Fresh from issuing a report that advised Washington to warn Israel against a pre-emptive military strike on Iranian nuclear weapons facilities, the geniuses at the Council on Foreign Relations have come up with yet another bright idea. This time the light bulb on 68th Street went off in respect of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, a crisis that the American State Department has labeled as genocide.

“The Unites States, while not backing off the charges of genocide and the threat of sanctions, must demonstrate understanding of the political issues that the government of Sudan perceives as fundamental. The United States must therefore signal its readiness to hold back on punitive actions if a serious political process begins,” says the latest report from the council. It was written by the director of Africa policy studies at the council, Princeton Lyman, and a research associate, Cheryl Igiri.

It was written as tens of thousands or more innocent black African individuals are facing daily raids and the threat of being raped and/or murdered by Arab militias working with the Sudanese government forces. The CFR’s own report describes 1.4 million persons who have already been displaced and 50,000 who have already been killed in the conflict. It describes how rape has become systematic. It describes how the Sudanese government forces “oversaw and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians,and the burnings of towns and villages.”

To recommend, at this late date, “readiness to hold back on punitive actions” after such crimes will strike many as being not just diplomatically daft but morally obtuse. At the trials of the Nazis at Nuremburg, at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague, at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that was held in Arusha, Tanzania, the principle has been that those responsible for ethnic cleansing are held accountable for their crimes. This serves as a deterrent to those who would engage in such behavior in the future. It honors the memory of the innocent victims. It determines the guilt of the individuals who perpetrated the crimes, so they can be jailed or executed and rendered unable to commit more crimes.

Reasonable persons may differ as to whether punishment in the case of Darfur should attach to individuals or to the government of Sudan, or to both. But for the Council on Foreign Relations to suggest that American public policy be that one can get away with genocide so long as one engages in a “serious political process” is not only unworthy but counterproductive. Who, other than one who puts foreign policy process over substance, would want to engage in a political process with the perpetrators of a genocide? Certainly not the victims – for them it is too late. They deserve to see the perpetrators held accountable.