Were the promises on Darfur for real?

So ask John Prendergast and David Eggers. 

Now that Obama, Biden and Clinton are in office, and another fierce anti-genocide advocate, Susan Rice, is in as ambassador to the United Nations, we felt there finally would be a consequence for the perpetrators of the genocide, the regime officials in Khartoum, Sudan.

But rather than the kind of tough actions the these top officials had all advocated in their previous jobs and on the campaign trail, President Obama’s Sudan envoy instead began to articulate a friendly, incentives-first message that even Sudan’s president, an indicted war criminal, publicly welcomed. Our chins hit the floor in disbelief, because our chins had nowhere else to go.

That op-ed, plus this piece by Randy Newcomb in Foreign Policy and this new campaign from Humanity United all point to a deep frustration and dissapointment felt by Darfur advocates.  Their angst is understandable. Even though a number of the anti-genocide movement’s top luminaries hold positions of influence in the Obama administration, Sudan policy seems hopelessly stuck.