David Axe reports from Chad, where a U.N. mission to protect refugees and aid workers may actually be prolonging the conflict in neighboring Darfur:
Rebel fighters can charge into battle knowing their families are safe, well-fed, looked after by Western doctors, and guarded by a mixed brigade of French, Swedish, Polish and Irish troops called "EUFOR." And if they survive the fighting, the men can return to these safe havens to rest, eat, and, if their groups' ranks are depleted, to recruit and forcibly enlist new fighters, often children.
And, in a column from our last print issue, Mark Schmitt argues that, where liberals once sough to replicate conservative institutions, they are now the models conservatives crib from:
For liberals living in the conservative era, conservative history has been more than a story. It has been a template, the closest one available, for what it means to translate ideas into political change. How often have I heard, "We need our Grover Norquist"--someone who would organize the weekly meeting where everyone would get their marching orders? (There is such a meeting now; I'm told it's more chaotic than Norquist's.) Or, "We need a Heritage Foundation for our side"? The Democracy Alliance, a forum for liberal donors, had its origins in a PowerPoint version of the conservative story that urged donors to model their funding on the collaborative structures of the right. Call it the "I'll have what she's having" theory of change, after the famous deli scene in When Harry Met Sally--assuming that if you do the same things, you'll get comparable results.
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--The Editors
