15 years ago Today the Rwandan Genocide Occured, as I Type This One Million in Darfur are about to Starve to Death

The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy, as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope.

We owe to those who died and to those who survived who loved them, our every effort to increase our vigilance and strengthen our stand against those who would commit such atrocities in the future -- here or elsewhere.

Indeed, we owe to all the peoples of the world who are at risk -- because each bloodletting hastens the next as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the unimaginable becomes more conceivable -- we owe to all the people in the world our best efforts to organize ourselves so that we can maximize the chances of preventing these events. And where they cannot be prevented, we can move more quickly to minimize the horror. . . .

---Bill Clinton in Kigali, Rawanda 1998

for more video

Samantha Power

On this day April 6th 1994 the Rwandan genocide began. It started with the shooting down of the Presidents plane, (a Hutu) by his own movement to be used as an excuse to begin the genocide. Before it was over almost 800,000 people were dead and led to calls of Never again. As we speak genocide is going on in Darfur and its clear nothing will be done to stop it. Even more outrageously the people ordering and benefiting the genocide are being treated as heroes by thugs and tyrants across the globe, all the while Darfur burns. Where is the Obama admin on this? Now the President has taken advice from Samantha Power, the "expert" on genocide and I wonder what is the policy she is advocating to the President? Power who was forced off the Obama campaign for insulting Clinton apparently is back. The following is from Power's book, A Problem from Hell (It was a pretty good book) explaining the Clinton administration's policy of non-confrontation in the face of genocide:

"second, Clinton's foreign policy architects were committed multi-lateralists. They would act only with the consent and participation of their European partners. France and Britain had deployed a combined 5,000 peacekeeprs in Bosnia to aid the UN delivery of humanitarian aid, and they feared Serb retaliation against their troops. They also trusted that the Vance-Owen negotiations process would eventually pay dividends. With the Serbs controlling some 70% of the country by 1993, many Europeans privately urged ethnic partition. Clinton was also worried about Offending the Russians, who sympathized with their fellow Orthodox Christian Serbs.

As we all know we know we ended up at war with Serbia, anyway, but only after hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by the fascist government in Serbia. My question: Why would failed liberal policies work with tyrants and terrorists around the globe now when they failed in the past?


At the conclusion of Powers book, she has some key elements to combating genocide.
They are:

1. Knowledge: No matter what policy makers say, they almost always have a good take on massive repressions and slaughter.
2.Influence: Genocidal thugs take their cue on what they can get away from Western Leaders. If murders and terrorists think they can get away with their actions, they are more likely to do them.
3. Will: The USA and our political leaders often lack the will to combat genocide and are unwilling invest political and financial capital in stopping it.
4. Accountability: By this she means US politicians who prefer inaction as the safer course when dealing with genocide. In a word the sin of inaction is better then risking a war that might lower their poll numbers.

Democrats should take a long look at this list and think about their policies. If we act weak, the world will act accordingly, if we turn a blind eye to genocide, it will continue, if we lack the will to fight evil, it will triumph, if our elected leaders think the path of least resistance is easier, they will take it More to the point one million people are about to starve to death, and as far as I can tell the worlds power don't care.

Remembering in the World:

(CNN) -- Crowds gathered in somber reflection near the Rwandan capital of Kigali on Tuesday, marking the 15th anniversary of the start of a 100-day genocidal massacre in Rwanda in which an estimated 800,000 people were brutally killed.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame addressed thousands during an emotional candle-lighting ceremony, criticizing the international community for not doing more to prevent the bloody wave of violence."I remind those experts that they need to go back to school," Kagame told reporters. "These children you saw here -- you think they are standing there because they are exploiting everybody's guilt?

Sparked by the assassination of then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, extremist militias made up of ethnic Hutus slaughtered ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus across Rwanda after Belgian peacekeepers left the country.

Tears from Susan Rice, will anyone ask her about Darfur?

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The 15th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda brought American U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to tears as she reflected on her personal memories surrounding the slaughter.

Rice visited Rwanda as a staff member in former President Bill Clinton's National Security Council six months after the ethnic cleansing. She explained how even months after the violence she encountered decomposing bodies at one of the massacre sites.

"For me, the memory of stepping around and over those corpses will remain the most searing reminder imaginable of what our work here must aim to prevent," she said Tuesday at a special commemorative event at United Nations headquarters in New York.

She emotionally concluded her remarks, expressing how "We bow our heads to mark the memory of those who were slain. And we bow our heads to mark the sorrow of all who stood by."

The mass killings began on April 6, 1994, when tribal Hutu militia members attacked their tribal Tutsi countrymen after the plane of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down. Within 100 days, some 800,000 people were murdered.