"Peace" for Genocide

The May 15 number of The New Republic devotes much of its space to essays lamenting the crisis in Darfur. And for good reason: We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have long believed that military force should be used to stop the Sudanese genocide. As a result, we fully support those—liberals and conservatives alike—who clamor for a military response.

And yet we cannot help but be irked by the clarion call for action on the part of sundry anti-war liberals. They seem not to realize the obvious: Their constant denouncing of the Iraq War has aided and abetted isolationist fervor in this country. If Americans are wary of committing US troops to Darfur, these liberals have themselves partly to blame.

Now, don’t get us wrong, dear reader: There were—and are—many reasons to question the wisdom of liberating Iraq. Personally, we supported the war, and we hope that the situation improves there. But opposition to Bush’s Iraq venture does not entail turning the other cheek about genocide.

Still, honest liberals would admit that some of the shrill anti-Iraq War sentiment has helped fuel a rising isolationism in America. After all, plenty of leftists carped about the Iraq War with such vehemence and irresponsibility that they seemed to be questioning any use of American power at all. In some circles, you can’t even refer to the War on Terrorism without obligatory scare quotes.

Many opponents of the administration’s Iraq venture have denied the very idea of a just war and concluded that American foreign policy is all about imperialism and Israel. Well, gee: If this is true, why, then, should our evil, rapacious country send troops to the Sudan? Won’t we just invade for Halliburton?

Actually, we think it’s rather pathetic that the anti-war left didn’t see this coming. Clearly, in their excoriation of the very concept of the War on Terrorism, they failed to realize the likely outcome of their actions. If they could galvanize public opinion against a war that was presumed to be in America’s security interests, how in heck did they think their pet projects—which aren’t in America’s strategic interests—would fare? Answer: Not very well.

Honestly, there’s something rather pathetic about a guy screeching about the death toll in Iraq one minute and screeching about a failure to act in Darfur the next. Gee, dipstick: What if US troops die there? How many casualties can we handle? When is enough enough? And why should America act “unilaterally” in the Sudan, since it appears as if the UN is again dragging its feet? Aren’t anti-war leftists militantly opposed to unilateralism?

So, if you ask us, the Cindy Sheehans, Michael Moores, and Noam Chomskys of the world bear a bit of the blame for our current predicament. You can only scream about the evils of American power so long until people begin to believe you. This is what you get for being a “peace activist,” you stupid hippies.