Sending Help to Sudan

Having just finished Samantha Power's stellar A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, it is gratifying to see that we may not be completely unable to do better:

After weeks of negotiations, the U.N. Security Council unanimously voted Thursday to send 10,700 peacekeepers to Sudan to monitor an accord ending a 21-year civil war between the government and southern rebels.

The Security Council hopes the move will not only create lasting peace in southern Sudan after the civil war but help end current violence in the country's western Darfur region, where the number of dead from a conflict between government-backed militias and rebels is now estimated at 180,000.

This is still long overdue, but compared to our reaction to Rwanda (where we actually pushed the UN to withdraw its peacekeeping contingent), this is a vast improvement. I highly recommend that anyone troubled by the litany of genocides in the last century (and the American lack of response) should read Power's Pulitzer-prize winning book, and begin educating yourself about the situation in Darfur.