Nicholas Kristof

Nicholas Kristof came to Cornell today to talk about Sudan. It was a fairly impressive talk. What you would expect from someone who is a good speaker talking about a conflict killing hundreds of thousands of people in particularly horrible ways.

Listening to the people in the question and answer session I remembered I was in a room full of hippies. Since hippies typically have a view where the military can do no good I decided to ask the question: "The only examples I can think of where a genocide was interrupted were the end of World War 2, and the former Yugoslavia. In both of these cases there was a huge job for the military. Is there a similarly productive role for the military in this conflict?"

He gave a typically well thought out answer to the question. Our ground forces are pretty stretched, and we just invaded two other Muslim oil producing nations. To go in with ground forces would be a bad idea. However to put pressure on the government, and hopefully hinder their efforts a no fly zone over the country would be a good idea. Also the UN forces there should be strengthened to the point where they can be of some use.