[Advertisement] "A Coalition of the Caring Can Save a Million Lives: President Bush, Why Won't You Lead It?" New York Times, 2 September, p. A19.

"In Western Sudan, Fear and Despair Are the Ever-Growing Enemy," by Somini Sengupta, New York Times, 2 September, p. A1.

The United Nations is threatening Sudan withóGod forbidó"economic sanctions"! Holy cow! That should stop the bloodshed overnight! Just like ten years of sanctions stopped Saddam's bloody rule . . ..

Where was the same "coalition of the caring" when 50,000 old people and children under the age of 5 died each year in Iraq over the course of the 1990s thanks to the economic sanctions levied by the UN? Twelve years of that gets you about 600,000 premature deaths. And that's only those who died because of the West's diddling on the subject. Let's not forget all the people Saddam killed in the years after Desert Storm and before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

So what's so sacred now about Sudan that separates it from Iraq? Bush decides to end that slow-mo carnage and finally bring down Saddam, and for that he's vilified as some latter-day Hitler by the Left, which now seems more than willing to send troops into the Sudan. Is this coalition somehow under the impression that no U.S. lives would be lost in that long-term effort at disarming those blood-thirsty militias and keeping the peace? Is anyone under the illusion that this would not also quickly get cast as the imperial U.S. taking on Islam?

I'm so tired of this picking and choosing approach to international security. I think we should have done Iraq and I think we should be doing Sudan. The Left and Right can't fight over these individual choices tooth and nail and then wonder why so many jobs get left half-done or not done at all.