This chapter addresses the policies of the Bush Administration, and the damage that it has done to the cause of democracy and human rights worldwide. But I have to start out by saying that, in certain respects, the Bush Administration's record of attempting to promote human rights is very good. That is, the Bush Administration has been as outspoken as any previous administration in championing human rights in different parts of the world. It has been willing to take quite strong action in efforts to promote human rights. We have the example in 2004 of Secretary of State Colin Powell's decision to label what is taking place in Darfur in the Sudan as “genocide,” which implies a responsibility under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide and to punish those who are responsible for genocide.

It contrasts with the Clinton Administration's stand a decade earlier in Rwanda, where the Administration danced around but refused to use the label genocide in a much clearer case than the case in the Sudan. Also, of course the Clinton Administration led the effort in the United Nations Security Council to withdraw United Nations troops from Rwanda – troops who, according to the commander, General Romeo Dallaire, probably could have stopped the genocide from taking place. In the Bush Administration, the State Department's Bureau of Human Rights under its recently departed Director, Lorne Kraner, has been very vigorous worldwide in protesting abuses of human rights, not only in countries considered antagonistic to the United States, but also in countries that are allies of the United States.