There is mass torture going on. The party in question is committing crimes against humanity. Should we just sit here on our hands?

Sounds familiar, does it not?

The same drum of war that beat to go to Iraq has been picked up, dusted off and finely tuned. Only this time it is in the hands of the left – Hollywood actors, Olympic-grade athletes and spoiled college hippies. In other words, it is in the hands of the very same people who adamantly stood up against the war with Iraq. The war, the one the administration said was accomplished five years ago, still wages today, taking the lives of sons, fathers and friends.

Now, many in the anti-war left want us to pack our bags from Baghdad and come home. That is a great idea, but they want us to make a stop on the way home and drop off some luggage, maybe a bomb or two. Save the people in Darfur. This is somehow different than saving Iraqis, even though President Bush made the same argument:

They’re being oppressed.

They’re being tortured!

This is the same tried and true argument we were given to invade Iraq, yet the anti-war people turn around and demand military intervention in Darfur. If the Iraq war has accomplished anything thus far, it should be that we need to keep our noses out of a sovereign nation’s business unless it is a direct threat to our country.

What is happening in Darfur is awful, but we are not the world’s police. It is not our job to meddle in the affairs of other countries. If we did intervene in Darfur, chances are it would end up much like Iraq – a muddled quagmire. The country could see an influx of terrorists and “insurgents.” How long would it take for a Republican to stand up and tell Hollywood: “We were lied to about the war in Darfur. We need a time table to get our people out of there”?

The hypocrisy from these liberal internationalists is flooring.

It seems the reason so many have differing views between Iraq and Darfur is because we have a Republican president. Only “bad” wars happen under Republicans. “Good” wars happen if a Democrat is behind them. I mean, just look at the Vietnam War, a war Democrats got us into and less than a decade later were screaming to get us out of, after wasting more than 50,000 American lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives in the process.

Democrats mostly point to World War II as a “good” war. Too bad Franklin Roosevelt did everything he could to force Hitler to attack us. When he would not, he waited for Hitler’s ally to attack and still went after Germany, barely bothering with the nation that attacked Pearl Harbor. That was a “good” war because it prevented the Holocaust, right?

Wrong.

Victims of the Holocaust still numbered in the millions, and some people argue the Nazis would not have slaughtered as many if America had not intervened.

While it is a crime against humanity and it is a tragedy, America should not always be the country to shed blood or force democracy upon a nation that might not be able to handle it. It’s a sad truth, but it might still be the truth. So, let’s allow the United Nations to do what they were created to do and send other nations’ forces to restore peace to the region. Leave our boys out of it, for once.

Ted Hamilton is a senior magazine journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].