George Bush: End the Genocide Now

I have recently seen several commercials demanding that George Bush (and by extension, the US) "End the Genocide... NOW", referring of course to the horrific situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

I'll first note that the ads imply that the genocide in Sudan is somehow George Bush's fault -- as though he is responsible, instead of or at least in addition to, the actual murderers in that country. This faulty reasoning relies on flawed premises -- that are quite common -- in which lack of action is somehow presented as a form of causation. Sometimes this is explicit (as it is in some philosophical literature), but other times it is more nuanced, where the argument is couched in causation terms, but really what is being argued is that the lack of an action equates to moral responsibility for the events that occur. No doubt, there are some very limited circumstances where this can occur, e.g., a lifeguard at a pool who does nothing as a child drowns in front of them. But such cases are quite limited and there is always a strict context where the expectation and responsibility to take a positive action is what allows moral blame to be given when the person does not. But I don't see such a context in this case with Sudan: It can't be expected that the US will somehow prevent all murderous regimes from killing hundreds of thousands of their own people. Not when leftists around the world whine over US "imperialism" and complain whenever the US tries to impose itself, even in the slightest way, in the affairs of other, so-called "sovereign" nations (so-called because countries ruled by dictators and other thugs are not actually deserving of such a respectful designation).

But even more interesting to me about these ads is the explicit argument (request... demand!) they give. They don't demand that George Bush (the US) directly do something to solve the Sudan problem and stop the killing and raping. For example, it doesn't suggest that the US should invade the Sudan, temporarily take over that country, and directly fix the situation. That would work, though it would cost some US lives and would have other problems -- and I'm not here advocating for that.

Rather, I note that these commercials are actually demanding that George Bush step up and go to the United Nations, and get that organization to do something to fix the situation. So what is curious about this? Well, why get upset with Bush on this score? Why not instead expect the United Nations to do this on its own? Why does the UN only seem to do things of this kind when the US presses them to take actions? That is the assumption of these commercials! How weak and inefficacious can this world body be? It baffles the mind. All the more reason to think that the US should abandon the UN (as I argued here, and again a bit here).