We aren't the world.

THE BEST WAY TO experience the charity mega-hit "We are the World" is by means of the video, on which you can actually watch the collection of 45 pop stars, ranging from the hot (Bruce Springsteen) to the dead (Bob Dylan) to the seemingly eternal (Ray Charles), shaking and singing for the relief of Ethiopia. Musically, it's a good tune, astonishingly good for a committee effort; and morally, it is better that the millions of dollars be raised with the intention of feeding the starving than of paying for the next few cocaine deals.

Intellectually, though, the musical effort leaves some things to be desired. The last wave of concern for African misery, ten years ago, was stimulated by the grinding Sahel drought. That drought was not an act of God. It was caused, in large part, by overgrazing; which occurred because the normals had increased the size of their herds; which became possible because the local governments, acting on the advice of Western "experts," had dotted the landscape with wells (which also, incidentally, lowered the water table). The suffering, in other words, was caused by misguided efforts to help. Since 20 per cent of the profits of "We Are the World" is supposed to go for "long-term development," the Sahel experience is not academic.

Or it would not be academic if the Marxist government of Ehtiopia were genuinely interested in ending the famine--which it is not. Most of the dying are "rebels," and Addis Ababa is content to take food for its own hungry, and let the rest eat sand. Relief organizations have been trying, with difficulty, to get around the problem: by feeding refugees in the Sudan; by going into rebel areas illegally. But you won't learn this from "We Are the World." Men eat. They also think; sometimes their thoughts lead them to cruelties not dreamt of in Bruce Springsteen's philosophy. We aren't the world, and not all the world is like us.