One of my favorite movie lines, as I have mentioned before, comes from Zulu, a film from the 1960s about 19th century British soldiers grimly facing down thousands of Zulu warriors. There were a little over a hundred British and the Zulus had a couple thousand rifles.
Before one assault on the small fortification, a frightened soldier asks his sergeant why they are fighting. The Sergent, in classic British Victorian fashion, answers "Because we are here, and no one else."
That describes perfectly the United States' role in the world up until 2009. We stand for freedom, we back democracy, we support capitalism. Why? Because no one else cares. We do it not for popularity but for principle. We know gratitude is fleeting, but we understand that the world is safer when it is free. At least we knew and understood those things until January of this year.
Darfur is an international outrage. Slavery and massacres of Christian blacks by Muslims continues unabated. I am not suggesting that we go into the region by ourselves like an Old West sheriff and clean up the town. Some situations call for the John Wayne treatment, this does not. What we need is to round up our posse. Get some old friends like the Poles, British, etc. and some new ones like Kenya and South Africa. Take on a leadership and organization role, but provide direct support mostly in logistics.
Fact is, though, our credibility gets shakier all the time. Who can trust our commitment to democracy when the president acts like Gordon Brown is the black sheep cousin while Hugo Chavez is the coolest guy on earth?
Darfur needs attention and our diplomatic ship needs righted. Too bad neither outcome looks feasible for at least, say, four years.
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