Here's a military action I can get behind.

Thousands continue to die in Darfur. Wes Clark wants us to go in.

After a series of UN Security Council resolutions on Darfur and a donors conference to boost the African Union Mission there, you could be forgiven for thinking the international community has responded adequately to the crisis. Sadly, this is far from the case. The international community urgently needs to take bold new action.

The truth is, civilians are still targeted in Darfur. The pro-government Janjaweed militias still remain unchecked. Humanitarian access is still restricted along key transit routes and in areas where millions of displaced Sudanese have gathered. Women and girls are still being raped as they leave their camps to collect firewood and forage for food. It's a tragedy...

The UN Security Council, in consultation with the AU, should request and authorize NATO to deploy a multinational "bridging force" to bring the combined force level in Darfur immediately up to 12,000 to 15,000 troops while the African Union prepares and deploys its own forces.

This is not an easy recommendation to make for Darfur, where all multinational organizations have been at pains to keep non-African troops out of Sudan. But the notion that the atrocities in Darfur are solely African problems requiring exclusively African solutions has to be reconsidered. These ongoing offenses are crimes against all humanity. They demand an international response that gives human life priority over diplomatic sensitivities.

Working together, NATO and the AU can save the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. They can demonstrate to outlaw regimes like the government of Sudan that the international community will not tolerate crimes against humanity.

And we must do this now.

We have a moral responsibility to help stop the killing in Darfur. We can't hide behind the falsehood of "we don't know what's happening on the ground" because we've known for some time. We've even called it a genocide, almost a year ago. Clinton dropped the ball in Rwanda, and I don't want to see some story of hundreds of thousands being slaughtered in Africa popping up in my Yahoo Inbox like clockwork every five or ten years. It's not enough that this country does not find Africa strategically significant; I find humanity significant. I find the country that held bin Laden throughout the 1990s significant. I find stopping Islamic despotism and the murder of African Christians significant. Our hands are only tied if we want them to be.

Wes Clark is absolutely right. I think recent events can stop this nonsense of classifying Democrats and Republicans as antiwar and pro-war. Democrats that I respect (not necessarily those of the DLC establishment "Bush is wrong but let's stay the course" variety) believe in justified war to protect our interests and save human lives. Iraq is doing neither; Darfur would do both.