TNR AND DARFUR TNR�s Adam B. Kushner went to the Save Darfur rally on Sunday, and concludes that we liberals are na�ve to think that anything short of military strikes will stop the carnage in Darfur. This seems to be the emerging line over at The New Republic. Last week, I responded to a similar argument by Lawrence Kaplan by spelling out some intermediate steps that the administration has been loathe to take but could go a very long way to pressing Khartoum to cease their aggression. So rather than repeat myself, I�ll respond to Kushner by invoking Samantha Power�s exhortation that when we define doing "something meaningful" exclusively as �intervening militarily� we set the bar for intervention too high. Thankfully, Kushner only calls for air strikes, not dispatching marines to Darfur. But knee-jerk lines like, �Only by exerting the full force of American power, which liberals have thoroughly come to fear in the last decade, can anybody really �Save� Darfur,� are both untrue and counterproductive. Untrue, because there is plenty that we can do short of military intervention, and counterproductive because such arguments obscure alternative policy tracks that could bring pressure upon Khartoum.
--Mark Leon Goldberg
