This op-ed, co-authored by Barack Obama and Sam Brownback, strikes the right tone of nudging the administration on the issue of Darfur.

Policy Adrift on Darfur

Impression: I cannot help but be struck by the parallels between Darfur and Iraq. Darfur, like Iraq, is (as Iraq was) a place that politicians and press are pressuring for more active attention to. Like Iraq, strenuous action in Sudan threatens to unite Muslim and other Third World demagoguery against the United States, despite our best intentions. Like Iraq, some will complain that if we act in Sudan, should we not be acting in the thousand other humanitarian trouble-spots around the world? Like Iraq, an exit strategy is difficult to set out at the start, in fact, it seems even more difficult to determine when the end of an American presence would come. Like Iraq, once we start in, our real motivations will begin to be questioned, no matter how pure our intentions. Like Iraq, Sudan also has friends in high places as well as low in the UN who have their own business (oil) interests to protect (China, for instance), humanitarian realities be damned, and like Iraq, once American bodies start coming home, support will evaporate faster than a dew drop in the Sahara, especially since, unlike Iraq, direct American interests are even more remote and obscure.

All of this threatens to combine to turn a sure-fire American "good guy" mission into a disaster waiting to happen, leaving Uncle Sam, once again, slapped in the face wondering what happened.

I keep remembering this article, about two African Union peace keepers killed in Sudan, and wondering how the reaction would have been had they been Americans.

One thing's for sure, involvement in Sudan has to be handled carefully, and by proxy (through the AU, for instance) as much as possible. The "save Darfur" movement would also be well-served using balanced rhetoric like that in the Obama/Brownback piece above, and less that falls into the old Leftist "protest and bitch" paradigm like that I saw at the last "Rally to Save Darfur" I attended.

George Bush is one of the only people on this planet that can really accomplish something serious there in Sudan. If people really want to save Darfur, and not just make themselves feel good bashing the administration, they should be all about showing that administration that there is a solid and reliable political upside to taking action, and that that upside will still be there when the UN and other predictable critics both foreign or domestic start screaming.