No protests to speak of, though (via Instapundit).
Posted by David Corn
<snip>**
Bill Clinton lied and hundreds of thousands died.
What do I mean by that? Watch the film Hotel Rwanda, as I did this weekend. It's a brilliant and sad reminder of the horrors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when the Clinton administration--like most of the governments of the West--took virtually no steps to try to impede the awful massacre that claimed perhaps as many as a million lives.
<snip>
But Clinton, as leader of the free world, turned his back on the genocide in Rwanda and far more people perished there than have done so in Iraq. Counting lives lost is certainly not the ultimate measure, and the comparison is indeed imperfect. Clinton did not cause the tragedy in Rwanda, <snip> relied on prevarication in each episode. <snip> But let me remind readers that during the Rwanda tragedy, the Clinton administration engaged in deadly word games. It acknowledged that "acts of genocide" were underway, but for weeks it refused to state that these the killings amounted to a genocide. Such a statement would have obligated the US government, under international law, to mount actions to thwart the massacre. And the Clinton crowd wanted none of that.
As I've written about (or, obsessed about) before, Clinton visited Rwanda in 1998 and issued something of an apology. Speaking of those terrible months in the spring of 1994, he said, "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror." He conceded that the United States and the international community had not moved quickly enough in response to the horrors under way.
This was a disingenuous cop-out. The Clinton administration at the time of genocide was fully aware of what was transpiring. The terror was reported in the media. And as a 2004 report written by William Ferrogiaro of the National Security Archive pointed out,
<<<
Throughout the crisis, considerable U.S. resources--diplomatic, intelligence and military--and sizable bureaucracies of the U.S. government were trained on Rwanda. This system collected and analyzed information and sent it up to decision-makers so that all options could be properly considered and 'on the table.' Officials, particularly at the middle levels, sometimes met twice daily, drafting demarches, preparing press statements, meeting or speaking with foreign counterparts and other interlocutors, and briefing higher-ups. Indeed, the story of Rwanda for the U.S. is that officials knew so much, but still decided against taking action or leading other nations to prevent or stop the genocide. Despite Rwanda's low ranking in importance to U.S. interests, Clinton administration officials had tremendous capacity to be informed--and were informed--about the slaughter there.
>>>
Oh, the Clintonites knew. And I well remember my friends in the human rights community pounding on the doors of Clinton's national security team members and beseeching them to do something: jam the radio broadcasts that were coordinating the killings; lean on the French (who were close to the Rwandan military); support the requests of the UN peacekeeping team in Rwanda for logistical assistance.
Yet nothing happened. And people were killed--many by machete--at a pace that the Nazis would have envied.
As I watched the film, it occurred to me that <snip> while Clinton's indifference (and that of other Western leaders), which in a way allowed Hutu extremists to kill so easily hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in one of the most time-efficient massacre of the 20th Century, prompted hardly a burp of indignation.
Disregard can be far more deadly than folly.
Clinton doesn't get asked much about Rwanda these days. But when Clinton in 1998 spoke in Rwanda--at what was essentially a brief touch-down at Kigali airport--he declared that the Rwanda genocide should not be forgotten. "Never again," he said. With that in mind, I look forward to Hillary Clinton being asked about the Clinton administration's response--or lack thereof--to the genocide when she runs for president. Given your declared interest in Africa and your role in the 1990s as a key adviser to your husband, Ms. Clinton, can you please tell us whether you actively encouraged your husband to make an effort to prevent or slow the Rwanda massacre? Or did you agree with the do-nothing policy? If she claims she pushed him to take action, then I would demand proof.
davidcorn.com
** - NOTE - David Corn is a rabid left winger. I edited out
(each time you see <snip>) his obligatory smears & falsehoods
about Bush to get to the main point of this story. |
