DARFUR

What might be called the liberal position on Darfur can be stated as follows:
"The people of Darfur have suffered unspeakable violence, and America has called these atrocities what they are -- genocide.
The Security Council has approved a resolution that would transform the African Union force into a blue-helmeted force
The liberal position is hardly distinguishable from
(a) the Bush administration's position on Darfur, and
(b) the Clinton administration's position on Kosovo.
In both cases the cry of genocide and "humanitarian" intervention is used to cover the USG's imperial machinations to reduce a state (respectively Sudan and Serbia) that was unreliable from the US/Israeli POV.
For Bush, "the United Nations must act" (with NATO providing logistics and "other support") -- and the wretched situation in Darfur will probably get worse, but Sudan, an oil-producing state (much of its production goes to China) will be put under increasing pressure.

Of major media, only the BBC has said at all clearly that Khartoum's resistance to "peacekeepers" was based on "well-founded fears of the designs of Western governments on Sudan." Meanwhile self-styled US peace groups and the Israeli lobby urge "Out of Iraq and into Darfur!"
listen to the calm common sense of Alex de Waal, a fellow of the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard, an advisor to the African Union, and author of "Darfur: A Short History of a Long War":
"I don't believe there is a military solution. It will not defeat the holdout rebel groups. What it will do is, it will kill more people,
the solution to Darfur is a political solution.
The solution has to come through political negotiation."
But by mobilizing the cover story of humanitarian intervention, the Bush administration should be able to introduce a military solution to its real problem:
how to attack another country on the Neocon hit list,

another country (like Serbia) on the concentric circle around the cynosure of US foreign policy, Middle East energy resources.
the official hero of Kosovo, Wesley Clark: "As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001,
This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan."