Pacifists for war

Today I received an e-mail from Sojourners calling for military intervention in the Darfur region of Sudan to protect civilians from government-sponsored militias. This seems to have become a kind of cause célèbre among certain elements of the Christian left (for lack of a better term). And it’s certainly a worthy one.

Still, as I’ve said before, one needs a clearer idea of what actually we should do once we’re there.

Justin Logan has suggested that committing U.S. troops isn’t necessary (and it’s not entirely clear that we could); we should, instead, provide logistics and materiel to African Union troops on the scene.

I’m symathetic to such a plan insofar as I think it would be better all things considered if regional conflicts were handled, when necessary, by local powers. The idea that the U.S. should jump into every conflict is a recipe for disaster (Somalia, anyone?). Think of it as the principle of subsidiarity applied to international politics.

Still, there may be times when the U.S. is the only power capable of intervening and circumstances warrant it.

Here’s a question though: are those of us who would like to see a drastically scaled back U.S. military establishemnt (a pretty utopian goal, admittedly) prepared to accept that such a reduced force would likely not be capable of intervening every time there’s some kind of humanitarian crisis? (This applies to the quasi-pacifist types on the Christian left as well as “seamless garment” types and traditonalist non-interventionist conservatives.)