"Unnecessary at this time"

What. The fuck. I don't swear too often. But reading about the latest "plan" for NATO to intevene in Darfur provoked an exception. Kevin Drum has the scoop. Here's the relevant excerpt:

The proposal, which still faces uncertain approval within NATO because of concerns that it could be a distraction from operations in Afghanistan, falls well short of more aggressive measures that some have advocated, such as sending ground combat troops or providing air patrols to protect peacekeepers and prevent the bombing of villages. These options have been ruled out as unnecessary at this time, an administration official said.

And for the record, I do pretty much agree with Drum that this isn't really Bush's fault. The US has been pretty awful on Darfur, but Europe makes us look like altruistic saints. Even still, I think that if Bush spent half the political capital he devoted to such lovely catastrophes like Social Security privatization, he could push a Darfur intervention through the resistance. So I'm letting him entirely off the hook. And oh yeah, no amount of domestic or international resistance justifies crap like this.

Dean's World has the same thought I do. On the other hand Daimnation thinks that an intervention would "just make matters worse" (with 400,000 deaths already, I'm skeptical) and frets that such an intervention wouldn't come with the consent of the Sudanese government (admittedly, genocideers tend not consent to forces trying to stop their slaughter). However much my heart may "bleed", I can guarantee you it's spilling less blood than the Janjaweed are on a daily basis as they sow terror throughout the region.