Commentary - James Kirchick: Biden is the only Democrat willing to do what’s necessary for Darfur

Asked at the Democratic debate what the United States ought to do about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, the Delaware senator replied, “I went there. I sat on the borders. I went in those camps. They’re going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of people die. We’ve got to stop talking and act. … By the time all these guys talk, 50,000 more people are going to be dead! They’re going to be dead!”

Biden also stressed that the United States should act “if the U.N. will not move now” and expressed support for deploying a NATO contingent of 2,500 troops that “could take out the Janjaweed tomorrow.” The Sudanese have, as Biden stated, “forfeited their sovereignty” by committing genocide, and their crimes against humanity have long mandated the use of international military force.

To this impassioned plea for action, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates for a show of hands — a new favorite tactic of his — expressing support for American military action against the Janjaweed militias and their enablers in the Sudanese government. What then followed was a spectacle of obfuscation and hand wringing. Here’s an excerpt from the debate transcript, worth quoting at length:

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.: Are we talking about a no-fly zone?

(Cross talk.) (Laughter.)

Blitzer: Hold on. Hold on!

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.: (Inaudible) — aren’t going to work.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio: Wolf, can I answer that?

Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.: Wolf, I was there —

(Cross talk.)

Clinton: If this is about enforcing a no-fly zone, yes.

Richardson: At the U.N.

Clinton: Yeah, a no-fly zone, absolutely. Ask about a no-fly zone, and I think you’ll get —

Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.: If you’re talking about American troops —

Clinton: — us behind Joe’s policy.

Biden: I’m talking about American troops.

Edwards: Yeah, I don’t agree with that.

Of course Edwards believes the U.S. should sit silently on the sidelines as an Islamist genocide continues. Representing a disturbingly large and growing portion of his party, he thinks the “war on terror” is just a “bumper sticker slogan” and presumably believes that if we just invited the jihadists over for some Southern sweet tea, they’d lay down the bombs currently strapped to their chests. But what is the excuse of the supposedly hawkish Clinton, one of the strongest advocates for using American military power in the Balkans during her husband’s administration?

Biden is prescient about the minimal risks associated in stopping the horror in Darfur. The enemy there is not well equipped, nor is Darfur an urban combat environment. The men responsible for the killing — the Janjaweed — are little more than philistine, rifle-toting marauders on horseback backed up by the occasional helicopter from Khartoum.

Nothing that the U.S. military, as Biden correctly asserted, could not destroy in a day. And it was also refreshing to hear Biden say, in response to the pandering of Edwards (who surely pleased the “netroots” wing of the Democratic Party by claiming that “we have lost our moral authority to lead”), that, “the reason we have no moral authority is because we’re not acting.”

But because the use of military force is now such a taboo subject among the Democratic Party base, expressing support for using it to accomplish policy objectives has diminished among the candidates.

The candidates are at least intellectually consistent in their hesitancy to endorse the use of force — more so than the liberals who are calling simultaneously for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, a policy that would likely precipitate genocide, while also demanding American intervention in Darfur to stop another one.

It is understandable that the massive mismanagement of the Iraq war would make Democratic leaders reluctant to endorse the use of American power. But the mistakes made in Iraq ought not make us feckless in the face of evil. That Biden — a candidate with no chance of winning his party’s nomination — is the only Democrat willing to do what’s necessary to end the slaughter in Darfur says more about the state of the Democratic Party than anything else uttered on that stage last Sunday.

Examiner columnist James Kirchick is assistant to the editor in chief of The New Republic.