Max Boot offers up a desperate prescription for what ails Sudan:
At the moment, there are just 2,000 lightly armed peacekeepers from the African Union covering all of Darfur, a region the size of France. And they have no authority to stop rape, pillage or murder; they are only supposed to monitor a meaningless cease-fire accord proclaimed last year between Khartoum and two rebel groups.
So who will stop the killing? That question should trouble any tender soul who has ever mindlessly muttered, "Never again." That incantation is repeated after every genocide -- after the Holocaust, after the Cambodian killing fields, after Rwanda -- and yet the next time mass slaughter breaks out, the world conveniently averts its gaze. The major exceptions in recent years have been Kosovo and Bosnia, which had the good fortune to be on Western Europe's doorstep. The rest of the world is treated to high-minded cluck-clucking and, maybe, ex post facto prosecutions.
America is currently over-stretched, while the UN is tragically ineffectual. Boot recommends that the EU (or a joint European/American force) take up the challenge of stopping the genocide in Darfur.
But that's unlikely to happen. We've been here before, and nations are justifiably reluctant to expend blood and treasure for humanitarian reasons alone, which is why Sudan's current state is all too familiar and predictable. So too is the ending.
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