"Out of Iraq, Into Darfur!!!" Well, the "Save" Darfur marches happened yesterday. Thousands in Washington, hundreds in Seattle. Bush met with leaders from "A Million Voices" on Friday, George Clooney was there as were various Congress critters, including Barak Obama. Condi Rice has called on China and Russia to help stop the genocide. (Colin Powell also called on the UN a year ago, remember, for intervention -- but the UN, in its wisdom, denied that there was any genocide going on there, and referred it to the ICC, using the situation as a club to beat Bush into agreeing to ICC involvement. And, my gosh! That sure helped, now didn't it?)

Thomas Nephew at Newsrack actually attended the event:

I'd guess that by the 2pm official start time there were around 10,000 people assembled in the first major quadrant of the mall -- that is, I could imagine making a 100*100 square of people from the numbers I saw. Some spilled across the street to the next uninterrupted square of lawn and walkways, with streams more making their way to the rally site from the direction of the Washington Monument and elsewhere. So I'd guess the rally hit maybe 20,000 by the time headliners like Barak Obama and George Clooney spoke. Jewish groups, college groups, and some NAACP were the main organizations I noticed.

I heard the first speaker, whose name I couldn't catch, but who was introduced as a Holocaust survivor. He said many of the things you'd expect but also brought up Iranian president Ahmadinejad -- not surprisingly, given the public short shrift he's given what the speaker had survived, but still pretty much off-topic less than half a minute into his talk. I don't want to make too much of one slightly jarring digression, but it illustrated how impossible it is to keep a demonstration or rally focused like a laser beam on the topic at hand, whether those teddible teddible people with puppets and Palestinian shawls and naughty words show up or not...

I'm not sure why President AllMyJihad's name was brought up, either, unless the mullahs think the invisible 12 imam's has somehow migrated to a well in Sudan ...

Then, Thomas very fairly cites Lawrence Kaplan, who thinks that nothing short of US military involvement will solve anything in Darfur.

The savedarfur.org requests of President Bush are, as Kaplan states, that the U.S., NATO and the international community should "provide immediate help to the African Union peacekeeping mission," and should "push the UN Security Council to authorize a UN peacekeeping force for Darfur" (Darfur Talking Points, Word document). Kaplan argues that reflexive reliance on the U.N. or the African Union on the one hand, and reflexive rejection of U.S. military solutions on the other amount to advocating ineffectual, unrealistic measures that will achieve precisely nothing for the victims of Darfur.

To which I mainly say, we'll never know until we've tried, and we need to try and retry the "non unilateral U.S. military" ideas before accepting Kaplan's judgment that "one thing and one thing alone: American power" will save Darfur. When Bosnia and Kosovo became consensus military action issues, it was too late for far too many -- but at least it was soon enough for the rest. (To that extent, the rallies today were in the wrong continent -- it's apparently more in Europe and Asia than in the U.S. where concern for Darfur victims needs to be kindled.)*

Thomas actually writes a pretty balanced article, and I'd like to respond here.

First, for the past year or so, the US has been working with the international community, which does not give a cr*p about the slaughter in Darfur. China's got a thriving trade involving Sudanese oil, as do some European countries. Does anyone imagine for a moment that China will be of any use if we try to get sanctions in the UN security council?

Sudan has rejected the presence of UN troops there ... about thirty thousand hit the streets of Khartoun about a week ago, with that fabulous chant "Death To America," although the purpose of the protests were to warn the UN.

Bush has done every single thing regarding Darfur over the past year that folks have been howling that he didn't do with Iraq, with the predictable non-results. Thousands continue to be hacked, burned, shot, starved and raped.

The AU has rejected any military help from any non-African nation -- but they sure are willing to collect money from the Western World. At this point in time, you'd expect the AU troops to be chauffered in platinum humvees. In the past six months, enough money's been collected to pay every one of the seven thousand troops roughly $40,000, which goes a long way in Africa -- but somehow I don't think the troopers are the ones collecting it.

The Arab league's issued various statements, but don't look for much cooperation there. Sudan's run by a Muslim government; and while the killing in Darfur is Muslim janjaweed hacking Muslim villagers to death -- the Darfuri are blacker in skin tone than the janjaweed. The Arab league is more preoccupied with the Palestinian situation, and supporting the newly elected Hamas government, and of course, with blocking perceived US imperial ambitions.

Diplomatically -- yah. Maybe we could get sanctions levied against Sudan. But -- how is this going to work when China will continue to trade for oil with Khartoum -- and who will make China stop doing anything?

Militarily -- there's a very remote possibility of sending UN troops there, Jesus walked on water, miracles happen. Which country's going to provide 80 percent of the troopers sent to Darfur under UN auspices ... ?

The demonstrations yesterday were a great example of democracy in action, though. That much is true. However, I didn't hear one pledge from any of the speakers of demonstraters to actually support one US trooper who might happen to get deployed to Darfur in response to their demands.

Matt Stoller, over at MyDD, mentions a sign saying "Out of Iraq, and Into Darfur!!!" No promise to actually support US troops was mentioned there either.

For a good listing of SaveDarfur's demands of President Bush, click to Psuedo-Adrienne's blog. You'll recognize it by the big "Impeach Bush" banner on the right hand corner at the top of the page.

Meanwhile, the Globe&Mail is reporting that:

Under pressure from the United States, rebels in Sudan's Darfur region agreed to continue negotiations with the government after rejecting a peace proposal that would end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Salim Ahmed Salim, a lead mediator for the African Union, said the talks would continue until midnight on Tuesday, pushing back the deadline for negotiations that have gone on for two years.

Earlier Sunday, the Sudanese government had said it was ready to sign the agreement, but only after it became clear the rebels were not ready to reciprocate.

Give peace a chance.

(above photo from MichelleMalkin; it was taken at the anti-war rally Saturday, not the SaveDarfur rally Sunday, although according to written sources listed above, it was indeed one of the slogans Sunday. It would be a shame to waste a sign, now wouldn't it? Incidentally, I didn't see any ANSWER involvement. They're preoccupied with Iraq, and getting US troops out of Haiti, and of course, the ever popular getting Bush impeached gig)  ¶ 8:00 AM