The first two sentences of this excerpt show that the UN was then and remains still an utterly useless organization. On that front at least, nothing at all has changed.

On what grounds, exactly, does anyone believe Khartoum will not return to murdering Christians once it has polished off those pesky black Muslims?

'Engaged' in my book would mean doing something. I'm not aware Bush has done anything.

There have probably been 20 million preventable deaths in Africa since 1983. Maybe more.

The only reason Clinton acted against Serbia is because he was shamed after what happened in Rwanda. He knew his 'legacy' would be a disaster if nothing was done in Kosovo.

The UN is a death-enabling organization. But the US should tell Kofi that he will be kicked out of NY unless he makes a public address, stating that although the member nations will do nothing to help the people in Darfur, he would personally be supportive of military action to protect those who are defenseless. Anything short of that, and he should be exiled to Sudan.

Harry:

Secured an agreement for peace with the South, which is Christian and animist.

Uh-oh,

I've never seen spam in the comments before.

And the Sudanese showed how seriously they took that by lauching an extermination campaign in the west.

For someone who believes in evil, you sure are trusting.

Why doesn't President Bush, make a speech outlining the slaughter in grisly detail, commit so many troops and dollars to Sudan, and then specifically call upon France, Canada, Sweden, China, a few others and especially the Muslim world to commit and fund so many troops (give numbers)on an urgent basis? Then we can all sit back and watch the dissembling.

It would have been a great sideshow to the convention in Boston.

James: It's a common problem with Movable Type.

Harry:

They stopped religious killing in the South. The West is just a matter of race. We did the same thing here. Intra-Christian killing ended at Westphalia but Jim Crow lasted until the 1960s.

With such widespread reports of black oppression, including slavery, one wonders why Jesse Jackson has not paid visit.

The world should intervene, when possible, to protect human life.
However, such intervention shouldn't just mean dumping off a truckload of supplies or establishing a refugee camp or safe haven.
It should mean taking over a troubled region and reshaping it. For instance, breaking the Sudan into two or three parts, recognizing the rump regions as nations, and bombing the dominant parent nation into rubble if they refuse to quit pickin' on the calved nations.

Africa's a mess, anyhow, in need of a total makeover of national boundries, which should follow tribal lines, not colonial lines.

Temporary pause, Orrin. It is fatuous to suppose the Sudanese Arabs intend to adhere to their agreement.

Harry:

They're scared. Supposedly Clinton's attack on an aspirin factory served at least that purpose. The Islamic world has figured out that it's a religious war and the Christians are better armed.

If this really is a religious war, then where are the 50 million dead muslims?

Same place as the 50 million dead Nazis. That's not what it takes to defeat an ism.

Dresden begs to differ with you. So do Hiroshima and Nagasaki (not to mention Tokyo) - as you have noted many times. Of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred without war, but not without fighting, and not without the preparations for a major war. But the Russian leaders were not going to die for Marxism; can the same be said for the mullahs, imams, and other nutcases out there?

jim:

That's the point--we didn't have to kill terribly many of them before they tossed in the towel. Such ideologies derive much of their strength from a sense of inevitibility and invulnerability, merely declaring them to be toast--as Reagan did at Westminster--destabilizes them, while confronting them with a few defeats causes them to crumble. On the other hand, many, many Bolsheviks died at each others hands quite happily and they murdered tens of millions of their countrymen. Islamicism is nowhere near as disordered.

From my viewpoint, Islamicism is as disjointed as the loudest voice in the nearest mosque. If there were a Pope, we would know where to start fighting. But there isn't. The purge of the Wahabbi strain may take 20 years or more. And it has to include the madrassas.

Some people have short memories.

If merely killing a few Muslims would cause them to change their behavior, the Christians already did that in Sudan. It had no effect.

And Sudan changed its behavior--they're killing black Muslims now, not Christians.

I was talked about 1898.