Heart of Darkness

President Bush's inaugural speech was ambitious, and so it got a lot of clucking from conservatives who feared it meant a new era of extending ourselves beyond our power to overthrow tyrannical regimes. I don't join that criticism, but I think that the U.N. has become the world's number one sinkhole for money that should be put toward ending the genocides occurring in Darfur and in the Congo, where it was reported on the Oprah program, more than 4,000,000 people have been killed and roving bands of killers routinely rape innocent women, hold them as sex slaves and brutalize civilians.

Oprah's website is full of gossip stories that make Donna Hanover's latest New Love seem more important than the horrors going on around the world, but after having the video report by Lisa Ling, the show turned into a fundraising event for an NGO. What good does sending money to such an area do until the violence has been stopped? I kept wondering why nothing was being done to help these people defend themselves from these punks, but that question doesn't seem to have been asked. What would it hurt to make sure every home had some firepower and the skills to fend off the criminals?

I wonder how much it would cost to fund an international force of volunteer troops to be sent into areas such as this, under the directions of a coalition of democratic nations, to put an end to violence. Certainly what we've been paying to the U.N. might be a good start toward actually doing something.