Foreign Policy Q & A

[FrustratedPoet]

Indeed. The effects matter far more than the intentions.

[BigDork]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


well i all the Dem candidates want to get rid of Bush.

You don't say. But he actually stands a chance to do it. A lot of the other Dem candidates are trying too hard to be like Bush if you ask me. I like the angry approach because I'm angry about our current government as well.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by lord of the mark
IIUC, the 3 million represents the total Congolese death toll in their civil war. Were all of these civilians who were murdered? Werent many men under arms killed in war?

The vast majority of those killed in the "civil war," aka, invasion of the Congo by the aforementioned countries were hapless civilians. If even ten percent of those killed were soldiers all four countries and their rebel groups would be without armed forces.

And in the case of any who were killed by the rebel side - did Rwanda and Uganda approve of or support those actions?

Since their armies were in the filed committing these attorcities, it seems likely that someone i their governments approved.

Im not accusing countries that supported Saddam for Iraqi deaths - Im only accusing Saddam - just as I would not accuse the US for civilians murdered by Stalin during WW2.

Intentions matter, not just body counts.

In that case you should be willing to excuse the bodycounts of the Communist states, since they were unintended.

1. few of those killed were soldiers.
Ok, but how many of those killed were murdered. Wars often result in dead civilians - not all are war crime victims.

2. Rwandan and Ugandan field armies
I was assuming that most atrocities on the anti-govt side were commited by rebel forces they supported, not by their own field forces - do you have evidence otherwise?

3. Communist murders - I do not hold Stalin responsible for, say, Germans killed accidentaly during the bombardment of Berlin. I do hold him responsible for the large number of Soviets and others deliberately murdered by the state. The large number of Gulag prisoners who died of hunger and illness - reading Gulag Archipelago, its pretty clear that in the vast majority of those cases, it was the intention of the state that they die, and conditions were established pretty much with that purpose in mind. Ukrainian famine - IIUC there is debate about that, and I dont know enough to say.

[lord of the mark]

From human rights watch

"Human Rights Watch is deeply concerned about the continuing carnage and waste that the war has unleashed on the population of the DR Congo. From our own coverage of the humanitarian and human rights costs of local conflicts spawned by the larger war, we find tragically realistic the recent estimates by the International Rescue Committee and other humanitarian agencies that the conflict has caused upward of 2.5 million deaths among the Congolese population, resulting mainly from forced displacement and the resulting lack of food, water, and medical aid. "


Forced displacement and lack of food, water and medical aid - tragic, but not deliberate murder by the Ugandan or Rwandan govts.

[BigDork]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Forced displacement and lack of food, water and medical aid - tragic, but not deliberate murder by the Ugandan or Rwandan govts.

But why are they being forced to leave their homes?

[lord of the mark]

"The link between rampant human rights abuses and the obviously man-made humanitarian disaster is becoming all too familiar, in particular throughout the areas controlled by the foreign occupying armies of Rwandan, Uganda, and Burundi, and the Congolese rebel groups backed by these regional powers. In addition to these forces, other perpetrators in the eastern half of the country include Rwandan and Ugandan insurgents fighting the armies of their respective national governments on Congolese soil. Among the Rwandan insurgents are some who participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In many localities, local rural militia known as Mai-Mai are also committing abuses against the civilian population, although other Mai-Mai groups are protecting their communities. In the disputed territories of Equateur and northern Katanga, government forces (Forces Armées Congolaises, FAC) have also conducted recent reprisal attacks on civilians accused of supporting the rebels. "


Forces implicated include not just the Rwanda-Ugandan side, but their opponents and Congolese govt forces.

[lord of the mark]

Looking at a small sample of HRW's vast documentation on Congo, one finds that it was a complex and brutal situation, in which all sides used attacks on civilians as weapons, in which the relationship of the outside powers (uganda and Rwanda) to Congolese groups was complex. Neither Uganda nor Rwanda have clean hands. There are at least 4 instances cited by HRW where Rwandan forces and their local allies participated in massacres. I was unable to find total civilian casualties in those instances, nor clarify if Rwandan forces were present in all instances. I doubt very much if the total killed by Rwandan forces was anywhere near the number killed by the Iraqi state under Saddam. I also saw no evidence that higher officials in the Rwandan state authorized or approved of the massacres, and at least some evidence that they tried to limit human rights violations. Whereas in Iraq murder was commited at the explicit direction of Saddam Hussein himself.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including not only his political enemies, but innocent people solely because of their religion or ethnicity.

Please cite for me examples of the current government of China doing this

Well, you could just ignore the effects that the continuing Chinese occupation of Tibet has had on the indigenous Tibetan population, both in terms of cultural destruction (effect on artworks, historic buildings, religious institutions, landscape, environment) and death by torture, execution, etc.... So the current regime in China has killed fewer Tibetans than its predecessors- like, wow. All they have to do now is leave- and pay compensation.

Of course if you want people that make Saddam look like chump change, go to the experts like Indonesia:

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac/programs/s354635.htm

http://www.fair.org/extra/9809/suharto.html

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1995/204/204p20.htm

It has been estimated that civilian deaths caused by Indonesia's illegal invasion and occupation of East Timor were greater in comparative terms than the number killed in the former Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion and occupation of Russian territory.

Not bad going.

And yes, they were Indonesian government troops, and paramilitary forces (for that little bit of 'plausible deniability') and yes they did target people because of their ethnicity (Chinese Timorese) and because of their religion (Catholics or other Christian denominations) and their political affiliation (which of course sometimes coincided with the other two reasons for killing them).

Over 300 000 West Papuans have been killed since Indonesia's invasion in 1963. Culturally and ethnically distinct from the invaders, it is clear their picturesque tribal qualities don't count for much when they're sitting on top of gold and mineral reserves and occupying tropical rainforest with expensive hard wood trees, just begging to made into furniture for export to the developed world.

http://www.freewestpapua.com/indepth_indon_oz_wp_control.html

http://www.melanesianews.org/demmak/progress/chiangmai02b.html

And then there's the Christian Moluccans, and the Muslim Acehnese....