Use people power against genocide

Two things were on my mind as I watched Hotel Rwanda, the stunning depiction of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi extermination that was the fastest genocide in the history of the world.

The first was Hollywood, and how I owed it an apology for the many times I have railed against its degeneracy.

A film this powerful shames the world out of its indifference to the slaughter of helpless humans and demonstrates the potential of movies to reach the places photos and words cannot.

The second was Bill Clinton, the great 60's liberal romantic, who dreamed of becoming president in order to make the world a better place.

How would he deal with his shame? The movie is more damaging to his reputation than if Monica Lewinsky had equipped herself with a handycam.

Though Clinton is never mentioned explicitly in the movie, he is the ghost that haunts the entire story, the most powerful man on earth, who not only refused to intervene to save 800,000 people from being hacked to death but declined to even convene his cabinet to discuss the crisis.

How would the great liberal hope now face his Nobel-prize winning friend Toni Morrison, who called him "America's first black President"?

Would he still be invited by Oprah Winfrey to talk about his $12-million autobiography once she focused on the fact that Clinton had even refused to provide jamming aircraft to block the Hutu Power radio transmissions that orchestrated the massacres?

The $8,500-per-hour cost to the United States was determined by the president's administration be too exorbitant, even though, since 10,000 Rwandans were being killed each day, the cost came to $20 per life.

And would Bill Clinton still be a hero to a new generation of American youth once they found out that eight African nations, fed up with American inaction to stop the butchery, agreed to send in their own intervention force?

All they asked from the US was the use of 50 armored personnel carriers, but the Clinton administration refused to loan them and instead demanded $15 million, leaving the carriers on a runway in Germany while the UN scrambled to find the money.

While all this happened, an average of 334 poor black Africans were dying every hour.

THE RWANDAN genocide was unique in the annals of modern genocide insofar as the world had absolutely no excuse not to intervene.

The Ottoman Turks' slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians took place during the fog of the First World War. The same was true of the Holocaust of six million European Jews, which gave Franklin Roosevelt the excuse that defeating the Germans was the best way to stop the carnage.

The Khmer Rouge's extermination of one third of Cambodia's seven million citizens was done in a country that was utterly sealed off from the rest of the world, thus granting the Western powers plausible deniability as to its occurrence.

But with the Rwandan genocide, UN commander General Romeo Dallaire of Canada, one of the few true heroes of this otherwise cowardly tale, informed the world of both the Hutu preparations for mass murder and every development once the genocide was in full swing.

The Clinton administration's response constitutes one of the greatest abominations of American history.

Not only did the United States refuse to intervene, but, to quote The New York Times, "it also used its considerable power to discourage other Western powers from intervening."

The Clinton administration robbed Dallaire of any ability to protect the unarmed men, women, and children by demanding a total withdrawal of all 2,500 UN peacekeepers, only later allowing a skeletal force of 270 because of the strong pressure of African nations.

The administration's insistence that the UN be withdrawn was taken as a clear signal by the Hutu Power militias that the West cared nothing for poor African lives.

From that time on the fate of the Tutsis was sealed, and the bodies of hundreds of thousands of children, with their parents', littered Rwanda's rivers and hills.

The Clinton administration's repellant response only got worse, with the State Department then prohibiting use of the word "genocide," because that would have obligated the US to intervene.

To be fair, I should add that Clinton did go to Rwanda in 1998 to apologize – though only for three-and-a-half hours, his plane not even shutting down its engines while he spoke.

DECEMBER 9, 2004 was the 56th anniversary of the approval of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations General Assembly.

But with another genocide taking place in Sudan and the UN refusing to even pass a resolution condemning it, it is clear the world is still not ready to prevent entire groups being exterminated.

It is also clear that no country, not even the United States, can be trusted to prevent genocide.

Even President Bush, the greatest champion of democracy since Winston Churchill, has thus far done too little to help the wretched people of Darfur, where about 100,000 have already died.

I believe that rather than merely blame world leaders for being indifferent to genocide, decent people everywhere must take it upon themselves to coerce their governments into action whenever a genocide occurs.

There should be a mass strike, along with other acts of civil disobedience, for two days of every month until the great democracies take action to stop whole groups being exterminated.

Surely if enough people began to act someone with global influence will emerge to inspire and orchestrate the campaign. We could shut down whole countries twice a month until those governments act.

Let's begin with the Sudan, whom the US and other responsible governments have already labeled guilty of a genocide.

Let us strike until the Western democracies send troops into the Sudan to stop the Janjaweed militias, or carry out air strikes against the Sudanese government that is arming them.

=== Well, as a conservative Jew, I like to grab any opportunity possible to show others there are actually non-liberal Jews like myself out there (although I don't think many!).

lol, cheers ...

The U.S. did actually address Rwanda. We termed it a "civil conflict into which we could not intervene" and we sent some APCs over there which ended up sitting on a runway in Uganda as we dickered with the UN on the proper stenciling to be applied.

One thing that Boteach and you might want to understand, however, is the very subjective approach the US takes to addressing the problems of other nations with US funding, US military, US bonds, and US lives.

Two links in particular help underscore the reason that Rwanda (and Sudan -- where Chicoms do not appreciate interference in their continued clearcutting of humans along their pipeline) are not Priority items in the same way that illumined Muslims or Pallie terrorists might be.

First is our 1974 national defense memorandum NSSM-200 (signed by Kissinger for Nixon and, as NSDM-314, signed for Ford by Scowcroft). If you read the actual document, it states quite plainly and succinctly that it is in the interest of the US to remove (depopulate, even, as necessary) those humans which clog our access to vital natural resources. Although this document was declassified in 1990 or so, it's generated criticism only from the third world nations -- African and Phillipinino, particularly -- actually targeted by the policies along with certain Catholics who would like to see the policies disavowed in word and deed.

This underlying policy (much like the GOP's very stark support for abortion, birth control and state-directed eugenics and manufacture of more perfect specimens for the labor pool which so concerned them) help one to understand how it is that the likes of Brzerzinski could so succinctly address our intervention in Serbia/Kosovo.

Which intervention -- like the latest in the War on a Noun series -- shares certain hallmarks of the "microcosm" Ziggy cites ... particularly where the plight of Christians in each of these target nations is concerned. (Not so surprising, of course, given the ongoing march against Christianity in this nation ... where the only public, prime-time mentions of Scripture and Christ which pass muster are those wherein the Lord's name is taken in vain to condone unjust war or the use of human lives like mulch for state-funded "humanitarian" experiments.)

CHARLIE ROSE: What are the implications for the future in terms of those who say, ``If you go to Kosovo with your bombs, then you have to be prepared for every other moral issue to take a position and be willing to use and employ your treasure and your men and women in the armed forces''?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's a very troublesome question. And it's a very good question, and one to which there is no easy answer. But there is, nonetheless, an answer. Just because we cannot stop a crime everywhere we should not fail to stop a crime where we can stop it. The fact is we are in Europe. We have an alliance in Europe, therefore we can do something about what is happening in Kosovo. We can't go into Tibet without starting a massive, huge war with China. We are not present in other parts of the world with our forces and with allies and so forth. And then, last but not least, even a self-serving argument. What happens in Europe impacts on us much more. so, in that sense, yes, we cannot do it across the board. We cannot have a moral imperative on a universal scale. But it doesn't excuse us from the obligation of doing it where we can do it.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, we say to the Tibetans, ``You know, we can't do it because we don't want to get into a big deal with China, a fight with China.''

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right.

CHARLIE ROSE: ``They're too big and strong.''

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right.

CHARLIE ROSE: We said with Chechnya, ``We can't do it because morality plays no issue here because, you know, we don't want to get into a big conflict with the Russians.''

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right. That is unfortunately--

CHARLIE ROSE: And we say to the Africans, ``We don't have a big stake here. It's Africa. It's not Europe, and so -- therefore -- we can't get involved.''

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: And we can support the African states doing-- You're absolutely right, Charlie. That's exactly the reality.

CHARLIE ROSE: It's not very tidy, is it?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It isn't tidy. And reality isn't tidy.

....

CHARLIE ROSE: We cannot, if I hear you correctly, fail here. Too much is at stake in terms of America's-- beyond the morality of the issue, but in terms of America's prestige and reputation and the credibility we have in the future. We cannot let this pass, and we cannot lose.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: You're absolutely right.

I think this is the first really complex challenge to American global leadership. And, if we falter here, the consequences would be devastating -- in the first instance, for Europe; secondly, for the American-European relationship; thirdly, for our position in the world; and then, in a sense, more generally for the kind of world that we will be living in the next few years.

So, in a microcosm, this is a real test case of what the world is about to be.

"Events in Kosovo" BRZEZINSKI SCOWCROFT LAVROV Interviews of 3/25/99

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