As President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor until June 2006, Michael Gerson was often referred to as the "conscience of the White House" by a coalition of the adoring. (Such praise is, well, let's just say slightly tarnished based on this coalition's record of combative conservatism.) In today's Washington Post, Gerson, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, doesn't give into "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and whole-heartedly heap praise on the President's latest half-hearted response to the ongoing atrocities in Darfur region of Sudan. Regarding the administration's most recent promise to the people of Darfur, Gerson writes:

Yesterday's welcome announcement by President Bush of stronger American sanctions against Sudan, and new efforts in the Security Council to internationalize those sanctions, is an attempt to break this resistance. Within the administration, most concede these actions by themselves will not be enough. But the effective use of this stick -- banks expelling Sudanese accounts worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- might make the threat of other, heftier sticks more credible in the future.

For a man given to great, often inspirational, flourishes of pen on paper (or strokes of fingers on keyboard as the case may be), Gerson's response is seemingly somewhere between tepid and lukewarm. It lacks the adjectives and, far more importantly, the idealism for which the gifted Gerson is rightfully known. He goes on to state:

The problem with waiting for peace, as one administration official put it to me, is that "the regime only responds to pressure. It has no record of responding to positive moves." So the other option is to set out on a ladder of escalation that will compel acceptance of the U.N. force and the disarmament of the militias. This approach would eventually involve the threat of force by a coalition of the willing -- not invasion and occupation, but a no-fly zone and perhaps a blockade. It would also require a clear message to the regime that menacing the refugees would bring terrible consequences. The more credible this threat of force, the more likely that the regime complies without the use of force.

Given other commitments, the U.S. military has been reluctant to even plan for these contingencies. But this leads to the strangest of situations: The French may now be more willing to act against genocide in Darfur than is the Pentagon.

The choice here is far from obvious. Escalation has risks; if not done in earnest, it is better not to begin at all. America is understandably weary and distracted. But a question hangs over the history of our time: Are we too tired to oppose genocide?

Ignoring the fact that he refers to the disastrous Iraq War (that he supported and promoted) as "other commitments", Gerson does seem to be, although very softly, challenging his former colleagues in the White House, the American public, and those in the global community to rise from our well-earned, Iraq War-induced torpor to oppose the genocidaires of Sudan and form the "armies of compassion" that he once lauded, altough in a different context, in order to bring an end to the Darfur conflict. (I wonder, are these armies of compassion actually compassionate coalitions of the willing?) Ending the genocide is a laudable goal; a goal that we can all, liberals and conservatives alike, support. Let', for the sake of argument, say we agree on the goal.

Now that we agree, how do we go about accomplishing it in an effective and expeditious manner? Should the "weary and distracted" America then share the burden of opposing genocide with the international community? Not just in terms of potential military intervention, but also by supporting the efforts of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and potentially prosecute the worst perpetrators of the genocide in Darfur? And why did the President fail to mention the investigation in yesterday's talk-tough-talk?Or should we, the American public, support the Bush Administration's continued ideological war against the interantionally supported court that could with our tactical support bring peace, justice, and security to war-weary Darfurians? The answer's not made clear by Gerson.

It might be instructive, or at least semi-informative, to take a look at Gerson's August 2006 answer to the Foreign Policy-posed question: How do we reconcile President Bush’s words on intervention for the cause of freedom with the absence of any real progress on Darfur?

I would dispute that there hasn’t been any real progress. There was real progress early in the administration on the CPA [Comprehensive Peace Agreement], which ended one of the most destructive civil wars in history.

But in the shadow of the CPA, you had the developing problems of Darfur. Here’s my frustration with this issue. From a multilateral perspective, the United States has done everything right. We’ve engaged the AU [African Union], we’ve gone to the U.N. Security Council, we’ve engaged [the United Nations’] military planners for the transition from the AU force, and we’ve tried to work with members of the Arab League. And people are still dying.

The problem is that the short-term need is a capable peacekeeping military force with a mandate to protect and—I don’t know a nice way to put it—the ability to punish those who kill and rape civilians. The president has talked about NATO as a way to strengthen the AU force, and eventually the U.N. force, but there’s resistance within NATO. I would love for America to be able to intervene unilaterally, but it’s not possible. We have to rely on the capabilities and willingness of allies to take up some of the responsibility.

From a multilateral perspective, the United States had done everything right? Really? That might come as a bit of a surprise to the international community. And although there's no mention of the ICC, there is a focus on allied unwillingness to share responsibility. But now that the French are more likely to act than the Americans, as Gerson so correctly points out, isn't it time for this man of words to ask for more than words from his President? Apparently Gerson's commitment to ending the genocide in Darfur stops at supporting the ICC or moving beyond rhetoric and holding his former colleagues to the same standards that he once held our allies. Michael Gerson is by all accounts a moral man and brilliant public servant. So why then can't he bring himself to fully supporting a diplomatically robust, internationally engaged, multilateralist U.S. role in the global efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Darfur? Maybe he just couldn't find the words.

--Rich Stazinski