Richard Just has written an important article in TNR that deals with almost the entirety of the situation in Darfur; capturing perfectly the feelings of powerlessness shared by those who have observed the genocide and its horrific humanitarian and political results for years without seeing any successful effort to hamper the work of the Khartoum government. Richard's constructive criticism of the activist community in particular is smart, and will undoubtedly be subject to scathing responses from those who don't understand why the international community should be concerned with this genocide, or who fail to understand why the logic of genocide demands a military response. Here are a few critical passages, but you should definitely read the entire piece:
The thesis of Don Cheadle and John Prendergast's book is that, in a democracy, the only way to ensure that the government will act in faraway places such as Darfur is to build a mass constituency of voters and activists who will demand that the government do so. This is correct, up to a point. It is not enough for that constituency to demand that the government act. It must be willing to demand that the government act in ways that will actually stop the killing. It must be willing to support the use of power. If it is not, then its righteous efforts will have been wasted.
...Too many in Washington have learned just enough about the history of Darfur to be inhibited by Sudanese ghosts. And so they throw up their hands, label the situation "complex," and accuse others of failing to see the shades of gray. In fact, if you spend enough time with the historical and journalistic material on Darfur--that is, if you look at the broad sweep of the conflict rather than trying to cherry-pick the dissonant notes for the purpose of forming an alibi--patterns begin to emerge out of the haze of complexities.
...If there is anything the Darfur literature makes clear, it is that the prime cause of the genocide is the national government. Not ancient and immovable tribal hatreds among Darfuris, but a particular regime in Khartoum. The historical studies show that while Darfur has seen tribal tension for centuries, these conflicts were nothing like the one that is now taking place.
Richard is right on all of these points. Nonetheless, even if activist groups had made clear the pressing need for force to stop this genocide from the get-go, Western governments, including the United States, U.K., Germany, and especially France, have proven themselves sufficiently amoral in the pursuit of realpolitik, and the United States sufficiently overburdened with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, that it is likely nothing would have happened. But it is silly for anyone who deplores genocide to pretend that our negotiations with Khartoum have made any progress in stopping the genocide; as Richard points out, there is a real difference between genocide and any other kind of international conflict.
--Tim Fernholz
