They said "Never Again!" . . . but they lied

[chequita guevara]

Tomorrow, April 7, 2004, is the tenth anniversery of beginning of the Ruandan genocide. For 100 days, the world stood watching as Hutus slaughtered 800,000 of their neighbors, the Tutsis. The world refused to help.

The UN soldiers were told not to get invovled, but they did. Unarmed UN soldiers declared buildings under their protection, and the people inside survived. A Senegalese UN capitain snuck Tutsis to safty before he was killed by motor shrapnel. The UN commander still has nightmares. The U.S. offered to send a tank brigade, but it would have taken three months to arive. The Belgians fled when ten of them were beaten to death (a number calculated by the Hutus to drive the Westerners out, and it worked).

We said never again, but we did nothing but watched when it happened again.

[DinoDoc]

Why would something like this be justification for an invasion?

[chequita guevara]

If this isn't, nothing is.

[DinoDoc]

There are quite a few places that we should be invading if gross human rights violations justify an unprovoked attack.

[Last Conformist]

Indeed. But very few where major genocides are ongoing.

[DinoDoc]

Why should that be the determining factor?

[SlowwHand]

Must be nice to have the luxury of playing both sides of a coin on things.

[DinoDoc]

Me or che?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Why should that be the determining factor?

I'm not saying it should. I'm pointing out that there's a difference between a genocide and "mere" gross violations of human rights.

An unprovoked invasion would, in my view, be justified if it can be reasonably assumed to save alot more lives than it will take. But that's for 'nother thread.

[DinoDoc]

Why? These issues seem to be exactly what this thread is about.

[chequita guevara]

DD is right. That is what this is about. Why did we do nothing? And worse, we used it to justify an attack on a country were it was not occuring.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If this isn't, nothing is.

Do they have oil?

[Verto]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If this isn't, nothing is.

So you would have supported an invasion of Iraq made under a pretense of ending Saddam's murder and brutality?

[Last Conformist]

Why "we" did nothing in Rwanda? Unwillingness to expose our boys in the line of fire*, the strategic unimportantness of the region, the Rwandan regime having unlikely friends in influential places, the fact that international politics are alot about realpolitik and not alot about humanistic ideals.

* This is pretty rich coming from someone who's country has very limited abilities to place troops anywhere, but you get the point.

[johncmcleod]

Is there genocide in Rwanda occurring on right now?

So you would have supported an invasion of Iraq made under a pretense of ending Saddam's murder and brutality?

Out of all of the brutal leaders of the world we could choose to take out, we just had to pick the one that would cost billions of dollars to remove, cost thousands of lives, destroy the country's infrastructure, completely alienate us from the rest of the world, and disrupt what was the best possible scenario for that country. With Iraq's socio-economic and ethnic problems, not to mention the fact that most of the population doesn't want democracy or know how to run one, I doubt a democracy could work.

If you want to spread democracy throughout the world, the best way to do it would be first to remove the dictators of countries that could support a democracy. But you wouldn't do it the US way and twist everything for your own interests. The thing to do is to cut off the dictator from any support and put pressure on him. If this is done any unpopular regime will fall.