By now, John Bolton's crass assessment of the utility of 10 floors of the UN building in New York is well known. Known, too, is his disdain for the very idea of international law and his dealings with foreign agents. Indeed, in his decades in and out of public service and think tankdom, he has developed a reputation as one of Washington, D.C.'s less diplomatic figures.

Brian Steidle understands the anatomy of a genocide. As one of three American State Department contractors on the African Union's (AU) monitoring team in Sudan, the 28-year-old former Marine captain witnessed the systematic destruction of villages in south Darfur in late 2004. He's now working with Gretchen Steidle Wallace (his sister), who runs a nongovernmental organization (NGO) called Global Grassroots Network to raise awareness about the government of Sudan's complicity in the Darfur genocide.