The next civil war.

I have to interrupt your holiday celebrations to remind you of the crisis that is looming in South Sudan. (Yes America, there is actually a country called South Sudan)

We won't hear too much about it here because our government will not get involved in a civil war in a poor country that doesn't have anything (ahem ahem, oil)  to offer us. Not to mention the fact that they are just....well, Africans.

"But field, we have an African American president, surely he will pay attention to the terrible things unfolding in that part of the world."

Don't count on it. He is an American president. He will do nothing of substance in this part of the world. Certainly nothing that will really help the people of that country. There will be no talk of military intervention and arming the rebels, because, quite frankly, we just don't care.

Another all out civil and ethnic war is coming, and we are not doing anything to stop it.

Whatever happened to intervening in countries where there are mass atrocities for humanitarian reasons? Sadly, in South Sudan, women and children are particularly vulnerable.

"Women in the Sudan have suffered in a variety of ways. The loss of family members and homelands has been the common lot of women in all parts of Sudan. The suffering has been greatest in the south, where violent death, disease, and starvation have killed great numbers of women and children. The psychological trauma has been devastating for many. Of those who have survived many are physically disfigured as well as emotionally scarred.

Rape has been used as a weapon against women and girls as young as seven years old. Some rapes have been random acts; however, rape has often been used as a matter of policy to disgrace women, destroy families, and sever tribal ties. In Darfur in northwestern Sudan during the early twenty-first century, "rape camps" contributed to the goal of ethnic cleansing of the Black-Africans via racial dilution. This has been cited as one of the justifications for calling that conflict genocide.

Human rights organizations have verified that southern women and girls have been abducted, taken to the north, and sold into slavery. Some women have been forcibly converted to Islam and married off. Boys under the age of seven are taken to the north and put into Islamic schools. Older males are slain if captured. Southerners, however, have also impressed young males into their guerrilla forces. The abuses suffered by southern women have been caused by combatants on both sides of the war.

In the decades of the civil war, homes and fields have been destroyed, crops have been seized, and hundreds of thousands of southerners have been displaced. Because African women are small-plot gardeners and the sole providers of food for their families, in subsistence economies this has been a serious loss. Seed and cultivating implements have been taken or destroyed, so if the women and children manage to escape the devastation of an attack on their village, there is nothing left when they return and no way to reestablish their livelihood."

This is all sad, and it shouldn't be only celebrities like George Clooney trying to keep the conflict in Sudan on the front burner. 

"President Obama told Congress on Sunday he may take further military action to protect Americans in South Sudan.

In a letter to Congress, Obama said about 46 U.S. troops were deployed Saturday to help evacuate Americans. That’s in addition to another 45 troops sent to reinforce the U.S. Embassy in Juba.

Though he is on his annual vacation in Hawaii, Obama said in the letter that he’s monitoring the situation.

“I may take further action to support the security of U.S. citizens, personnel, and property, including our embassy, in South Sudan,” Obama wrote." [Source] 

Wow, 46 troops!

Of course Mr. President, we must only protect American "property and personnel" in Sudan. Because, the last time I checked, they don't have enough oil.