AP Photo

It seems to take quite a lot for a spectacular state-failure catastrophe to attract the attention of the civilized world these days, what with U.S. President Barack Obama’s persistent and absurd reiterations of his administration’s fantasy that “the tide of war is receding” and everything. In the case of Mali, it took the better part of a year and the loss of two-thirds of the country to a grisly alliance of Tuareg slavers, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine, the “Defenders of the Faith.”