I’m in Africa, and from this vantage point one can — and I think should — expand the ongoing critique of the West beyond the Middle East. For here, more people are dying every day than the sum total of Iraqis, Iranians, Lebanese, and Israelis in a month. They are dying at the hands of marauders, of tyrants who starve them to death and then beg the West to provide money and food to the regimes who caused the artificial famines in the first place. And they are dying of disease, of course, the biggest of all the killers. The latest misery is the disaster waiting to happen in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the former Zaire, where an election has taken place, to the manifest satisfaction of scores of distinguished observers. The results are not yet in, but the various parties are maneuvering to cause trouble for whatever government emerges. And so far, at least, it is hard to see a clear policy from any Western country (one would hope, forlornly, that the French and the Belgians would be actively engaged, but they do not seem to be, at least from the snail level I am at). And yet big disturbances in the DRC could produce an enormous wave of refugees that would overwhelm neighboring countries…it is sad, not least because of the usual lack of vision in the West, but because there are so many wonderful people here, of all skin colors, working hard to save lives and create wealth, in this magical place that, amidst so much suffering, still offers a beauty and tranquility that cannot be matched anywhere in our world.