A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.

• Author: Moore, Matt
• Position: Book review

A LONG DAY'S DYING: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DARFUR GENOCIDE

Eric Reeves

(Toronto, Canada: The Key Publishing House Inc., 2007), 386 pages.

As the Obama administration takes office, humanitarian intervention once again seems more than a rhetorical priority for United States foreign policy. President Obama has chosen Susan Rice, an advocate of strong action against genocide, to be ambassador to the United Nations, and Samantha Power, an intellectual architect of the contemporary human rights movement, was one of his key advisers during the campaign. At the top of the list of conflicts in which a policy of intervention might be applied is the ongoing crisis in Darfur.

Eric Reeves' book is a reminder that national governments and the international community must often be prodded to address situations of dire humanitarian need. The book is drawn from his writings over the period between 2003 and 2006 and is comprised of snapshots from what he calls "critical moments" in the Darfur genocide. Central to this account is the international community's diplomatic fumbling in the face of the Sudanese government's evasion, which he regards as a principal enabler of the human catastrophe in Darfur: "Out of such diplomatic failure of nerve and dishonesty, genocides are fashioned."

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