As all of the news services have reported, Charles Taylor did not show today up at the opening session of his trial for war crimes at the Hague. He was once an ally of the United States, and it was precisely at the time when--as the prosecutors charge--he was tyrannizing his country by mass murder, mass rape and mass mutilation of body and limb. And soul, too. Ryan Lizza told the story first--in The New Republic, as it happens--of how the Clinton administration coddled Taylor through the years of his most brutal rule. What should have been explosive was the role played by Jesse Jackson as maitre d' of African policy in this American betrayal of human rights. Also complicit in this deed was Susan Rice, barely 30 but Mme. Albright's protege and her assistant secretary for African affairs. The truth is that no one has ever really cared about the lives of Africans in Africa unless those lives are taken out by whites. No one has cared, not even African Americans like Jackson and Rice. Frankly--I have not a scintilla of evidence for this but I do have my instincts and my grasp of his corruptibility--I suspect that Jackson was let in on the diamond trade or some other smarmy commerce. You saw the panicked face of the other Democratic candidates on Sunday night when Joe Biden put to them the grim truth about saving Darfur from genocide. Mrs. Clinton looked like she had just met her ghost. Even my friend Barack Obama, with whom I talked about Darfur two weeks ago, resisted the simple truth: No American and allied forces in Darfur, no end to the killing, the raping, the pillaging. It's as simple as that, as direct as Biden said it was. In any case, Jackson's role in this ugliness--that is, the Liberian ugliness--has now been reported in Sunday's Globe in a detailed front-page article by Bryan Bender. You will be shocked. While something akin to genocide was taking place in Liberia and sexual slavery, as well as induced bondage to drugs, the US was supplying the government with aid and counsel. You saw this pictured in Edward Zwick's brilliant film Blood Diamond. Will anybody own up to these US-condoned atrocities, now confirmed by documents obtained by the Globe under the Freedom of Information Act? As for Jesse Jackson, he--with he usual ready big mouth--was not available for comment when Bender called.