SF Chronicle: Did Iraq doom Darfur by dulling our ability to do right?

Did Iraq doom Darfur by dulling our ability to do right?: "

Little more than three years after a defiant United States led an invasion of Iraq over the objections of many in the international community, another anniversary has come and gone. In early 2003, few outside the African nation of Sudan had heard of a region called Darfur. Three years on, with a campaign of genocide continuing with full knowledge of the entire world, Darfur has become synonymous not only with genocide, but with the world's astounding ability to do nothing, even while it righteously declares the situation there utterly and categorically unacceptable.

Going to war in Iraq involved many risks not only for the United States but also for the weak and powerless everywhere. If the Iraq campaign turned to failure, would Washington become more reluctant to risk American lives and money to help people brutalized by despots and thugs, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo? Or would it turn its back on genocidal massacres, as it did in Rwanda? Would disappointment in Iraq turn the American people inward, as Vietnam did, making the public force politicians to refrain from even suggesting the use of force except under the most extreme circumstances?

With Iraq in disarray, the American people have turned against that war, with a majority saying it was not worth fighting.

Does that mean Americans now want to close their eyes to Darfur? Amazingly, the American people have always been willing to see the United States do more to stop the killing in Darfur. In 2004, pollsters learned that more than 60 percent of Americans surveyed backed the use of force to stop the killings. That, believe it or not, has not changed.

Sudan's government bears responsibility for Darfur, where so-called Janjaweed militias, Arab nomads on camelback, armed by the government, have attacked black non-Arab farmers and their families, killing at least 200,000 civilians and displacing more than 2 million. This Muslim-on-Muslim conflict, started after a rebel group in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, complaining that the government was shortchanging their people. In response, the government launched this effort to rid the region of all its black population, by murder, fire and terror. Now, millions of Sudanese have walked away to escape the Janjaweed's campaign of mass rapes, poisoned water wells and human bonfires. Every month, another 5,000 people die in Darfur. The survivors live in dismal refugee camps along the border with Chad, and even Chad now looks set to fall into the carnage.

How hard is it to stop marauding gangs of killers riding camels from perpetrating genocide? A decisive effort from world leaders would easily get the job done. Would it be politically risky? Hardly. Consider the situation in Washington. The president's approval ratings are scraping the floor, and Democrats are eager to exploit any weaknesses on an election year. And yet, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, who recently visited Darfur, joined the ranks of politicians polishing their humanitarian rhetoric. Darfur, she intoned, "is a challenge to the conscience of the world."

"This is the only thing I and the president agree on 100 percent."

The European public and political leaders also agree the killing has to stop. Why, then, does it continue?

The answer is a mind-boggling desire to reach consensus -- with the killers.

Yes, the United States, NATO, and the United Nations agree that a large international peacekeeping force must be deployed to Darfur to stop the massacres. They will send that force, however, only when the government of Sudan requests it. That's like asking Hitler for permission to liberate concentration camps.

A small and mostly useless force from the African Union was supposed to ask for U.N. peacekeeping status, but Sudan kept that from happening. NATO says it will to lend its full support to the U.N. force, as soon as one exists. How inspiring!

Iraq, after all, did not erode Americans' sense of justice. It did, however, appear to have dulled Washington's willingness to do the right thing, even in the face of international paralysis. Without the diplomatic battle scars from Iraq, a more determined United States could easily rally NATO into action, as it did rather easily when it decided to stop the killing in Bosnia -- without U.N. approval.

The genocide in Darfur will end when the killers finish the job or when a courageous world leader makes a decision to lead the world in a cause that is not just urgent, but indisputably just.

Frida Ghitis, a frequent Insight contributor, is the author of "The End of Revolution: a Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.