Ending the genocide in Darfur (not)
by Paul Danish (letters@boulderweekly.com)

Judging from the yard signs, there are a lot of people in Boulder who want to "End the genocide in Darfur." At the risk of being unkind, I don't think they're being serious. If they were, they would have put a second sign up, as well — one that reads "Win the war in Iraq."

There isn't a chance in the world that the genocide in Darfur can be ended if the war in Iraq isn't won. No sane American politician would ask the United States to go to war for Darfur if the war in Iraq is lost. And if the United States isn't prepared to go to war to end the genocide in Darfur, the genocide isn't going to end.

Yet most of the people who have "End the genocide in Darfur" signs up also want to end the war in Iraq — not by winning it, but by cutting and running. There may be a few exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. Most of "End the genocide in Darfur" folks want to end the war in Iraq by declaring defeat and going home.

You don't have to be a genius to understand the connection between Darfur and Iraq. The genocide in Darfur is being perpetrated by the government of Sudan for reasons similar to those that motivated the government of former Yugoslavia to attempt "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia and Kosovo — putting down a separatist movement.

The diplomatic record of the past three years leaves little doubt that nothing short of military power will force the Sudanese government to stop the genocide. The Sudanese government has made it abundantly clear that it doesn't give a rip about the opinions of the international community, and the international community has made it equally clear it isn't going to do anything about Darfur except send Band-Aids and styptic pencils and cry a few crocodile tears.

Nor does the Sudanese government have anything to fear from the United Nations, because at least two members of the United Nations Security Council — Russia and China — oppose imposing strong economic sanctions or deploying an international force with a mandate to do something besides stand idly by and, with a certain clinical detachment, watch the massacres continue (as UN "peacekeepers" did in Srebrenica).

For that matter, even if a meaningful set of economic sanctions were put in place tomorrow, it would be years until they produced results. The genocide in Darfur will be completed long before economic sanctions end it.

The only country that can end the genocide in Darfur is the United States, not by getting the UN and the international community to act, but by using military force. The necessary force would involve, minimally, something like the bombing campaigns that ended the attempted genocide in Kosovo in 1999 or prevented the late Saddam Hussein from destroying the Iraqi Kurds following the Gulf War or made it possible for the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

There is, however, no chance that the United States will undertake such a campaign — because the folks who aver that they want to end the genocide in Darfur are for the most part the same ones who have been working for years to make it impossible for the United States to win in Iraq or take unilateral military action generally.

They have worked tirelessly to de-legitimize the Iraq war and to convince the American people that it is a lost cause (which it isn't), and they have largely succeeded. They fiercely oppose the Bush Doctrine, which provides for the United States engaging in pre-emptive war against those who harbor its terrorist enemies, and which could easily be applied to the Islamic/fascist government in Sudan that harbored al-Qaeda.

Moreover, if the United States actually started bombing Sudan, does anyone have the slightest doubt that a lot of the folks with "End the genocide in Darfur" signs in their yards would be in the vanguard of those howling about American aggression and even accusing the United States of genocide.

And speaking of genocide, if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq prematurely, the subsequent civil war(s), and outright invasions would likely result in multiple instances of genocide.

The fact that the people who want to end the genocide in Darfur seem OK with throwing 25 million Iraqis under the bus suggests that their concern with ending genocide is a tad selective and more than a little unserious — if not outright disingenuous.

If you have an "End the genocide in Darfur" sign in your yard and don't support winning the war in Iraq, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. You are making it impossible for the United States to fight for your cause. At least have the decency to shut up.

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