Much of the world doesn't believe that America has much moral ground to stand on.
But there is an election going on, and we do have candidates that stand for something better: the hope that America may return to representing those values.

But there are parts of the world, certainly many parts of Africa, where China is viewed more positively than the United States.
And so they should be. The United States has missed the boat when it comes to Africa. Wherever you go in Africa, in every country, there will be Chinese people and Chinese foundations and Chinese initiatives. We didn't get on board, and China is there.

Doesn't that weaken our ability to preach on Darfur?
Nothing weakens our ability to look forward to what should be. Once we start looking backward, then we're on very, very slippery ground. When I speak to officials from China, they talk about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and Iraq, and these are indefensible positions as far as I'm concerned. And I immediately cede the ground. "You're right," I say. "Let's not waste precious time. We're talking now about the people of Darfur." And they say, "You're not talking about what we're doing for Darfur, all the wells we build." I tell them, in America when we take a car to the mechanic we don't tell him what's right with it, we say what's wrong with it.

Isn't it tough for American athletes to speak out about China when they may then have to defend our country and its policies?
It's an agonizing position for them. We have to look at the IOC [International Olympic Committee], why they picked China and placed our athletes and all the athletes of the world in such a position. Apparently there were promises made to the IOC that China would change policies. How can Beijing host the Olympics at home while underwriting genocide in the Sudan?

Such contradictions are not unprecedented in Olympic history.
We go right back to 1936 [hosted by Hitler in Berlin]. Shame on the IOC in their isolation in Lausanne [Switzerland]. Now they throw up their hands and say, "We're not political. How did this happen? Oh, dear."

It's often repeated that in the face of criticism China gets its back up and is even more intransigent.
I've heard that time and time again, and I don't agree. [Farrow and her son] wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "The Genocide Olympics." Everyone said, "Don't push China. They'll go the other way." But within days of that piece China, for the first time, appointed an envoy to Darfur. They hired two international public relations firms to sanitize their image. And, most importantly, they did sign on to the new U.N. Resolution 1769 appointing 26,000 peacekeepers to the Darfur region. Before, they had abstained.