JUST before Christmas, a dozen happy American families were ready to bring a group of newly adopted kids home from Cambodia - when the U.S. government stepped in and aborted the adoptions on spurious charges of slavery.

I heard about it because one of the parents caught in the blender is a colleague. But every American ought to care. For one thing, the war we're in is going to be showing us pictures of orphans on a daily basis and figuring out how to manage them is going to matter. But even more important, this story tells us that key people in the U.S. government think it's better for a child to die in Cambodia than be raised in Akron.

In parts of the Third World children, mostly female, are sold by their families to slave traders. Others are stolen or simply dumped as too expensive to feed. Most end up in brothels, mines or sweat shops. A few end up in orphanages, who then pass them on to people from the First World who are desperate for children.