Why Won't U.S. Act on Rwanda & Congo?

Observers of African affairs are accustomed to disappointments. But surely one of the bitterest of late has been the Obama administration's scandalous failure to address the situation in the mineral-rich, eastern border provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, for sixteen years, a conflict has dragged on that rivals or exceeds the Holocaust in lethality. Five to six million people have perished. (New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof credibly estimates the total at 6.9 million.) American policy toward the region, which is still essentially a reaction to the 1994 genocide in the Congo's neighbor, Rwanda, predates President Obama's arrival in the White House. Yet Obama could help staunch the continuing flow of blood in the region even now with a minimal commitment.