Darfur

Matthew Yglesias thinks about how to be a reality based idealist who is not an absolute pacifist.

The first issue is that the terror in Darfur makes foreign intervention moral and, for an idealist who is not an absolute pacifist, morally compelling. However, the USA doesn't have the troops to spare to pacify Darfur especially if the government of Sudan resists.

we spelled it out:

We are not realists. Rather, we agree with Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, that coercive humanitarian intervention, while useful and important, "can be justified only in the face of ongoing or imminent genocide, or comparable mass slaughter or loss of life."

So why don't we think the United States should mount an invasion of Sudan tomorrow? Well, for the exact same reason that Just doesn't either:

The International Crisis Group estimates that 12,000 to 15,000 troops could secure Darfur if the Khartoum government cooperates; if it resists (which is likely) then the number of troops will have to be larger. Such intervention need not be unilateral; in fact, given that our armed forces are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be multilateral.

In other words, we can't intervene, in no small part because we invaded Iraq.

This is discussed with reference to the case against the liberal hawks who advocated an invasion of Iraq. Now thinking about how the invasion of Iraq became an idealistic venture, one recalls that idealism was the last resort of the scoundrel in the White House. The problem, in large part, is that any advantage of an invasion which would be recognised by a realist had already been obtained by the threat of invasion which made Saddam Hussein roll all of the way over and accept the most invasive inspections in world history, which inspections would have convincinbly disarmed Iraq in months. In retrospect, this doesn't seem like such a big deal, since Iraq had already unconvincingly disarmed itself long before. However the threat of invasion did force Saddam Hussein to end his hiding of the fact that he had nothing to hide, which was all he could do.

Now back to Sudan. A massive US intervention would be impractical at the moment. It would be impossible without a draft and a draft is politically impossible.

However, it should be easy to scare general Omar Hassan Ahmed Al Bachir with the threat to bomb. Recall Kosovo one successful example of idealistic hawkishness based on bombing with 0 battlefied casualties. Note that, once the Serbian army left, Europeans were willing to take up most of the burden of peace keeping. They do that, they just don't make war. Recall also Haiti, where the credible threat of an invasion made Cedras cave without any actual fighting. The recent history of success in the field of humanitarian violence is largely success in terrorising dictators till they do what we want.

What do we want gen al Bashir to do ? Well the international crisis group has an idea when it discusses the Khartoum government co-operating. I would settle for something easier to verify, as in no Sudanese army troops in Darfur. The Janjaweed are lightly armed and, being a minority in the areas they terrorise, not able to operate as urban guerillas. I'd say an official invitation to foreigners and agreement to withdraw Sudanese army troops from all areas within Darfu requested should do the trick, even if the troops who make peace in Darfur don't include any US forces.

It should be easy to convince Bashir. For example saying "I hear that Hosh Bonnaga is a nice little village. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it." Or
"What the hell is an airport doing in the middle of a city.

Personally I'd consider just detonating it as urban renewal, if you get my drift."

I'd say the poor general would be so terrified by the quality of our intelligence that he wouldn't know that we got the name of his home town and the map of his capital via 10 minutes of googling.

Of course all this discussion of idealistic hawkery has nothing to do with the world we happen to live in (as all agree). Bush is willing to deal with Bashir in exchange for a little probably fake assistance in the war on terror.