i was only 12 when it happened. i really don't remember much of it. and i don't remember caring when i was taught about it in high school. yea yea, africa's so far away. whatever.

this morning i read up on the rwandan genocide. the u.n. scaled back its forces. france, u.s. and other countries refused to help. the rwandan catholic churches helped the hutus round up tutsi and hutu sympathizers. this entire thing is a mess. at least 800,000, and up to 1,000,000 were killed.

my question is this: did we have a responsibility to stop this?

Perhaps we would have acted differently if Somalia hadn't been so fresh in our minds. Former colonial powers in the area should have been the go to source of peacekeepers, it shouldn't be expected that the US be the go to guy, especially if we want to take off the mantle of 'world police'.

Last I checked Rwanda isn't a major source for oil...

I don't think the US had a responsibility so much as the colonial power (was it the French?) that caused the problem in the first place. The groups were coexisting just fine until the Tutsis were put in charge, which of course caused the Hutus to hate them.

Of all rich countries, I blame Belgium the most in this case. Belgium anthropoligists that start that shit of measuring facial and skull traits that made one tribe consider the other "different, evil"

sun devil and hb, i'm pretty sure both of you are off base on this, but i'm drunk right now and i can't type that well or form coherent thoughts.

I think you're wrong. And HB was right, it was Belgium.

can you morally say we did not? especially given the last excuse for invading iraq.

ah, i misunderstood your post, SD. my bad.

i'd like to read more about how belgium's anthropologists led to the genocide, though.

You guys are all wrong. A guy with a PHD that wrote a book said it was because of global warming.

certainly environmental issues were a large part of it, but i wouldn't attribute them to climate change. i'd say they were manmade.

does the u.s. have the responsibility to police the world?

Who says we have to buy the excuse for invading Iraq? It was a poor excuse, and we have no moral responsibility to police the world.

I find it rather difficult for one to be consistent in arguing vehemently against the Iraq war, and then turn around and argue vehemently for a military incursion into Darfur. They aren't the same situation, but its pretty clear that both are quite complicated and will be solved by the locals on the ground rather than a foreign occupying force.

This will go down as the last thing Belgium has ever done on an international scale.

Its okay, you can probably pass it off on the Walloons.

true about the excuse, but as for the US policing the world, i wasn't referring to the US alone. i meant collective 'we' as in the developed world, and the responsibility we have, in my opinion at least, to help our fellow man when we can. obviously this can't always be done, and the intervention is not always justified- case in point, iraq. i believe rwanda is a case when we should have done more.

I think one could certainly make an argument that some peacekeeping forces would have been beneficial in Rwanda. But maybe not. From what I've read, the U.N. was in denial that there was really a problem in Rwanda until it was too late, which is usually the case. That's the paradox in these types of situations... There's no way we could provide enough resources (i.e., personnel) to be able to watch over every single potentially violent situation, and by the time the violence actually breaks out, it's too late to do something. The best thing to do is to let these people live their lives without intervening in the first place...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/world ... da.html?hp

Rwandan Convicted of Genocide



A senior Rwandan military officer charged with being one of the masterminds of the 1994 slaughter in Rwanda in which bands of Hutus massacred hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus was convicted by a United Nations court in Tanzania of genocide on Thursday and sentenced to life in prison.

In a statement, the United Nations tribunal said that it had sentenced the officer, Col. Theoneste Bagosora, and his accomplices, two other Rwandan military officers who were also on trial, Maj. Aloys Ntabakuze and Col. Anatole Nsengiyumva, to life imprisonment for “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.” But a fourth co-defendant, Gen. Gratien Kabiligi, was acquitted of all charges against him and the court ordered his release.

Colonel Bagosora, 67, was the cabinet director for the Defense Ministry at the start of the slaughter by Hutu of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu in 1994. The three other senior army officers had been on trial with him since 2002 at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania.

The court said that Bagosora had been “the highest authority in the Rwandan Defense Ministry with authority over the military” in the days after the death of President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994.

The president, a Hutu, died when his plane was shot down over the airport of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. This sparked the three-month wave of grisly massacres that tore through the small east African country.

The speed and violence of the genocide was evident in the court’s findings.

On April 7, 1994 -- the day after the air crash -- Colonal Bagosora was responsible for the killing of the Rwandan prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana; the president of the Constitutional Court, Joseph Davaruganda; and three top opposition figures: Frederic Nzamurambaho, Landoald Ndasingwa and Faustin Rucogoza, the court ruled.

Colonel Bagosora was also found guilty in connection with the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers by soldiers at Camp Kigali on April 7, and for organized killings by soldiers and militiamen at various sites throughout Kigali and Gisenyi, in the west of the country, from April 6-9, 1994.

However, the court cleared Colonel Bagosora and the others on trial of conspiring to commit genocide before April 7, 1994. The trial lasted for six years, during which a total of 242 witnesses were heard.

The court said that the prosecution had alleged that General Kabiligi, who was head of the military operations bureau of the army general staff, “participated in the distribution of weapons, meetings to plan the genocide as well as a number of specific crimes, many of which were related to roadblocks in the Kigali area.” But the charges were dismissed after he advanced a successful alibi, and “it was also not proven that he had operational authority or that he targeted civilians,” the court said.

SD wins.