He Rang the Alarm on Darfur
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
July 16, 2007
Some day an American president will visit a genocide museum in Darfur and repeat the standard refrain: If only we had known ...
But that excuse will ring hollow, because there was a whistle-blower in the heart of the Bush administration. Roger Winter, whom President Bush had appointed in 2001 to a senior post in the U.S. Agency for International Development, frantically tried to ring alarm bells — but instead the administration turned away.
If there was a hero within the U.S. government on Darfur, it was Mr. Winter. But it was doubly frustrating for him because in 1994 he had the same experience during the Clinton administration, when he was running a refugee organization and desperately trying to galvanize officials to respond to the Rwandan genocide.
In outrage at Bill Clinton’s inaction during the Rwandan slaughter, Mr. Winter abandoned the Democratic Party and became a Republican.
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