More than 800, 000 people have fled Kosovo, a Serbian province where refugees say Yugoslav troops have conducted a campaign of terror and depopulation against civilians.
In 2006 an energetic Mr Fenty (at 35, the youngest mayor in the District's history) inherited a city on the mend after decades of depopulation and woeful governance.
If this bizarre scheme is enacted, we will soon hear again a proposal for an infinitely greater horror that extremists advocated a few years ago: Force depopulation of the Great Plains and let the area go back to its "natural" state.