An Interest in Intervention: A Moral Argument for Darfur

Abstract

The United States government has consistently failed to act when faced with governments committing mass atrocities against their own citizens. Yet U.S. leaders acknowledge that the United States is capable of and responsible for such action. We have thus seen one U.S. administration after another crying “never again” after a humanitarian crisis or genocide, while allowing the crises to go on unhindered when they recur. I aim in this paper to 1) outline the crisis in Darfur from 2003 to the present; 2) describe the U.S. response to the situation in Darfur; 3) delineate what I believe the U.S. should do/be doing in response to the crisis and 4) provide rationale for why the U.S. should undertake these or similar actions in response to genocide in Darfur or other nations in the future.