Sudanese Diplomacy: Rice Entourage Roughed Up
And American reporters hammered as well. Where’s the instant outrage? Missing in action, of course, because Sudanese government thugs knocking about US diplomats and reporters in Condi Rice’s entourage isn’t news to the knee-jerk leftish pop-offs who make a kicked Koran an international incident.
To briefly review: US Secretary of State Condi Rice visited Sudan and Sudanese “security personnel” behaved like a rude gang of bullies. (Here’s a link to the AP report via The Houston Chronicle.)
Here’s the AP’s lede and key elements of the story:
Security forces in the Sudanese capital manhandled U.S. officials and reporters traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, marring her round of congratulatory meetings with leaders of the new unified government. Rice demanded an apology, and got it.
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“It makes me very angry to be sitting there with their president and have this happen,” she said. “They have no right to push and shove.”
Rice made her remarks to reporters after she and her entourage boarded an airplane to fly from the capital to a refugee camp in the Darfur region. At the camp, she said the United States would hold the Sudanese government to account if it fails to end the refugee crisis.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Sudanese foreign minister responded to Rice’s demand for an apology by telephoning her aboard the plane to express regret for the incidents at the ultra-high-security residence of Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir.
Twice, Sudanese guards’ hostility toward members of Rice’s entourage devolved into shouts and shoving.
As Rice’s motorcade arrived at the residence, armed guards slammed the gate shut before three vehicles could get in, including those carrying Rice’s interpreter and other State Department officials who were supposed to attend her meeting with el-Bashir.
After protests, the officials were eventually allowed in. But guards repeatedly pushed and pulled Rice senior adviser Jim Wilkinson, and at one point he was shoved into a wall.
“Diplomacy 101 says you don’t rough your guests up,” Wilkinson said later.
Once Rice’s traveling group was inside, the guards tried to keep reporters out of a planned photo shoot of Rice’s meeting.
When reporters were finally allowed in, they were elbowed and guards repeatedly tried to rip a microphone away from a U.S. reporter. They were ordered not to ask questions, over State Department objections.
When NBC diplomatic reporter Andrea Mitchell tried to ask el-Bashir a question about his involvement with alleged atrocities, a scuffle broke out.
Guards grabbed the reporter and muscled her toward the rear of the room as State Department officials shouted at the guards to leave her alone. “Get your hands off her!” Wilkinson demanded. But all the reporters and a camera crew were physically forced out.
The excuse mongers for terror Norm Geras so brilliantly excoriates excuse this kind of behavior as well –or they ignore it. Imagine the outrage if a Sudanese diplomat got bumped by a Secret Service agent. Remember, this is the same Khartoum government prosecuting a genocidal war in Darfur.
UPDATE: I meant to add a few quotes from Geras’ column in The Guardian (July 21).
The lede:
Within hours of the bombs going off two weeks ago, the voices that one could have predicted began to make themselves heard with their root-causes explanations for the murder and maiming of a random group of tube and bus passengers in London. It was due to Blair, Iraq, illegal war and the rest of it. The first voices, so far as I know, were those of the SWP and George Galloway, but it wasn’t very long - indeed no time at all, taking into account production schedules - before the stuff was spreading like an infestation across the pages of this newspaper, where it has remained.
Norm then exposes the “bullhorn left’s” hypocrisy — a bullhorn for their insistent grievances, but a “blind left” for crimes by Castro, Mugabe, Islamofascists, etc:
It needs to be seen and said clearly: there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do. They make more difficult the fight to defeat them. The plea will be - it always is - that these are not apologists, they are merely honest Joes and Joanies endeavouring to understand the world in which we live. What could be wrong with that? What indeed? Nothing is wrong with genuine efforts at understanding; on these we all depend. But the genuine article is one thing, and root-causes advocacy seeking to dissipate responsibility for atrocity, mass murder, crime against humanity, especially in the immediate aftermath of their occurrence, is something else.
Note the selectivity in the way root-causes arguments function. Purporting to be about causal explanation rather than excuse-making, they are invariably deployed on behalf of movements or actions for which their proponent wants to engage our indulgence, and in order to direct blame towards some party towards whom he or she is unsympathetic.
A hypothetical example illustrates the point. Suppose that, on account of the present situation in Zimbabwe, the government decides to halt all scheduled deportations of Zimbabweans. Some BNP thugs are made angry by this and express their anger by beating up a passer-by who happens to be an African immigrant. Can you imagine a single person of left or liberal outlook who would blame this act of violence on the government’s decision or urge us to consider sympathetically the root causes of the act? It wouldn’t happen, because the anger of the thugs doesn’t begin to justify what they have done. The root-causers always plead a desire merely to expand our understanding, but they’re very selective in what they want to “understand”.
I thought this paragraph in Norm’s piece was great. Is it telling that it was not in the Guardian piece? “The root-causers always plead a desire merely to expand our understanding, but they’re very selective in what they want us to ‘understand’. Did you ever hear a Jenny Tonge who empathizes with the Palestinian suicide bomber also understanding the worries of Israeli and other Jews - after the Holocaust, after the decades-long hostility of the Arab world to the State of Israel and the teaching of hatred there against Jews, after the acts of war against that state and the acts of terrorism against its citizens? This would seem to constitute a potentially rich soil of roots and causes, but it goes unexplored by the supposedly non-excuse-making purveyors of a root-causism seeking to ‘understand’. The fact is that if causes and explanation are indeed a serious enterprise and not just a convenient partisan game, then it needs to be recognized that causality is one thing and moral responsibility another…”
Comment by slickdpdx — 7/21/2005 @ 9:50 am
A “Chill Wind” in Sudan I’m confident that these reporters will quickly recover from the emotional trauma and go back to being outraged about the Bush administration’s “manipulation of the press” and “heavy-handed bullying” of those with whom they disagree.
Trackback by VRWC On Crack — 7/21/2005 @ 10:32 am
The Americans came to try to tell the Sudanese government to stop killing non-Muslims. The Sudanese government does not WANT to stop killing non-Muslims, and probably resents the request. Hence the ill-disguised ill will. End of story.
Comment by dave — 7/21/2005 @ 10:50 am
[…] n”> Filed under: World Scene, Foreign Policy by Mac Powell at 10:50 am Austin Bay sums up my thoghts on this: “US Secretary of State Condi Rice visited Sudan and Sudanese ’ […]
Pingback by In the Bullpen » Sudan “Security” Roughs Up Rice Delegation — 7/21/2005 @ 10:51 am
[…] allowed to witness briefly the talks. This story sort of downplays what really happened. Courtesy of Austin Bay, we get a more detailed look at the “U.S. officials” who were blocked, and ho […]
Pingback by The Sundries Shack — 7/21/2005 @ 11:38 am
Have the Sudanse no brains? Their thugs rough-up Mrs. Alan Greenspan and expect their secret bank accounts to remain safe? I hope they’re no depending on any large checks clearing in the morning…..
Comment by Ted B. — 7/21/2005 @ 11:40 am
The reason we don’t care about the Sudanese roughing up Condi is that: A. She probably deserved it B. We expect no less from the Sudanese. C. We expect the US Military to act better than the Sudanese. When we don’t we lose any moral high ground to criticize. D. The Sudanese can always say…its better than people are treated at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.
Comment by madmatt — 7/21/2005 @ 12:03 pm
Sooooo, given this country’s obvious attempt to show the world who was boss, why the f*#$ didn’t Rice pack up and leave? Immediately. I highly doubt that the regime that gave instructions to manhandle the Secretary of State and her aides gave any worthwhile concessions in their talks that are likely to stop their own genocide. She showed weakness. That weakness will cost lives. We expected more of this woman.
Comment by Some Guy — 7/21/2005 @ 12:28 pm
Once Secretary Rice and her entoruage are safely out of the Sudan, we need to kick Sudan’s ass for this. This is just one of those thing that cannot be tolerated. A mere apology is not enough, I think. I don’t really care so much about the reporters, but if a diplomat’s safety from being roughed up by government goons is not assured, then whose safety is assured?
Comment by HaroldHutchison — 7/21/2005 @ 12:31 pm
Rouged up Andrea Mitchell, eh? Something tells me this might not be a bad time to short their currency. I’ve got a feeling that they might be in for ann economic crisis sometime in the near future. Heh.
Comment by Bill — 7/21/2005 @ 12:44 pm
The obvious explanation is that the chattering classes are profoundly racist. They simply do not expect a bunch of African officials to behave in accordance with international norms, so they are neither surprised nor willing to express outrage. This, by the way, explains most of the double standard applied to the Arab/Israeli conflict. The Western left actually has contempt for Arabs, so it does not hold them accountable (this contempt was also surfaces in leftist discussion of the prospects for Arab democracy).
Comment by TigerHawk — 7/21/2005 @ 12:55 pm
Please don’t make blanket statements. As a leftist, I find this behavior bizarre and rude. It’s not to the same level as desecrating a holy item, no, but nor it is polite or appriopriate.
Comment by ZuG — 7/21/2005 @ 1:13 pm
“It’s not to the same level as desecrating a holy item, no…” Mistreating an object is worse than mistreating a person? That is the most bass-ackwards thinking I’ve heard in many weeks.
Comment by Barfy — 7/21/2005 @ 2:14 pm
Post #10: Oh, that could be interesting.
Comment by HaroldHutchison — 7/21/2005 @ 2:21 pm
I expect the “jihad lackey” would ask Condi what did she do to provoke being “roughed up”?
Comment by Mike Burleson — 7/21/2005 @ 2:55 pm
OK, ZuG. Many leftists have contempt for Africans.
Comment by TigerHawk — 7/21/2005 @ 3:11 pm
#3: What’s even more remarkable is that the Sudanese are murdering Moslems in Darfur. (They just happen to be dark-skinned Moslems, who sit on a lot of oil, so that whole “co-religionist” thing doesn’t apply.)
Comment by Mark Tinder — 7/21/2005 @ 3:44 pm
Boy, after reading what Andrea Mitchell did, my repect for her just went up exponentally. It’s not often that an MSMer goes off on the right tangent. To Andrea Mitchell- friend of freedom and a true patriot!
Comment by Michael Kazmac — 7/21/2005 @ 3:56 pm
This is certainly bad behavior and should be condemned but I think there is too much other news going on just now for this to rise above the noise level. What with Rove, Roberts and More Bombs in London it’s hardly been noticed that Sunni members of the constitutional process in Iraq have been killed and the rest are standing down until proper security is provided. This petty rudeness on the part of the Sudanese is outrageous but there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get to this particular bit of outrage in the grand scheme of things.
Comment by Serge — 7/21/2005 @ 4:00 pm
Is there any evidence that outrage actually is ‘missing in action’ from the left? I sure don’t see any cited here. I just see quotations from a UK column that predates the incident. As for Andrea Mitchell, any praise due for trying to put the heat on a murderous dictator? Or is she part of that ‘lefty media’, and thus undeserving?
Comment by Andy — 7/21/2005 @ 4:10 pm
Sudan - a government of thugs Secretary of State Rice watched in disbelief as Andrea Mitchell of NBC was physically thrown out of a press conference in Khartoum, Sudan.
Trackback by Mark in Mexico — 7/21/2005 @ 4:49 pm
In the old days, manhandling the U.S. Secretary of State might be perceived as an act of war. In those same old days, blowing up a U.S. warship would be considered an act of war, too. I guess we’re operating under new rules now. I wonder if this would have happened had she been a male, i.e., Colin Powell? He too went to Sudan and termed it genocide, but I don’t recall seeing anything like this happening then.
Comment by jordan — 7/21/2005 @ 4:49 pm
Another angle to this may be that Condi is an African American, and the genocidal attacks of the Arabs are directed against blacks. They are racist to begin with. Its as if a Jewish dioplomat from America or Britain were sent to talk to Hitler in WWII. The reception would be all the more chilly.
Comment by Gemilo — 7/21/2005 @ 4:59 pm
Please don’t make blanket statements. As a leftist, I find this behavior bizarre and rude. It’s not to the same level as desecrating a holy item, no, but nor it is polite or appriopriate. Really, since when did the left care about objects that people think are sacred or important enough not to be abused. Crucifixes dumped in piss and burning flags offends Christians and many American respectively, but the left doesn’t care. And when Muslim terrorists blow up churches and mosques of different sects, leftists don’t care. Frankly, I consider shoving around diplomats and reporters worse than sprinking pee on a Koran which has millions of copies floating around the world.
Comment by ATM — 7/21/2005 @ 5:06 pm
[…] id that the thugs involved will be dealt with– whatever that means. Here’s my original post. Here’s an update on the fracas and Sudan’s apology (via the NY Times). […]
Pingback by Austin Bay Blog » Sudan Apologizes (Sort of), Condi Marches On — 7/21/2005 @ 5:16 pm
The reason we don’t care about the Sudanese roughing up Condi is that: A. She probably deserved it’ WTF are you talking about?
Comment by IcallMasICM — 7/22/2005 @ 6:58 am
Think that a third world country would dare do that if we didn’t have a weakling and coward as pResident? But we do, and he’s also alienated every ally we’ve got in the world. And as a result, this incompetent drunk isn’t going to do anything about this but dodge questions.
Comment by BobBoudelang — 7/22/2005 @ 8:51 am
Puh-leeze. Liberals have been begging the Bush administration to get serious about Darfur for months, if not years. What planet do you live on?
Comment by Ben — 7/22/2005 @ 3:35 pm
Of course the Sudanese think they can get away with it; they already have. Colin Powell called their policy genocide and *nothing happened*. Now, years later, the genocide/ethnic cleansing is pretty much finished, the military objectives achieved and the raping and murdering only continue because the Janjaweed enjoy it. The West and the world did nothing but puff a very little bit of hot air. The USA puffed more air than anyone else — it actually got mentioned once in a while. Big deal. It is now clear that no dictator needs to fear international repercussions for genocide.
Comment by Randal Trimmer — 7/23/2005 @ 4:32 pm