The Foreign Service Journal, February 2007

special envoy was appointed and a fragile peace brokered in 2006. When it came to Sudanese Muslims killing Sudanese Muslims, the administration could not be bothered to actually do anything about it. Colin Powell, perhaps try- ing to improve his place in history, did label the actions of the Khar- toum government in Darfur “geno- cide” in September 2004. But since that time, there has been nothing but handwringing by Washington and calls for others to act to end the bloodshed. Early in his presidency Bush is said to have written “Not on my watch” in the margin of a report on the fail- ure of the Clinton administration to act to stop the killing in Rwanda. That was a couple of hundred thou- sand dead Sudanese ago. And the conflict and the killing continue, spreading to Chad and the Central African Republic, leaving at least six million people with neither food nor protection. In Asia, Bush has an enormous trade deficit with China and a nuclear weapons test by North Korea to his credit. In late 2003, Vice President Cheney joined a meeting discussing the next moves in the negotiations with North Korea. According to two officials present, Cheney foreclosed any ges- tures that might have kept the process alive by asserting: “We don’t negotiate with evil; we defeat it.” In late December 2006, the U.S. did attempt to return to the negotiating table with this charter member of “the axis of evil,” but only after Pyongyang had thrown out the IAEA inspectors and extracted enough plutonium to build the bomb it detonated. Perhaps the regime will fall and democracy will triumph, making Cheney’s version of the black-and-white world look pre- scient. If not, Washington will have to piece together a F O C U S F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 Having constructed a black-and-white world to satisfy his supporters, there is no way for Bush to justify talking to the evil ones.