The important thing is not how quickly the country is healing but how easily it descended into madness.
Comment: Education isn't the answer. Thanks for this wisdom. The truth is even worse. Education has no value on its own. If not rooted on a solid morale background it can easily be misused as a tool to gain personal benefits to the detriment of the majority of the less privileged in a society. This wisdom is proven every day by the educated African elite...just look to Kenya, where the educated elite scavenges on the poor.
Comment: The Vatican???s refusal to acknowledge the role of the catholic church and the active participation numerous priests in the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda is in my mind as I follow the Pope???s visit to the US, his apologies for the sex abuse inflicted on American children by catholic priests and his denunciation of the ???monster??? Nazi regime. How about the monster Rwandan clergy responsible for genocide crimes that the Vatican continues to protect all over Europe? I can only be convinced of the sincerity of the Pope when Rwanda gets apology for this horrendous failure of the church, compensation for the victims, and the arrest of fugitive clergy. Otherwise it seems like a case of special justice only for those who can put together a class action suit.
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Comment: I think we often see bad things happening 'over there' as something 'those people' do and somehow feel immune from it and rarely think that it can happen to us as well.
Watching and reflecting on the Rwanda genocide made me realise how easy it is with the right circumstances for ordinary people to do terrible things to each other. The violence in Kenya recently made my theory a reality. Affluence is the buffer that protects much of the world from terrible violence. Poverty and deprivation and competition for scarce resources make it easier to marginalise those we are in competition with and what better way to decide who the 'them' are- people from a different, race, tribe, religion etc are an easy target.
Our duty then it to speak up when we see our 'leaders' guiding us down a path that will more likely than not lead to violence or worse genocide. It does not solve the underlying problems, just creates a whole set of issues to contend with.
Never again is great rhetric, but like Ms Omaar says, even I know better than to believe it.
Comment: The failure of Clinton to respond to the unfolding disaster in Rwanda will go down as a stain on his Presidency just as Bush's over-eager intervention in Iraq will forever stand as a stain on his. There are times when US power is worth fielding and Rwanda was one of them. We sat by and did nothing. Maybe it was because the Rwandans are African and not white Americans -- therefore not worth our trouble -- and don't have diamonds and oil. Whatever the motive, Rwanda is our national sin. I am in total agreement with the idea that the US and Europe have no right to judge anyone. Yes, what happened was an African crime and those who committed it deserve to be judged but they deserve to be judged by their own people. Only Rwanda can judge Kagame.
Comment: Comment: The US intervenes where it is politically or even economically expedient for it to do so.
Even then President, Bill Clinton has admitted that they did not do enough to help stop the genocide. That being said, there were many other world super powers that did nothing and now with Darfur, it's like déjà vu all over again. When you have such power you ought to use it wisely. An intervention in Rwanda and Darfur, wise. Iraq, not so wise.
Comment: The US intervenes where it is politically or even ecconomically expedient for it to do so. Then President Clinton even admitted that if they did not do enough to help stop the genocide. That being said, there were many other world super powers that did nothing and with Darfur, it's like déjà vu all over again. When you have such power you ought to use it wisely. An intervention in Rwanda and Darfur, wise. Iraq, not so wise.
Comment: Here is the sad irony; if the US had intervened militarily in Rwanda, most of the world press and the domestic left-wingers would have gone absolutely bananas, with the whole invading-a-soverign-nation, cowboy-mentatilty nonsense that we hear endlessly today. Of course, now the same crowd can sit back in their easy chairs and say that the U.S. errored by not intervening.
With the left, the US is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't.
Comment: Not so simple my friend. Unfortunately, the path we have to choose is always very narrow. To interfere too fast is as bad as to to watch from the outside. Dont be partisan. The left very often stay passive whereas the conservatives act too easily. Dont be blind on one eye!
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