Peace in Sudan? Perhaps

Okay, I’ll admit it. In the rush of day-to-day life, I often forget about Sudan. The Darfur conflict has been going on since 2003 but is still generally ignored by the media. Issues closer to home tend to grab my attention. The conflicts between Republicans and Democrats over health care and the Iraq War seem far more relevant, especially since those issues receive much more mainstream media coverage than does Sudan.

But since the conflict began in 2003, the estimated death toll has reached 300,000, and more than 2.5 million civilians have been displaced. Maybe it deserves our attention. So when I was flipping through Google News and a saw the little blurb “Peace in Sudan?” I was caught off guard. Surely I’d have seen something if the conflict was over. And it isn’t yet, but for once it looks like an end might be in sight.

As of now, a temporary truce has been signed between the largest opposition group and the Khartoum regime. The two have plans to talk further to reach a permanent agreement. A worrisome component of this agreement, however, is the March 15 deadline for a permanent peace treaty. Can two groups that have been fighting for seven years reach an agreement in three weeks? As much as I’d like to believe the answer is yes, I find it nearly impossible.

After all, there was a peace agreement in 2006 between one faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) and the Sudanese government. Unfortunately, another faction of the SLA did not sign the treaty, and violence continued in the region. The latest treaty was signed by the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) and the Khartoum regime. Other rebel groups such as the SLA refuse to sign even this temporary treaty until all violence is stopped. And while the Sudanese government says they intend to include other factions in the negotiations, those factions are angered by the separate ceasefire with Jem. Some rebel groups have united to form the Liberation and Justice Movement in opposition to Jem.

It may be a little early to expect a permanent ceasefire. The current negotiations seem to be further alienating rebel groups rather than bringing everyone to the table for a discussion on ending the conflict. It’s disheartening when one of the major obstacles to peace results from excluding some dissenting groups. However, if the Sudanese government reaches out to the other rebel groups, as they claim they intend to, perhaps peace in Darfur is closer than we think.

I hope that if a permanent peace agreement is reached in Darfur, then the media will give it the proper coverage. After all, the end of a seven-year-long conflict that many had written off as hopeless is nothing if not newsworthy. And it’s certainly more interesting than hearing more reports that Congress is at a standstill as they argue about healthcare.

SARAH WENTZ

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Obama and the Lama

After reading about Obama’s one-hour meeting with the Dalai Lama last week, I sat there pondering what in the world the two could have talked about.

Dalai Lama: I recall your victory speech at Chicago’s Grant Park—good speech.
Obama: Why thank you. Uhhh, I've heard that green tea from the high mountains of Tibet is excellent.
Dalai Lama: Yes...
59 minutes of awkward silence)
Obama: Well, it was great seeing you, and I hope to see you again in four years because then it means I’ve been reelected.

OK, that’s probably not what the two talked about, but I think this is a good summary of what passed between the former and current Nobel Prize winners: absolutely nothing substantial. It wouldn't be the first time...

Lama to George W. Bush: Maybe the Texas Rangers will win it all this year!
Lama to Bill Clinton: It’s a shame I can’t eat beef, because I sure want to try that McDonald’s Big Mac you recommended.
Lama to George H.W. Bush: I’ve been invited to many homes, and I have to say that yours is the nicest!

The Dalai Lama has been to see each president since George H.W. Bush, who is responsible for initiating this useless and counterproductive tradition. The Tibetan figurehead has treaded the middle line for decades, carefully distancing himself from the violent rebellion in Tibet in 2008 while loudly calling for increased autonomy, but he has never called and never will call for independence. America has always respected the integrity of China’s geographical boundary, which includes Tibet. So why did Obama meet the lama in spite of strenuous protests from America’s most intimate trade partner and biggest creditor?

Does the president not have anything better to do? Health care reform, immigration reform, Afghanistan, and unemployment rates are all issues that voters care more about than some place few Americans can find on the map. Does the average jobless family in Detroit care about Tibet?

I’m guessing that when Obama looked at his schedule on the day of the lama meeting, it probably said: “9 O’clock: Meet with Dalai Lama and piss off China.”

The Dalai Lama is a moderate; a moderate and soft-spoken man is all he is. I mean, God/Buddha bless him, but has he actually changed anything in Tibet? Chinese control of Tibet has only tightened over the last few decades, and it is increasingly clear that China considers a meeting between the U.S. president and the Dalai Lama to be an insult.

I just wish the government could see the political consequences of its gesture, because that’s really all the meeting is: a gesture. The meetings are always hush hush and brief, and nothing concrete has ever come out of them. But future cooperation between the United States and China is vital in every aspect, from politics to the world economy to the military. There are direct negative consequences from this one-hour meeting that has not produced, does not produce and will never produce any changes in Chinese policy. China has already backed out of helping the United States corral Iran, and the Chinese military is closing its curtains again just as the two powers began working on military transparency. Why strain a potential world-leading partnership? I think if some future president decides to stop the meetings, China will be grateful and give back in the form of a little more autonomy for the Tibetans.

DAN KANG

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Showing Some Spine

After Scott Brown's victory in the special Massachusetts Senate election nearly a month ago, many in the mainstream media sounded the death knell for Barack Obama's health care reform. Brown's victory stripped the Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority. Without the numbers, it was said, Democratic senators had no chance of blocking Senate Republicans from filibustering health care reform, and the bill would not pass unless it was watered down to attract at least some Republican support. However, after Harry Reid's recent announcement that Democrats will push health care reform through the Senate using a congressional procedure known as budget reconciliation, it seems as if the bill may indeed have a chance of passing without any Republican support.

The reconciliation process is an obscure and complex one that can be used to streamline the passage of any measures that affect the federal budget and reduce the deficit. Essentially, when a bill is brought to Congress under the reconciliation procedure, debate in either house is limited, and, in the Senate, the use of the filibuster is forbidden. As a result, only a simple majority of 51 votes—rather than the traditional supermajority of 60—is needed to pass the bill in the upper chamber. This would solve the Democrats’ 60-vote problem, and enable them to include particularily divisive provisions—such as a public option—which conservative members of their own caucus (Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, and Ben Nelson) oppose.

The Democrats have long had the reconciliation option on the table, and the progressive wing of the party (yours truly included) has for some time been urging the president and congressional leadership to use it. However, as a result of President Obama's desire to pass the health care bill under the guise of bipartisanship, the procedure had been put on the back burner.

Reid's announcement—and the support the President seems to be offering for the use of reconciliation—represents a welcome shift in Democratic strategy on the health care issue. Ever since President Obama made health care reform the centerpiece of his domestic agenda last year, the reconciliation procedure has been available for him to pass meaningful health care reform. But by not taking advantage of this opportunity and instead caving in to Republicans and Democratic moderates, the president has capitulated on one of the most crucial issues to come before the United States Congress in the history the Union.

What the president has termed “bipartisanship” has devolved into outright appeasement of Republican demands, and it has come at the expense of the American taxpayer and the American economy. Soaring health care costs are a significant strain on not only individuals and families across America, but also upon the federal budget. If spending on Medicaid and Medicare continues at the current rate, these programs will increase in cost from 5% of our national GDP today to 20% of GDP in 2050. Rising health care costs are breaking the federal budget and contributing greatly to the already formidable federal deficit. Clearly, this is not an issue on which he can afford to compromise.

If the Massachusetts election has taught the president anything, it's that ordinary voters are worried about the desperate financial plight of many individual Americans and about the enormity federal deficit. It is these voters—not the Republicans—the president needs to appease, and he can do this by implementing real, substantive health care reform to reduce the burden of health care costs on American families and the American government. In order to do so, however, he needs to play some hardball politics.

There are promising indications that the president is ready to dig his heels in for a fight; he has written his own version of the bill—to be unveiled in a public brainstorming session on health care with the GOP next week—and seems prepared to move forward with it under the reconciliation procedure. Despite claims from the right wing that such a move represents an unprecedented and extremist “nuclear option,” there is strong precedent for such action, especially with regard to health care: in 1985, Congress used the reconciliation procedure to pass the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which allowed employees leaving a firm to remain enrolled in their employer’s health care plan if they continued to pay premiums. Again in 1997, reconciliation was used to pass the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicare advantage, two programs which now provide benefits to more than 17 million Americans.

Had the president and Congress employed this policy months ago, they would have saved themselves a lot of time, energy and political capital. Had the President acted with dispatch in passing the health care reform bill, the Republicans would have had no opportunity to take control of the debate, defame the president and his allies, and push the Democratic Party into such disfavor with voters. However, the Democratic “bipartisan” strategy lent itself to delay, and over time, the President and his party simply lost control of the message.

But what's done is done. We can only hope that, this time, the president will have learned from his previous mistakes and will take swift action to pass a meaningful reform bill. To act in any other way would result in absolute disaster.

DAVID ZOPPO

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