Free Republic

The vast, mutilated African state of Congo is enjoying a ceasefire but butchery and theft continue apace while the West remains inactive reports Adrian Blomfield in Aru Nine-year-old Bahati lies on the ground whimpering, a urine stain slowly darkening the front of his baggy camouflage trousers. Two boys, perhaps three or four years older and also dressed in military uniform, stand over his body clutching bamboo canes in their hands. A boy soldier in the eastern Congo They look across at "General Jerome", a former traffic warden who now heads the Armed Forces of Congolese Patriots, or FAPC, one of...

'The soldiers had red eyes, and they were singing and dancing. They slaughtered the priest, cut him to pieces, removed his heart and liver and cooked them. The rest of the group had to pay money or eat the human flesh to be allowed to leave. Another four men, three women and three children were killed.' Among the dead was a pregnant woman who was gutted. In Congo for the past 50 years tales of cannibalism have been apocryphal. Today they are a norm - what better way to sow terror into the hearts of your enemies than to instil...

There's a lot of debate these days about the Congo, Liberia, and what the USA should do. What if the answer is "nothing"? How do we make choices like that? This 5-way discussion among liberals and conservatives addresses some of these issues, providing solid background on the situations and history at play in The Congo & Liberia, the limits on foreign intervention, and the USA's capacity to intervene. We can't be everywhere. As Kaplan notes, we need to be in some of these places. How do we think about those choices? Sometimes, too, the depressing answer to how much we...