fly zone, as well as ensure that UN peacekeepers get the helicopters they need.

At the least, he seems to have backed away from his earlier position in support of a US intervention. In April 2007, he said “I would use American force now”. He did, however, elaborate the outlines of a Biden Doctrine, for when the US should intervene:

“The line that should be drawn is whether we A, first of all have the capacity to do anything about it number one. And number two, certain new lines that have to be drawn internationally. When a country engages in genocide, when a country engaging in harboring terrorists and will do nothing about it, at that point that country in my view and Barack's view forfeits their right to say you have no right to intervene at all.”

Sarah Palin (R) also spoke in favor a no-fly zone, and then detailed how, as Governor of Alaska, she called for the state to divest from Sudan. However, ABC News has questioned just how much she actually supported divestment while in office.

On a final, optimistic note, count on the Sudanese to remind us that both Democrats and Republicans sometimes have more in common than not. After the debate, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry criticized both Biden and Palin for supporting a no-fly zone, saying:

“They know very little about what is going on here. Their statements were meant for local consumption. They had nothing to do with Darfur. [The no-fly zone] would be a very short-sighted move. Curbing the actions of the armed forces would impede the flow of humanitarian aid to Darfur and tie the hands of the government in its efforts to prevent attacks on aid convoys.””

A statement which if nothing else wonderfully mixes the blatantly obvious (local consumption) and the obviously untrue (everything else).

(To see how the Genocide Intervention Network grades Biden on Darfur issues, see here. There’s no similar ranking for Palin, as she’s not in Congress.)

Image: Vice Presidential Debate - Associated Press