Chuck announces a rally to Stop Genocide in Darfur. Put me on record as thinking genocide is very awful and worth stopping, even at the expense of national self-determination, which I normally think is worth respecting. But take a look at Save Darfur’s action list and you get merely a call to “contact President Bush and demand that he do more to protect the civilians of Darfur.” More what? What should the U.S. do exactly?
Best case scenario is the West and the African Union send in a bunch of peace-keeping troops which perform what amounts to peace-keeping action, similar to what NATO is doing now in Kosovo. Worst case scenario, what starts as innocent peace-keeping mission gets caught up in full-fledged siding in a civil war, in the deposing of the current Sudanese regime and the messy task of nation-building in an area where nationalist sentiment mounts against us. If the latter seems farfetched, think Mogadishu.
I’m not saying a liberal interventionist war to stop genocide should be beyond consideration, but, well, it is a war we’re likely talking about. The liberal interventionists are overlooking and downplaying the similarity between Sudan and that other interventionist war we’re mired in right now. We went into that one glibly; those making the case for Darfur intervention need to be clear about what’s involved. Mere indignation at a real problem is not enough.
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