John Eibner and Joe Madison write a concise update on the current situation in the Sudan. It's difficult for Americans to stay focused on a region where there is no obvious national interest at stake, and it's easy to avoid thinking about the suffering of the people there when their plight gives way on the evening news to feckless murder investigations in Aruba and Cindy Sheehan's quixotic crusade in Crawford.
The absence of a manifest national interest was the argument for staying out of Bosnia and Kosovo and Rwanda in the nineties. It was the crux of the case for neutrality in 1940. It is not a trivial argument. Even so, power carries with it some measure of responsibility. We should not stand by and do nothing while people are starved and slaughtered if it is within our capacitites to do something to stop it that would not make matters worse. In other words, there is a moral case, even in this amoral post-modern world, for bringing our power to bear on behalf of those trapped in the third world hells that befoul our globe like so many toxic pustules.
The debate should not be whether we should intervene to help desperate people. The debate should be about how we might most effectively accomplish that goal. It should center around how we can produce the greatest amount of good with the least amount of evil.
Hopefully, moral suasion, diplomatic pressure and economic incentives will bring about a surcease of the suffering of the victims of the despots and petty tyrants who populate the third world, but sometimes, as in Bosnia and Rwanda, it might take the application of military force. That should be a last resort, but, provided it can be reasonably expected to work and produce a better result than would capitulation, it should always be an option.
It was indeed an option in Bosnia, to our credit and the credit of the Clinton administration. It evidently was not an option in Rwanda, to our and president Clinton's everlasting shame. You may, of course, disagree, but if so, at least watch the movie Hotel Rwanda and see if that doesn't cause you to rethink your opinion.