The Save Darfur Coalition advocates for a stronger, multi-national peace-keeping force, short term NATO assistance, more support and training for African Union troops (who are understaffed and patrol an area the size of Texas), more funding from the US Congress and President for humanitarian relief and peacekeeping forces.

The previous poster is wrong in suggesting that the U.S. act independently.

All countries must be untied in opposing genocide.

Sounds like a lame excuse to not get involved, Jonny ("Wonder if...").

I don't even pretend to know what can and should be done in Darfur. What I do know is that more media attention right NOW improves the chances of stopping (or at least slowing down) the madness over there.

People are dying.

I'll be there.

The Pelosi Doctrine
April 14, 2006; Page A16

The killing in Darfur province of Sudan is terrible, but as a foreign policy problem it is also instructive. In particular, it is exposing the weakness of a strand of U.S. foreign policy thinking that might be called the Pelosi Doctrine, after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Darfur is the Sudanese province where Arab Janjaweed militia supported by the Khartoum government have murdered an estimated 200,000 mostly black Muslims and displaced another two million. President Bush has requested $439 million in humanitarian aid, proposed a NATO mission to the area (an idea our European allies instantly shot down) and is now pushing for a U.N. peacekeeping contingent to replace the ineffectual forces of the African Union, as well as targeted U.N. sanctions against Sudan's leadership.

As an alternative, consider Ms. Pelosi's position. She has made Darfur a personal priority, demanding action and, to her credit, joining a recent Congressional delegation to Darfur and Khartoum to meet with Vice President Ali Taha, who denied there was anything much amiss. Ms. Pelosi described her experiences with obvious sincerity from the House floor last week. Then she offered this: The Administration must appoint a special envoy to Sudan as a way of "[signaling] that bringing peace and stability to Sudan is a priority of the United States."

Now, why hadn't anyone else thought of that? We'll grant that a forceful envoy might orchestrate a more effective and coherent response to the Sudanese atrocities. Similar efforts by Jay Lefkowitz, Mr. Bush's special envoy for North Korea, have at least had the useful effect of devising ways to help trapped and abused North Korean refugees in northeastern China escape to free countries.

Then again, the record of most other "special envoys" has not been promising. Cyrus Vance, David Owen, Peter Carrington and countless other worthies trooped through Belgrade in the early '90s, trying to make Slobodan Milosevic "see reason" as Serbian troops massacred civilians in Vukovar, Sarajevo and Srebrenica. Milosevic rightly interpreted this brand of diplomacy-by-signals as evidence the West lacked the political will to stop the killing, which would have meant stopping him.

Yet this is exactly what Ms. Pelosi now proposes to do with Khartoum. The job of the special envoy, she says, is to find ways to "stop the violence, bring the people to the negotiating table and get humanitarian relief to the people who need it." These are contradictory goals. Bringing "people" to the table means giving Sudan's government -- the perpetrator of the genocide -- a seat and thus a veto over how and when the Darfur crisis is resolved. It is Khartoum that is the chief obstacle to deploying U.N. troops in the region.

This is of a piece for what passes as a security policy in most of Ms. Pelosi's party. A recently published Democratic "plan" for "real security" offers some poll-tested words on "finishing the job in Afghanistan," spending more on body armor and veterans' benefits, getting out of Iraq fast and achieving energy independence by 2020. The word "democracy" is never mentioned, nor is the word "prevention." On outrages such as the one in Darfur, the plan promises to "lead international efforts to uphold and defend human rights; and renew long-standing alliances that have advanced our national security objectives."

Terrific. In Sudan, that and the United Nations will get you exactly . . . what we have now: slaughter. With the best of intentions, Ms. Pelosi urges Mr. Bush to "do something" about Darfur. But she then refuses to confront the fact that the very international institutions and sometime allies she wants the U.S. to defer to are unable or unwilling to help Mr. Bush do anything at all.

Her "special envoy" is a substitute for the kind of action that might actually make a difference. In the short term, that would mean arming the Darfuris so they can defend themselves. In the long term, it means regime change in Khartoum -- which would almost certainly require the use of U.S. military force.

Mr. Bush's reluctance to commit U.S. troops in Sudan is understandable given our current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan and our obligations around the world. But if Ms. Pelosi's outrage over Sudan is more than posturing, she'd focus less on the White House and more on the fecklessness and obstruction of the countries and United Nations that she typically invests with so much moral authority.

All of these are reasonable comments - certainly an intervention would cost money, certainly protesters often have other political agendas which are distasteful, certainly people who believe we should intervene in Darfur disagree about whether we should do it elsewhere.

That's all true. But 500,000 people have died there so far. Darfur presents an opportunity - no, an obligation - to put aside our differences on other issues and recognize what we all ought to agree on: that when hundreds of thousands of innocents are being slaughtered because of their race, we have an obligation to try to stop it. We can argue about the best way to do that, and we can argue about what to do in situations where the good guys and the bad guys are less obvious. But what the folks behind the protest are trying to do is raise awareness and political pressure to take action, so that there's a debate about what action will be best.

Honestly, I suspect few to none of you believe we should do nothing in the face of genocide. If you believe we should act as a country, don't use other protests' flaws as an excuse not to take any action yourself.

I am sick of the U.S. doing all the work. The EU countries talk a good game about human rights but when the rubber hits the ground they do nothing.

I am not willing to support putting U.S. men and women at risk and pay billions of dollars for a WAR that the rest of the world will expect us to die and pay for. I truly feel for these people but I am sick of the rest of the world yelling at us and then turning around and saying we have to do something. No we do not have to do anything.

Intervention as a policy got us into Iraq with no exit plan. What is the exit plan for Dafur? And how many other "Dafur" type missions can this country afford to take on?

Look I was giving the EU countries the benefit of the doubt. We all know they would do nothing from the begining to the end. No U.N. support, no troops, no nothing. So lets agree that the entire thing would be hard.

Also, I agree with "sad" that we need an exit strategy.

Why no hold it in front of the Sudanese Embassy??? 2210 Massachusetts Ave NW or at least hold a sit in there? Sorry if this is already going on I haven't followed the issue or protest the closely, just an idea.

Most of the comments made here are extraordinarily disturbing, and disappointing. As the previous poster alluded to, sitting idle while another genocide of Holocaust like proportions happens is inhumane and not the type of country the U.S. purports to be.

To write off this protest because you probably won't agree with the beliefs of those present is not a good enough reason not to get it involved. And, these organizers are by no means asking for military involvement other than peace-keeping and training of UA troops.

They just want some U.S. pressure, funding and most of all - attention. Thus far the U.S. has done none of those things while thousands silently die. Perhaps if our image in the world wasn't so poorly damaged, a multi-national force wouldn't be so hard to assemble.

disappointed, so lets say they same things about the rest of the world. All the other countries will do nothing. The world has some horrible places and I wish they were just in moives but just because they are real doesn't mean that the U.S. can and must do something about every situation that pops up. The U.S. needs help and if the U.N. was doing its primary mission we wouldn't be having this discussion right now.

The U.N. is already in Sudan and has been their on a peacekeeping mandate for southern Sudan, where the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement recently ended the twenty-one year civil war between the Sudanese government and southern rebels known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The U.N. mission in Sudan, known as UNMIS, will eventually deploy 10,000 troops to monitor and implement the north-south agreement. As of January 2006, there are 5,300 foreign troops from sixty-one countries participating in UNMIS and deployed in Khartoum and southern Sudan. While this is different from Darfur it shows that the UN is and can work in Sudan. THe UN also has tried to bring a peacekeeping force into Darfur, but the Sudanese government won't allow it and claims that a UN force will violate its sovereignty. This is puzzling position since there already is a force of 10,000 UN peacekeepers in southern Sudan and another 6,000 African Union troops in Darfur trying valiantly to maintain the peace. One of the reasons that the UN hasn't been able really do anything about Darfur is because a number of the countries on the UN security council specifically China and Russia rely on the Sudanese Govt. for oil and other raw materials. Using blanket statements that UN and the international community aren't trying to do something is completely inaccurate.

The FIGHTING 10th!!

Gabriel I think this episode demonstrates that the only thing playing on the "International Stage" is a farce.

If we do something in Darfur it should be for the right reasons. Trying to win a popularity contest with the world is futile, dangerous, and foolish. I'd rather we do the right thing for its own sake, not so US college students feel more comfortable at the student union at the Sorbonne.

I wish the protesters luck, but methinks that the protest will fall on deaf ears unless the rally maintains a precision focus on Darfur, and doesn't stray an inch from a single, clear, concise message. And aside from one recent rally, history is not on this event's side.

In all fairness, major rallies seldom achieve anything these days. They've largely lost their impact factor because they've been done before, and done to death. The immigrant rights rallies did well because the overall makeup of the protesters was a group that hadn't reached such mass before. It was new, it was novel - and it was focused.

So perhaps this weekend's rally will achieve the media attention it desires.

But the other thing - and the thing that would achieve a more real impact - is if every protester actually does something after the protest: writing or calling members of congress, working for a charity or awareness campaign, et al. The reality, however, is that there are a fair number of people who show up to such events merely to be there, to experience the moment, after which they return to their daily lives and tune out the movement. Such is the result of the short-attention-span society we're saddled with these days.

The "SAVE DARFUR: Rally to Stop Genocide" is not a whack-job demonstration, not a Bush-bashing event, not an act of civil-disobedience.

It's to raise awareness of the ongoing violence and suffering in the Darfur region of Sudan and demand more affirmative, demonstrative action from the U.S. government.

Many of the comments here are jaded, negative and lack hope.

Come to the Rally; we'll change your perspective.

Darfur is the troubled place. It doesn't matter where the U.N. troops are if they aren't in Darfur. Sinde the Sudan government opposes a UN force into Darfur, I don't see what can be done unless the UN or US invades the country.

Secretary-General can say all he wants that war crimes in Darfur "cannot be committed with impunity", but the inaction of the UN and Western countries clearly show it can.

Just last week the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan England, said the relief efforts would collapse because of lack of support. To say that there are UN troops actually helping is crazy. UN troops rarely help. This is a matter for the grown ups and big daddy America is not going to do anything because its been smacked around too much by the international community. Plus being the lone Superpower that is fighting a war on terror, it has too much stuff on its plate. Darfur is a very low issue on the US to-do-list.

I'm soo there!

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