The Darfur Debacle

I had hope there for awhile that we were going to actually do something in Darfur. According to a story in today's Post, Bush is genuinely passionate about the issue and personally committed to doing something about it:

"He wanted militant action, and people had to restrain him," said one senior official familiar with the episode. "He wanted to go in and kill the Janjaweed."

You go, Dubya. Going in and killing some Janjaweed is exactly what we ought to be doing.

On the downside, it's not clear how much of this is genuinely moral interest, and how much is based in a kind of partisan evangelical Christianity:

Many close to Bush believe that this intense interest in the issue was heavily influenced by American evangelicals, who have adopted the cause of Christians in southern Sudan.

Though there's this:

Former senator John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), whom Bush appointed as his special envoy for Sudan, said the president's interest in the country is rooted in a larger sense of morality. "This isn't a country that has much strategic interest for the United States," he observed.

Of course it's common to confuse religion with morality, so who knows? Not that I really care why we go in. I just want us to go in. One of the things that seems to be holding us up is that (even according to Bush) we just can't invade yet another Muslim country. Yet another opportunity cost associated with this numb-skull invasion of Iraq...but no need to open that can of worms here. If we'd have done things right in Afghanistan and properly rebuilt the country, some Islamic nations would practically be begging us to invade.

I still think--as I've said before--that we ought to pool our money and fund some mercenaries to go in. Heck, even Blackwater would improve the situation tremendously.