Rwanda, is she referring to the Clinton administrations refusal to call it genocide? Or is she referring to the Clinton administration send blow up rafts so they could pull thousands of dead bodies out of the water or is she talking about pulling UN peace keepers out so they could finish off the job.
The Question of Genocide The Clinton Administration and Rwanda
Holly J. Burkhalter
The Rwandan genocide, which claimed the lives of upward of a million people in a three-and-a-half-month period beginning in April 1994, will be remembered as one of the greatest human rights disasters of our time. However, the Clinton administration, facing what was the clearest case of genocide in 50 years, responded by downplaying the crisis diplomatically and impeding effective intervention by U.N. forces to stop the killing. The reasons for its stance include a lack of leadership within the Clinton ad- ministration’s foreign policy bureaucracy; its refusal to deal with the crisis as the human rights disaster it demonstrably was; Ameri- can distrust of peacekeeping in Africa fol- lowing the loss of American servicemen in Somalia last year; bureaucratic inertia at the United Nations ; and a general U.S. withdrawal from engagement in countries for which there is no strong domestic constituency.
U.S. policy throughout the Rwandan genocide can best be understood by looking at the five phases of the crisis. Interestingly, the Clinton administration responded with vigor and creativity to the fifth phase, the mass flight of Rwandans to neighboring countries. Several thousand U.S. soldiers were deployed in Zaire and Rwanda itself in late July to break the back of a massive cholera epidemic and to provide food, water, medicine, and shelter to refugees and dis- placed people. Top Clinton officials visited the refugee camps, and humanitarian issues there were a visible priority for the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon.
This vigorous approach during the refu- gee p...
Immaculee Illibagiza is a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Her entire family was killed, but she survived because a local pastor harbored nine women for three months in a 3 foot by 4 foot bathroom. Because they could have been found out at any moment, they basically could not talk, or move, for those three months. “”For example, when I remember what went on in Rwanda, I think a call - just a telephone call - from the White House, would have stopped the genocide in a second. If the president or somebody had just called the country, and called the people who were doing it - because they were saying it on radio, it was not something they were hiding - if he had called, with a phone call and told them “Stop it, otherwise we are going to punish you” they would have been scared. They would have stopped it. They did not even need arms, or soldiers to come stop it. They would have stopped the radio, and the genocide would have stopped in a second.
She may be right. All the President needs to say is “Those of you who are doing this will be hunted down and prosecuted. It may take us a year to get a force over there that can stop you, but rest assured, we will hunt you down no matter how long it takes. The U.N. Will convene a special tribunal to prosecute these crimes, and we will get you.””
-— Clinton may have been able to save 400,000 lives with a phone call. Just the threat of future assured punishment might have stopped the whole thing. And also interesting was the comment that “they would have stopped the radio” - this I take to mean that instructions or incitement given over the radio was instrumental to keeping the hatred flowing. And a radio station is something that could have been taken out with a single cruise missile.