http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121617393073456841.html

The International Criminal Court’s decision to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Bashir is being hailed in the usual places as a landmark in the effort to stop the bloodshed in Darfur. In fact, the indictment is of a piece with the same toothless moral posturing that has already prolonged Darfur’s misery for more than four years.

The central role of the Khartoum government in supporting the Darfur killings has long been clear. As we wrote in May 2004, “this is no ordinary famine but part of the Sudanese regime’s campaign against the African tribes.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell called events in Darfur “genocide” several months later.

That’s more than can be said for the U.N., which initially sought to suppress its own candid report on the crisis for fear of offending Mr. Bashir and his Khartoum thugs. The U.N. later distinguished itself with a 2005 legal judgment that claimed that, despite mass murder, pillage and rape, Darfur could not be called a genocide because “genocidal intent appears to be missing.”

This U.N. absolution was particularly significant because it might have obliged the world body to intervene under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The Security Council has since done little more than sanction a handful of individuals and authorize a weak peacekeeping force that can barely protect itself, let alone innocent Darfuris. President Bush also proposed a no-fly zone, only to be talked out of it by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

We dwell on this sorry U.N. record because it testifies to the inverse correlation between the international community’s pronouncements on Darfur and its actions, of which the International Criminal Court’s intervention is typical. The U.N. Security Council referred Darfur to the International Criminal Court in 2005, both to appear to be doing something and as a way to embarrass the Bush Administration. Mr. Bush has rightly refused to recognize the court that is a supranational body answerable to no one.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has been far more aggressive than the European Union (let alone China or Russia) in sanctioning Mr. Bashir’s government. Three years and 200,000 deaths later, the ICC prosecutor now claims to have solid evidence that Mr. Bashir has always been in full control of the genocidal apparatus in Darfur. To whom, outside the U.N. itself, can this possibly come as news?

It may be that Mr. Bashir will someday be brought before the court to face its version of justice. In that event, we can only hope it doesn’t descend into the five-year carnival that was the “trial” of former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. But as with Milosevic, that day will only come after Mr. Bashir has been toppled from power, whether by coup, revolution or foreign intervention.

If the civilized world is serious about saving Darfur, it is toward that end that it must set its sights-and not the false moral comfort of a meaningless indictment from an illegitimate court.