Militias in Congo Tied to Government and Rwanda

Congo Unrest Disrupts Critical Mine Reforms

This is one of the saddest stories I have ever read. The country has been a disaster since Mobutu Sese Seko, who was the US's darling: his anti-communism kept the Soviets out. Yet his corruption was flagrant, massive, and unchecked.

As rebel fighting in eastern Congo threatens to escalate into a regional conflict, government officials in Kinshasa have put on hold important decisions affecting the mining industry, a delay that likely pushes back international investment plans and undercuts the country's efforts to rebuild its shattered economy.

International companies have scrambled to secure mining rights in Congo, which has vast reserves of cobalt, copper, tin and diamonds. But the country has been racked by years of civil war and cross-border fighting. Elections in 2006, the country's first in 40 years, appeared to ease some of the instability.

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Refugees Struggle in Congo

It has vast resources, but has been racked with misery since the days of Belgian colonialism.

Congo needs the additional money. The country's central bank last week trimmed its annual growth forecast for next year to less than 10% from about 11%, citing waning demand for Congo's metals and unplanned violence-related spending. Craig Andrews, a World Bank analyst, said he would be surprised if growth topped 6% next year.

Cambodia's Killing Fields

One of the sorriest chapters of modern human history were the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Awful enough that 2 million people were murdered in a country as small as Cambodia, the double tragedy was that merely a half century after the Nazis the Khmer Rouge showed that genocide coul dindeed happen again. Not many years later Rwanda proved it again.

Dith Pran was the Cambodian man whose reporting, along with Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times, became the basis for the movie The Killing Fields. I remember seeing it nd being emotionally decimated by the tragedy and the evil.

[Schanberg and Dith] were in Cambodia in 1975 to report the fall of Phnom Penh to Khmer forces. Mr Dith was not allowed to leave, and had to endure four years of torture and starvation before escaping to Thailand.

Imaginary enemies

Maybe the way to get snipers off the center of discussion is to attack the Reverend. Spin, Senator, spin.

Roger Cohen: Imaginary snipers, real challenges
International Herald Tribune - 3 hours ago
By Roger Cohen Those of us, like myself, who first went to Bosnia at the start of the war in 1992 and then, in 1994 and 1995, endured Bill Clinton's circumlocutions as we sat in an encircled Sarajevo watching pregnant women getting blown away by ...
Video: Video Belies Clinton's Bosnia StatementsAssociatedPress

Roger Cohen has some tough words for the Clintons. Both are in for raps on the knuckles and upbraiding for their temerity and obfuscation.

Here's some news for Hillary Clinton: The Bosnian war was over in 1996. Those of us, like myself, who first went to Bosnia at the start of the war in 1992 and then, in 1994 and 1995, endured Bill Clinton's circumlocutions as we sat in an encircled Sarajevo watching pregnant women getting blown away by shelling from Serbian gunners, know that. Only after the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, three years after the initial Serbian genocide of 1992 against that population (and one year after a genocide on his watch in Rwanda), did the gelatinous Clinton develop some backbone. NATO bombed, Richard Holbrooke did his brilliant work at Dayton in November 1995, and the guns fell silent in Bosnia.

First, the facts from someone who was on the ground where the snipers Senator Clinton misspoke about having to dodge. Then opinions about things, including gelatinous Bubba's circumlocutions, and her wife's, the Senator's misstatements about the war.

It was over, although she recently recalled "landing under sniper fire." It was over when "we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base." Oh, please.

This is, as Mr. Cohen states, a significant issue: Hillary Clinton's transference is intriguing: Suffering Sarajevans ran from snipers during the war her husband let fester. Invented danger, supposed to showcase bravery, may instead betray guilt. But I'm not going to psychoanalyze the Clintons. I don't have the space to plumb such unquenchable ambition. Few do. Anyway, she now says she "misspoke" about Tuzla. End of story, you might say. But I'd say it's the beginning of another, more important one.

I agree; I say the Senator is lying. Mr. Cohen's entire article is magnificent, insightful, informative.
Clinton made up Bosnian sniper fire in an attempt to show that she's tougher than Barack Obama; that she's a hardened, seasoned, putative commander-in-chief ready to respond to crisis when the "red phone" of her fear-mongering ad rings. John McCain's own recent "misspeaking" about Iran, placing (Sunni) Al Qaeda in (Shiite) Iran, also smacked of muscle-flexing: He wanted to signal toughness to the mullahs in Tehran, where Obama has suggested he'd seek dialogue. But what the United States, and those that look to it, need now is not more braggadocio from the White House. We've had a seven-year dose. That's enough. What's needed, rather, is some new, creative thinking about a changed world in which authoritarianism is enjoying a renaissance and America and its allies need to work together to spread peace, prosperity, freedom, equity, security and, yes, democracy. U.S. hard power has not worked. The Iraq invasion was bungled. European soft power is insufficient.

He quotes Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund in an important recent essay called "Trans-Atlantic Power Failures," a "European Union with 27 member states and a total of 1.8 million men and women under arms" is incapable of pacifying little Kosovo ("one quarter the size of Switzerland") on its own.

NATO, quoting Ms. Stelzenmüller, Mr. Cohen states has to find "the right mix of idealism and realism," and a new cohesion, if one-pipeline Russia and one-party, Tibet-tormenting China are not to prosper with authoritarianism-for-export.

Foreign policy debate in this election campaign has been paltry. I'd like to hear something about GWOT - the "Global War on Terror" - the heart of U.S. national security strategy. It amounts to war without end because "terror" is a tactic and tactics don't surrender. GWOT should be abandoned: It's externally divisive and internally treacherous. Al Qaeda can be beaten sans GWOT.

Obama, in his speech on race, did important things. He confronted reality, thought big, probed division, sketched convergence. He took Americans and many people beyond U.S. shores to a different mental place. Imagine that capacity applied to GWOT, Iran, Russia, China and Israel-Palestine.

If you don't like the sound of that, there's always seasoned swagger of the kind that runs from imaginary snipers.