Position: NATO should intervene
This position addresses the topic Darfur conflict.
For this position
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"Nothing, however, has garnered as much attention within the activist community as the latest scheme to deploy a U.N. security force in Darfur. This plan, which has been promoted by nearly every activist organization working on this issue, has an almost unimaginable fatal flaw: Without permission from the perpetrators of the atrocities, the peacekeepers will be staying home."
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"We could have chosen another path. We could have bypassed the maddeningly slow U.N. machinery, assembled a coalition of allies under the banner of nato, and dispatched troops to Darfur ourselves--without consent from, or apologies to, the men in Khartoum who orchestrated this evil. The United States could have led the way. We still could."
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"Will the president, with all the problems he is dealing with elsewhere, lead further, hopefully with other democratic nations -- as we did in Kosovo -- with targeted air strikes on Sudanese airfields to ground the killing Sudanese airplanes, and show Mr. al-Bashir he faces consequences?"
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"In his April 18 speech Mr. Bush mentioned one clear remedy for such attacks: steps "by the international community" to "deny Sudan's government the ability to fly its military aircraft over Darfur." There is support for that idea in the British government; now is the time for Mr. Bush to actively explore it while implementing the unilateral U.S. financial sanctions he outlined."
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"Mr. Blair spoke of imposing a no-fly zone to impede air attacks in Darfur. That's an operation that would necessarily be carried out by Western powers, which could undertake it without U.N. sanction, as they did in Kosovo. If the situation in Darfur is "intolerable" and "unbearable" -- and it is -- Western governments should stop delaying the remedies that lie in their hands."
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"So, who will enforce the U.N. plan to save the black Muslim survivors of Khartoum's National Islamic Front government? Mr. Bush, the world leader who has most forcefully condemned, and named, this genocide, is otherwise engaged in Iraq. But why couldn't England, Germany, Italy, France and other nations start by setting up a no-fly zone to prevent Khartoum's planes from bombing villages to facilitate the Janjaweed's murders?"
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"But the failure of European or Arab governments to supply helicopters is a disgrace. Over and over, leaders such as Britain's Gordon Brown, France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel have said the situation in Darfur is "intolerable." Yet, although NATO countries among them have 18,000 helicopters, none have been made available for Darfur. No wonder Mr. Bashir feels free to thumb his nose at the United Nations."
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"The Pentagon should look at what it would take to set up a no-fly zone over Darfur - probably out of neighboring Chad. No easy proposition, but the mere suggestion of a U.S. - or, better yet, NATO - no-fly zone over Darfur would give Khartoum heart palpitations. The slaughter in Sudan can be stopped - but only if the world is up for joining the United States in some serious arm-twisting."
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Against this position
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Mixed on this position
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