Don't bow to the 'Muslim street'

Americans are frequently told that the Iraq war has "inflamed the Muslim world." Just a few months after the conflict began, Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, used this exact phrase to describe the war's effect on global Muslim opinion. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the continued occupation of Iraq has led to "an increase in anti-Americanism in the Muslim world." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert complains about the "bitter anger that [the Iraq war] has provoked among Muslims around the world." And on and on it goes.

Indeed, it is this consequence of the Iraq war -- negative public opinion among Muslims -- that its critics believe to be the most devastating for America's global standing. The major lesson that many have taken from our Iraq experience is that we should place much greater stock in worldwide public opinion -- particularly Muslim opinion -- when deciding foreign policy.

Yet there could not be worse criteria on which to determine our foreign policy. This is starkly illustrated by the controversy about how to help stop the genocide in Darfur.

On Jan. 1, a 26,000-man United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force will deploy in Darfur -- with the approval of the Sudanese government -- to protect civilians from the nearly 5-year-old genocide that already has claimed upward of 200,000 lives.

The Darfur peacekeeping operation, known as UNAMID, is not terribly controversial. It will be almost entirely made up of African troops, commanded by a Nigerian who will report to a Congolese diplomat, with but a handful of European engineers and support staff.

It's hard to find a less-convincing example of imperialism than the ragtag African soldiers on this mission. UNAMID is the most innocuous of proposals, broadly supported by all the major U.S. presidential candidates, human rights activists and international bureaucrats. It pales in comparison to the NATO mission to protect Kosovar Albanians, which entailed bombing the Serbian nationalist regime of Slobodan Milosevic. UNAMID is the antithesis of the "reckless unilateralism" of which Bush administration critics frequently complain.