If Bush doesn't say it, does that mean it's not real?

There's that often repeated, never probing question, "If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around, does it still make a sound?"

How about a 21st century take: "If a genocide is occuring in Africa, and no one pays any attention to it, do the bodies still rot?" Decidedly more depressing, but certainly probing.

As posted on Sudan: The Passion of the Present (a fantastic blog on the Sudan situation), President Bush did not mention Sudan (or Africa, specifically, for that matter) in his State of the Union last night. There was a brief mention of "genocide," though it's pretty hard to qualify that without identifying where genocide is occurring. There was also a one-second mention of Zimbabwe, in the context of it being a country with an evil dictator.

Governor Tim Kaine, who gave the Democrats rebuttal, didn't even go that far. The closest he came to "Africa" was "Iraq."

I don't understand. We're talking about the most critical humanitarian problem facing the world right now, and the world's superpower doesn't mention it in 58 minutes of political pulp. This, despite pressure from groups like Human Rights Watch urging the U.S. to use its Security Council presidency in February to urgently seek a transition of the African Union force in Darfur to a United Nations mission with a strong mandate to protect civilians. (note: Oh, yeah, by the way, the U.S. becomes the new president of the U.N. security council, which should please all of the John Bolton fans.) The U.S. owed it to the world to mention Sudan last night. As Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice should have made this happen.

You can read Human Rights Watch's letter to President Bush here.

As Governor Kaine said about 400 times in his ten minutes, "There is a better way." But you can bet that it doesn't involve the public relations turned politics that we all watched last night.