Dire Straits in Congo

Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson arrives in Congo and, trying to calculate the number of deaths over the past decade, writes, "We know that the events are approaching a holocaust scale when the margin of error is measured in millions." Looking forward, he writes that "Security in eastern Congo is the prerequisite for political progress." He sees one solution: "a capable, hard-hitting European military force, supported by the United States, which would stabilize the situation, give the [U.N.] peacekeeping force some breathing room and put a limit on [rebel leader] Nkunda's ambitions." Sadly, such a step seems "unlikely." Britain and Germany in particular have opposed the deployment of such a force.