i don't understand. you convincingly put forward the case for intervention and then conclude with: "by extending its remit to the internal politics of states, liberal intervention is becoming an enemy not a friend of peace". i fear grandstanding oratory is beginning to compromise your message - or maybe i've just missed the point

Nick, london,

Countries should not be involved in other countries troubles except thro' the United Nations. When I was in the Air Force early sixties, I was totally opposed to having to go out to be involved in the Malasia / Indonesia conflict I did not believe that is what I joined up for. Our money would be better spent at home to the benefit of ourselves.

Dave Madley, Poole, Dorset, England

Do British servicemen and women declare a willingness to fight for causes unrelated to the defence of Britain when they join up ?

Blewyn, Muscat, Oman

Qh come on why not have the courage to tell the story as it really is? What's happening in Sudan, Chad, etc is all about the scramble for the oil and uranium resources in the whole region. Stop playing the game and seek the truth!

John H G, Gibraltar, Gibraltar

Isn't it high time that Britain stopped 'intervening' in affairs that are nothing to do with the British? We 'intervened' all through the 19th century and got an Empire that the world has been down on us for ever since!! Enough!

Jane Coles, Ludlow, UK

Simon Jenkins, why do you cheapen an otherwise sadly accurate article by writing: "Yet still they are lectured on failed governance and corruption – from the EU of all hypocrites"?

The EU is not corrupt and to suggest otherwise is dishonest. There are corrupt people throughout the Union (Labour are doing quite well at the moment) but corruption is not accepted or tolerated as it is in third world countries: your remark is unworthy of a journalist of your calibre.

Peter Goddard, Epsom, England, EU

Well as successive governments have ignored ,underfunded ,and depleted our Armed Services how could we do anything in the world for moral reasons.So we all hang around hand wringing,shame on us.

Frances, Tunbridge Wells, UK

May I ask that Simon buys a map before writing ignorant comments such as above?

Sudan is vast and surrounded by other nations. Iraq and Iran could be accommodated within its borders. Just how could a Western force hope to invade and subdue such a huge area?

This is an African problem for Africa to sort out, just like Thugabe. The West does not even have a clear physical access path into Sudan. Bashing Britain, the EU and USA for not intervening just shows that the writer has no idea of what may be involved.

Roy Ellor, Salford, UK

I totally agree with this comment. It sadens my heart when I think about what the people (Men and Women/Children) are enduring in the region of Darfur. Our troops could really make a difference if we were there. Instead, we have to loose our lives daily in a battle that shouldnt have been fought. Its so hard to explain this tomy children. They ask theobvious questions that we all ask... How can this be right????

God bless the brave people of Darfur and our brave troops under such a confused government.

Tira, Gaithersburg, MD

Western governments are part of current African crisis; they disregard international treaties when they feel and complain when their interest is on the line; With Iraq in their mind, most western government are now trying to use proxy war with Africa; the first but not the last, was American proxy war in Somalia, in which Ethiopian troops conducted and carried out with American money and hardware; the result was that more bloodshed and last of countless of Ethiopian troops and whatever the objectives was, its clear that nothing has been achieved upto now a year later and still war is ongoing matter. The Human suffering is much greater than Darfur, but because of political agenda media blackout is imposed.

Jowit warat, Leeds, UK

Once again the West shows its impotence and indecisiveness on another crisis. Dont expect the USA to do anything. Why should we. We ridded the world of one of the worlds most brutal and murderous dictators and what do we get for it. Hundreds of thousands marching in the streets denouncing us. But of course they were not living under the boot of Saddam so what did they care. The Joe McTs of the world represent the view of the world now. Denounce those who dare do something as war criminals and smugly look the other way on these atrocities. But where is the UN? At the resort town of Bali of course cooking up the latest scheme of soaking the West of money to fund the war on what? Global Warming. No wonder the West is laughed at.

Cynicalcitizen, Cburg, USA

Not that I'm particularly a Brown fan myself, but if Jose Barroso patronises Gordon Brown for not attending the Lisbon summit, as Simon Jenkins thinks, he should seriously ask himself who has more furthered the anti-mugabe stance - himself or Brown?
Barroso, characteristically, created a 'nice moment' when at the end of the summit he stated that the African leaders should ( paraphrased) 'go away and absorb the problem...' ( of Zimbabwe.)
Was this I wonder what CaptainSmith said when he heard that theTitanic had hit an iceberg?
No, Barroso did nothing to alleviate worries about Zimbabwe, much less Darfur.

Bill Roby, Valença, Portugal

Removing the Sudanese central government is the worst idea I've ever heard. Intervening in Darfur to enforce a ceasefire would probably be good, but expect these troops to have to stay there for decades and Darfur to eventually have to secede. The Arabised political elite in Khartoum is uniformly condescending towards their frontier peoples - however this Khartoum regime cannot be removed, if you think Darfur is bad now, remove the central government and watch Sudan vaporise as hundreds of tribes fight each other. There is no interventionist fix in Sudan, much better to pin hopes on international pressure (which China needs to join) and negotiation.

Chris Grala, Auckland, New Zealand

The truth is that aside from a few activist celebs the western world doesn't give a damn about "sub-saharan" natives.

mike, todos santos, mexico

Off you go then. There are no soldiers left.

Brian Gilbert, HAMPTON, Middx

Mr Jenkins, you are wrong in assuming that "the West" always HAS to do something. Do nothing, please. Because whatever you DO do, it turns out a horrible mess, a zillion times worse than it ever was. Just look at former Yugoslavia, at Kosovo, at Iraq: if you had stayed away, the existing poblems would have been already solved by themselves, with less deaths and destruction. What's more, in most cases there would BE no problems in the first place. Because it is precisely "the West" that's causing them, due to its various global interests. So please, stay away.

Robert Eric, Belgrade,

Your article is somewhat sterile because it is unsupported by specific facts. If there is a problem in Darfur, what caused it? How is it that after years of adequate coexistence a group of people suddenly becomes antagonistic? There must be an answer to this question and that will surely dictate the course, if any, that the United Nations takes with regard to a country in which internal strife has arisen. There is the further point that if countries such as Britain and the US have neither seen this problem coming nor subsequently been able to produce any remedial response, why should they be any better disposed to solve the problem by force? If the problem is complex all forceful intervention will do is exacerbate the matter. It wont solve it, it will complicate it, and it will add the further problem of subsequently removing the forces from the country. Tony Blair may have been Prime Minister, but that has committed him to positions that are biased and less than ideal, and I submit that he is wrong in his espousal of military intervention.

Henry Percy, London, UK

Darfur 300,000 dead , Iraq 2 to 5 million under Saddam.

Mark Savill, Sheffield, UK

Simon, you were among the first to blame Blair for not fully following the UN route over Iraq (although you must surely concede that he did try). Now you criticise Brown for not taking unilateral or coalition action against Sudan. And you fail to confront the reality that Afghanistan under the Taleban was a strategic threat to Britain, Europe and the USA and therefore action had to be taken. The Chicago speech was made in the idealistic period before that threat manifested itself in 2001.

Benji, London, UK

When it comes down to positive action it is only the USA that has balls and also puts its money where its mouth is. Our european governments are just good at empty talk, the Russians are amoral and the Chinese are immoral.
Good luck to Darfur and Chad. Unfortunately, european governments are committing all their spare cash and political capital to funding palestine and kosovo.

chaplain, canterbury,

Hooray, I work in the Admin office of one of the many units that have been tortured by the JPA fiasco. This debacle was always on the cards. Implementation should have been delayed, when it was clear, from similarly disastrous RAF and Navy transition that legacy and JPA systems were not ready to merge.

The Army has been rescued by manual cash systems and there are personnel in my unit who have not been paid properly since Jan 2007. Reservist Bounty payments were a shambles and we have cases of personnel having been paid 2 salaries per month.

The customer services system is woeful, with queries being closed arbitrarily, unresolved and dealt with by poorly trained staff with little or no understanding of the military salary.

I would dare to suggest that the Times figures are a sanitised version of the real extent of the problem.

Terry, LONDON,

Simon Jenkins tells it as it is again! Blair's 'liberal interventionism' (whatever does that ridiculous phrase mean?)was ill-conceived like all his half baked ,half understood ,grandstanding iinterventions on the World Stage. Blair was only there for the show, for the legacy,for the posturing -not for the quiet and deliberate purpose of making a real differnce in these difficult areas.. On Iraq Blair ignored the FO and all his advisers because God told him he was 'right' to attack Iraq. In so doing he not only thew away any moral authority he might have had, but also threw away the ability to intervene positivety elsewhere by overstretching and nearly breaking the armed forces. Of course we should have acted in Darfor and Zimbabwe -in spite of the inevitable Colonialist/Racist jibes from African states, happy to sit back and watch the carnage and disorder -at least it was African carnage and disorder! All too late now and like every other Nulabour policy,,it has ended in failure.

David, Uzes, France

at the moment brown can do no right, so in context his best option was to stay a home,

michael joseph heavey, cahersiveen>adams towns, madness

Because of the ties with the American CIA and Sudan, and because of an unwillingness to confront China who recieves the majority of thier Oil from Sudan, No one will fight this attrocity until it is too late and there are too many lost and we are yet again dragged into a conflict that could have been taken care of with a lot less loss of life

Shannon, LaGrande/ Oregon, USA

Simon, kindly explain the "liberal" part of killing tens of thousands of innocent women and children in Iraq?

Blair is a war criminal and should be treated as such.

Joe McT, BlairsFantasyIsland,

Liberal interventionism translated: Something to get Uncle Sam to do with his armed forces on his dime!

MARK KLEIN, M.D., OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA