AFRICA CALLING.

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 14-JUL-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

As President Bush ventures into Africa, a passage from the opening pages of V. S. Naipaul's novel "A Bend in the River" comes to mind. It's the moment when the narrator, Salim, after driving for days from the East African coast into the interior of the continent, recalls, with a hint of dread, the counsel of an old friend: "You can always get into those places. What is hard is to get out."

Bush turned to Africa in shoes heavy with the dust of Afghanistan and the sands of Iraq. He has no apparent exit strategy for either of those countries, which he got into, for better or for worse, with a spirit of avenging justice and a conviction that the national interest was at stake. His mission in Africa is different. It appears that he was drawn to the continent, which has figured only marginally in the Administration's strategic considerations (as an occasional battleground in the war on terror and...

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