I can’t figure it out for the life of me. How could we have sat back and done nothing while the 400,000 people were slaughtered? Did we not have enough proof at the time? What was the benefit of not acting? I know that perhaps there wasn’t a direct benefit to the US in sending troops to Rwanda, but is that the only reason a nation commits troops?
And do you think that if such a thing were happening today, would the US attempt to halt it? If Bush is the gung-ho christian he says he is, I’d be surprised if we didn’t. Not that it requires a christian to act in such a moral and sacrificial manner, but its certainly a strong tenet of the faith.
I think the lack of interests we needed to protect was only marginally relevant (to ME – it was hugely relevant to why we didn’t intervene.)
We didn’t intervene because not only did we not have interests to protect, we also didn’t have ground forces close enough to intervene in time (which I may be wrong about.) In addition, there were already peacekeeping forces in the area, which could have but did not intervene (am I correct in that as well – France?)
However, if I were president at the time I would have considered intervening and most likely decided not to. Sure, the lack of interests is one consideration, but logistical problems are another – any force large enough to be able to not get into trouble in isolation is too big to get to central Africa quickly.
On the other hand, I would have intervened extremely early in Bosnia. Much closer to our troops and bases, more interests in the region (being closer to Western Europe,) and taking place on a longer time scale.
I highly highly recommend the article Bystanders to Genocide. The author won a Pulitzer for her coverage of Rwanda.
It appears that the only ones who had advanced warning were the UN, US, France and Belgium. Clinton had it rough time with Congress at that time and a humanitarian mission would not have been received kindly (this was before the full extent of the tradegy was known), while Belgium essentially were responsible for the whole mess in the first place. It’s all in the article. Btw, I think it was 800 000 who were killed, not 400 000.
I have here before me “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families,” a very moving and informative book on the massacre in Rwanda.
According to this book, the Rwandan genocide began in April of 1994. During this time, the UN pulled almost all its peacekeeping troops OUT of Rwanda, pushed and prodded by the United States ambassador to the UN, Madeline Albright, who herself was acting under the instructions of Presidential Decision Directive 25. This directive, written in the wake of Somalia, was essentially a list of reasons for the US to not only not engage in UN peacekeeping missions, but to persuade others not to engage in these missions either.
A week after the troops were removed from Rwanda, the ambassadors from Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, and Spain, who had been confronted with irrefutable evidence of genocide in Rwands, began pushing for the return of UN troops. The United States demanded control of the mission, and things were delayed until mid-May. At this point, finally, the Security Council agreed to dispatch five thousand five hundred troops to Rwanda, but on the insistence of the United States, very slowly. (Note that there was great difficulty in passing a Security Council resolution containing the word “genocide,” because the US refused to use the word on the grounds that the Convention of 1948 would require them to act in the event of a genocide.) When, in June, a coalition of African nations offered to send their own intervention force to Rwanda if Washington would lend them fifty APCs, we instead leased them to the UN for fifteen million dollars.
In the meantime, France was actively allied with the genocidal Hutu Power government (primarily because the Hutu Power groups spoke French while the revolutionary army called the RPF spoke mainly English), and French diplomatics were offering the Hutu party line that the genocide was a consequence of mass public outrage, that the government and army sought only to restore order, and that the killing was a consequence of the war with the RPF. When given a mandate to restore order, the French troops occupied a large area of Hutu-controlled Rwanda that was under attack by the RPF and declared it a “safe zone.” Within this safe zone, Tutsis went on being slaughtered, and the Hutu Power command fled to Zaire.
There was a documentary on this on PBS a couple months ago, “Ghosts of Rwanda” I believe it was called. One of the reason they cited was that Clinton was timid about sending in troops after Somalia. Specifically the Black Hawk Down incident. The thought it seemed at the time was that Rwanda would yeild the same outcome. Hence Clinton went on to declare that the US would not act unless they held some interest in it.
Gosh, it sounds like maybe you didn’t catch the true intent of the question. I’m so sorry I confused you. Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be: Are we ever morally obliged to commit troops for humanitarian missions such as this?
I think that lack of foresight and political feasibility are the prime candidates. They also underestimated the extent of the damage that would be caused, and overestimated the difficulty of preventing it. One could call it a massive failure of the intelligence community more than presidential screw ups.
As a side note, we seem to have learned no lessons from it, judging by things like Sudan.
As a second side note, I think this question will go down in history along with “Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor” and “Did Bush know about the hijacking threats”
First, one must note that, as I said, the intelligence community must do its job in accurately predicting and gauging the threat before any intervention can happen.
Second, well, morals are different. To put it Michael Moore’s way, if someone down the street was being murdered, would you want your child (18 years old) to go try to stop it? I would certainly personally intervene myself, and I would allow my child to risk his/her life to intervene, but a lot of parents wouldn’t. Some others would. So the answer you get is going to vary person by person.
The US is always more reluctant to commit its troops to a place where it may not be able to withdraw them from.
With no sea access, it becomes necessary to have the goodwill of the surrounding nations to keep the troops supplied by rail, road, or air (you gotta have permission to fly military aircraft through somebody else’s airspace). If the neighbors object, you are in the deep cack. Couldn’t get any worse if it was raining arseholes.
And the wonderful reputation :rolleyes: of African Governments doesn’t help.
In Virus Hunter, Dr. Peters discusses setting up a research hospital in Zaire. It would provide free health care for local citizens badly in need of it, while enabling his team to research tropical diseases. At every turn, local governmental leaders alternated between utterly paranoid mistrust of Europeans & Americans on the one hand, while demanding bribes shamelessly on the other. When the bibes weren’t given, permission to act was denied or actively opposed.
I’m so sorry you’re incapable of writing clearly. Asking whether or not nations ever commit troops for purely humanitarian missions is a very different thing from asking whether or not they ever should.
If the question is about “ought to” … I’m tempted to say yes; but the problem is that while we all agree Rwanda should never have happened in hindsight, its a much different story on the front side. Are we 100% certain both sides won’t see us as invaders and turn on us? Are we 100% certain that there really is a clear “victim” here, and not just a civil war?
And then there are the practicalities: is there an exit strategy? How many casualties are you willing to sustain?
Wow, that was some huge piece of history revisionism in your post. The book you mentioned is touching in its coverage of eyewitness testimonies (famous actually), but far from truthful in its coverage of the political events. See the Inshuti website, for example their open letter to the author of this book.
Such vivid contrast, its almost like those posters with one white hand shaking one black hand.
As to Mr. Mace’s “why would we”… well, I guess some people are minded like John Mace, in that their view is helping themselves and ignoring the plights of others because it does not involve them. I can’t further describe such viewpoints under the rules of Great Debates, but “childish” comes to mind.
I feel that now, also worth noting is that in order to intervene there, we would have had to have had a plan to put a regime in place that would be stable and fair handed. Clearly, we have not demonstrated that we are so capable, so messing about in other people’s civil wars may not be such a good idea, however much it sickens me to say so and thus throw away the lives of so many people.
In the democratic republic of the Congo 2.5 million people have died since 1998 as a result of famine and disease that resulted from the civil war. As far as I know there isn’t much intervention there either.
Its not up to the US solely to do things about this type of issue. the african union supposedly has an army that is supposed to be deployed in situations like that.
The U.S. didn’t just refuse to put its own troops on the ground. The U.S. actively campaigned against U.N. intervention in Rwanda.
A Canadian General, Romeo Dallaire, was ordered by the U.N. to withdraw from Rwanda. He disobeyed, and stayed there along with 2,600 peacekeepers (none American). He literally begged for support - he claims that all he needed were 5,000 more troops. Troops which Canada was willing to provide, but Canada did not have the heavy airlift capability or logistics to get them into place.
He was refused ALL support. The Clinton Administration even refused to jam Hutu radio transmissions coordinating the genocide - something that only required overflights, not boots on the ground.
Dallaire continued to fight to protect the Tutsis, but the Clinton Administration, spearheaded by Madelaine Albright, demanded that the U.N. withdraw its forces.
Note that of the 2,600 peacekeepers there, none were American. And yet, the United States took the lead in forcing them out of the country.
One of the reasons I’m so opposed to a Kerry Presidency is that there is every sign that he would put back into place the very people who behaved so disastrously against Rwanda - Madelaine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, etc.
Again - the U.S. didn’t just fail to act in Rwanda - other countries WERE acting, and the U.S. actively worked to stop them.