THE COMMONS

In the September issue, Anne Applebaum documented the anarchy and greed of Sudan's devastating civil war.

- 

Behind the Cover: In this month's cover story, "The Most Powerful Man in Science" (p. 34), Michael Scherer profiles Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has broken with his family and his former political party, and has attacked the scientific establishment. For this month's cover image, the photographer Elinor Carucciknown for her intimate explorations of family and identity captured Kennedy in his HHS office.

Kennedy suggested that she shoot a portrait with him holding his rosary. -Bifen Xu, Senior Photo Editor.

I have studied Sudan all of my adult life. I lived there in 1980 and wrote my doctoral dissertation on Sudanese foreign policy.

It's a country, I learned, that breaks the heart of anyone who loves it.

In the years since, I have not found a single American article or book on Sudan that did not get some detail wrong.

But Anne Applebaum's "This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like," deeply depressing though it is, gets everything right. It even conveys, somehow, the feeling of Sudan.

I had thought that I should write something about the utter depravity of the current civil war, but now I don't have to. The absence of any coverage was horrifying. The scale of the tragedy in Sudan has to be described before anyone will try to do anything about it.

Sally Ann Baynard Alexandria, Va.

In "This Is What the End of the Liberal World Order Looks Like," Anne Applebaum writes that "Sudan is a good place to fight." But we should also remember that Sudan is a good place to wage peace.