Unfortunately for the people of Sudan, there’s just too much at stake in an election year to divert any collective energy from Bush-hating.

Of all of the places in the world that seem like appropriate benefactors of the collective affections and good-will of the liberal, bleeding hearts, the Sudan seems like the most likely candidate.  Yet our poster-bearing friends’ chants and blogs are strangely devoid of any reference to this greatest of present-day humanitarian crises.  What could be the reason for the deficient attention paid this particular massacre-in-progress?  Well, the answer is simple:  there is no Bush to blame for it.  

While the House and Senate both passed the Sudan Peace Act in October of 2002 and Mike DeWine, Republican Senator from Ohio, recently introduced the $70 Million dollar “International Disaster and Famine Assistance appropriations bill,” a sense of urgency from the activist foot soldiers of the liberal left is all but nonexistent…no doubt too occupied with Michael Moore’s Leni Riefenstahl impression-of-a-film.  

And what of the all too liberal media?  Sudan has certainly merited a story here and there, and especially with Colin Powell and Kofi Annan’s recent visit, such left-leaning publications as the New York Times have dedicated a miserable fraction of space to the Sudan story in comparison with the far-less atrocious Abu-Ghraib prisoner abuses.  But the Abu-Ghraib “situation” (as the President referred to it) has the advantage of a connection to the administration.  In an election year, apparently, one has to ration compassion for political expediency.

The demonstrators are not entirely inactive.  Just last week Christian Solidarity International and the Sudan Campaign Partners (who work with the democratic opposition within Sudan) staged the “Stop the Genocide and Free the Slaves” demonstration at the Sudanese embassy on June 29th, where former congressman Rev. Walter Fauntroy was arrested along with radio talk show host Joe Madison.  The rest of the droves of protesters who were so offended by the “atrocities” in Iraq and in Afghanistan, even those who protested President Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, were notably absent.  No bad street theater for this one.  Just silence where once there were cries of  “never again.”  

The compassion for humanity that many modern liberals claim to have a monopoly on is, apparently, reserved only for those they can portray as victims of the evil Bush.  In a time when the left is accusing the President of harming people for personal gain we see the left strangely unconcerned about considerably more people being harmed, presumably preoccupied with the all-important struggle for leftist POLITICAL gain.  Putting an end to this genocide should be THE issue and acting to stop it should be an unthinking bipartisan reflex.  It also merits as much, arguably much more, front page coverage than Abu Ghraib.  Unfortunately for the people of Sudan, there’s just too much at stake in an election year to divert any collective energy from Bush-hating.  I suppose we can tell them they just have the wrong people oppressing them.