The Times bleeds for Darfur, every fortnight or so.  And now it is bleeding  for South Sudan which is under attack from another  group of armed Arabs, the Misseriya, sort of cousins of the janjaweed.

Khartoum is the proximate culprit. But, frankly, the United Nations is the  underlying enabler. It purports to be able and willing to stop genocide in  Darfur and what will probably turn out to be a genocide in the south. If  only...Yes, it is always "if only."  If only the there were peacekeepers  and more -- let's be frank -- non-African peacekeepers.  If only China would  help. The Times instructs the "major players -- including Europe and Sudan's Arab allies...[to] make clear that Khartoum will pay a stiff price if it attacks the South." This is crap: no one will pay any price.

Somehow, the Times manages to put the biggest blame on -- guess who! -- George  Bush.  "President Bush -- who has done a huge amount of hand-wringing about
Sudan and Darfur -- should have been pressing Khartoum to keep" its previous commitments, blah, blah, blah.  Why did the Times believe that Khartoum any intention of meeting these obligations?

Of course, knowing that its editorial is itself a sign of failure, the Times urges that, "The United States and others also need a fallback plan..."  The Times has never come out for American and allied intervention in Sudan, and this hesitance is mostly designed not to offend the flotsam and jetsam states of Africa which are incapable of keeping peace at home and really indifferent to peace among their neighbors.

Still, hundreds of black Africans are dying every day -- sometimes thousands -- and someone should stop this continuous shedding of blood. No one can do it except the United States with its allies: Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Holland, Denmark. It would not take much. And it would be reasonably easy to get John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to agree on at least this minimum act for life.