I saw Hotel Rwanda last night - I'm still pissed

[Rabrrrrrr]

and sorely disappointed in the American government for not intervening. I wish I had been paying more attention to the news at the time.

Why didn't Clinton do something? Did he want to, but the repukes held him back? Or did they really have no idea how awful it was there?

Watching that was like watching movies about the Nazis killing Jews - I just get pissed off and sad and start thinking that I wish I were Superman or God or something, so I could just go wipe all the assholes out. Which is ironic that I'd be willing to go genocidal because genocide pisses me off, but such is the nature of emotion, is it not?

p.s. - GREAT movie! Got the story across, excellently acted, beautifully filmed.

[liberalhistorian]

1. In all fairness, it wasn't just the USA

that didn't do anything, it was the entire U.N. and all the member countries who ignored what was happening because the UN felt it was "too complicated and messy" as they told their diplomats who saw what was about to happen and who pleaded for UN and international intervention. Clinton thought it was best to go along with what the UN's policy was.

[Garbo 2004]

4. Actually the US encouraged the UN not to do anything & that's on the US.

The US had its own policy and didn't defer to the UN's policy: rather it helped define UN policy and actions in regard to Rwanda well before and during the massacres. The US in 1993 and 1994 actively would not support measures that could have prevented the violence. After the killing began the US actively requested the UN to withdraw UN troops (which did not include US troops) and helped discourage/impede efforts to take effective timely action.

The Clinton Administration simply didn't want to be involved (it had other priorities/issues to deal with, Somalia was still a fresh memory). It didn't want greater UN involvement since that likely would require more from the US in resources and materials even if not armed forces. The US didn't simply drop its leadership role: its leadership supported UN inaction and withdrawl. And weighing things in the balance, pragmatically the Administration had to figure there would be little political fallout from such a policy. It was just Rwanda, after all. (Four years later Kosovo was another matter of course, geopolitically.)

In January 1994 the UN Commander Dallaire advised the UN (he reported to Kofi Annan who was in charge of the UN Peacekeeping forces) that killings were being planned. He wanted more troops and authority to raid arms caches and take other steps to avoid bloodshed. He didn't get it but was told to brief foreign ambassadors in Rwanda, including the US ambassador, which he did. From his view on the ground, the Rwanda genocide was a planned event that could have been stopped even before it began.

From a Human Rights Watch report:

Warnings, Information and the U.N. Staff

A January 11, 1994 telegram from General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force, to his superiors was only one, if now the most famous, warning of massive slaughter being prepared in Rwanda. From November 1993 to April 1994, there were dozens of other signals, including an early December letter to Dallaire from high-ranking military officers warning of planned massacres; a press release by a bishop declaring that guns were being distributed to civilians; reports by intelligence agents of secret meetings to coordinate attacks on Tutsi, opponents of Hutu Power and U.N. peacekeepers; and public incitations to murder in the press and on the radio. Foreign observers did not track every indicator, but representatives of Belgium, France, and the U.S. were well-informed about most of them. In January, an analyst of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency knew enough to predict that as many as half a million persons might die in case of renewed conflict and, in February, Belgian authorities already feared a genocide. France, the power most closely linked to Habyarimana, presumably knew at least as much as the other two.

In the early months of 1994, Dallaire repeatedly requested a stronger mandate, more troops and more materiel. The secretariat staff, perhaps anxious to avoid displeasing such major powers as the U.S., failed to convey to the council the gravity of warnings of crisis and the urgency of Dallaire’s requests. The paucity of information meant little to the U.S. and France, which were well-informed in any case, but it led other council members with no sources of information in Rwanda to misjudge the gravity of the crisis. Instead of strengthening the mandate and sending reinforcements, the Security Council made only small changes in the rate of troop deployment, measures too limited to affect the development of the situation.

When the violence began, the secretary-general’s special representative, Roger Booh-Booh minimized both the extent and the organized nature of the slayings. Meanwhile Dallaire was fairly shouting the need for immediate and decisive action. Given the two points of view, the staff generally presented the more reassuring assessment to council members.

By late April, representatives of the Czech Republic, Spain, New Zealand and Argentina sought information beyond that provided by the secretariat and became convinced that the slaughter was a genocide that must be stopped. They pushed the Security Council to support a new peacekeeping operation with a stronger mandate to protect civilians. Had these non-permanent members been fully informed earlier—such as on January 11—they might have found their voices in time to have called for firm measures to avert the violence.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-05.htm#P121_49244

And, lastly, subsequent Clinton administration claims that they didn't know what was going on until it was too late have been refuted by information released pursuant to FOIA's.

PBS Frontline Ghosts of Rwanda info:
Timeline: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/etc/crontext.html
Samantha Power interview: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/interviews/power.html
Program page: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/

"Clinton Kept Hotel Rwanda Open" article: http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20872/
National Security Archive articles and source materials:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/index.htm

[Zuni]

7. As bad as Clinton's policy was, it does not hold a candle to France

France actively sided with the Hutu Power regime and continued to send arms and aid to them even during the massacres. France worked with Mobutu to aid the Hutu extremists to block the RPF (which was an Anglophone rather than Francophone movement and fighting the Hutu Power regime after invading Rwanda from Uganda).
France also helped block UN action during the genocide and even parroted the Hutu Power propaganda at times.

France intervened at the end of the genocide, but basically they seemed to be blocking the victorious RPF and letting the Hutu paramilitaries escape.
Then the French set up "refugee camps", which quickly became UN sponsored. These Refugee camps were literally filled with Hutu Interhamwe, and became bases from which these killers raided into now RPF controlled Rwanda. The Civil war that broke out in the Congo is partly the result of these camps (still going on) as the Interhamwe were a major destabilizing influence in the region.

France's role is by far the most sordid of all the Western Powers.

[Zuni]

8. If Clinton did do something to prevent it

half the people on DU would be calling it imperialist war mongering...no evidence that the Hutu were commiting genocide, they would say.
It takes 900,000 bodies for people to say maybe we should have done something. Some here still call General Clark, Albright and Clinto war criminals for intervening to stop killings and mass expulsions in Kosovo (which was admittedly not nearly on the same scale as Rwanda)

Maybe he was sick of all the monday morning quarterbacking and did not want to jeopardize himself politically.

A cowardly position, but understandable.
We either want to use our military to prevent this from happening again, or we don't. When it's all over we cannot try to villanize those who felt that some evil (war, air strikes, possible civilian casualties) is better than a much greater evil (what happened in Rwanda in 1994)

[Garbo 2004]

10. Simply having the UN peacekeeping forces at the recommended levels

and with the mandate per the 1993 Arusha peace accords may have succeeded. But the number of forces the UN sent in was one third of what was origninaly proposed and had significantly reduced authority. That's peacekeeping per a negotiated existing peace accord all parties agreed to. All that was needed was for the US to support the deployment of the UN peacekeepering force and the authority to do its job. Not "warmongering" and no strategic bombing required. It wasn't Kosovo:

"Alison Des Forge: The initial force, the initial recommendation from the military experts was that the force should be 8,000 soldiers. They eventually reduced that to 5,000. But the US, as the leading force for economy at that point, was asking instead of 5,000 that the troops be limited to 500, which was in fact a ridiculous number. The compromise eventually put 2,500 soldiers in the field, but they were far short of what was needed, once the crisis developed into something other than a simple peacekeeping exercise." http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s19237.htm

Samantha Power presents a balanced explanation IMO of the reasons the US wasn't particularly eager for UN (and US) involvement even prior to the massacres. But she also notes that the US didn't really make use of various "policy tools" that fell well short of US armed intervention that might have made a difference. Even if it did not, it would have been less shameful than the subsequent prevarications about not being informed and not knowing what was going to happen when the record shows otherwise.

[Zuni]

14. Clinton was entirely wrong to try to undermine the peacekeepers

I was talking about a military intervention to stop the genocide or prevent it. I did not mean to imply Clinton was correct---in fact I think it was ridiculous to try to tell the UN to limit other countries participation

The force Dallaire had was tiny,---there were vast numbers of Hutu Interhamwe as well as the actual military forces engaged in the killing. Priests, mothers, kids---a huge number of people actually participated.

Even if Dallaire's force was 10,000, i do not think he would have been able to hold Kigali, much less Rwanda in a pitched battle with the Hutu power forces. And on top of that, his force did not have real offensive firepower like artillery or air cover, armored vehicles or any kind of weapons that would give his forces adequate protection in the event of a confrontation.
And Belgium and Bangladesh pulled their troops out after a few deaths. If they had more troops, would they have kept them in?

8,000 lightly armed peacekeepers could not stop this. To stop this, a major show of force would be nessecary to stop it right away.

[Garbo 2004]

16. Perhaps once the violence really started up, that's the case. What about

before, when Dallaire was asking in January for the authority to raid arms caches and asking for more troops to engage in interdiction efforts?

It may have been a losing proposition one way or the other but it was handled badly.

I doubt Clinton would have had much if any Congressional or popular support for armed intervention after Somalia. But the Administration could have at least taken a less ignoble path than blocking efforts at the UN and later pretending it didn't know what was going down.

[Zuni]

17. If he was able to disarm them, there is a possibility

But I have my doubts that he could have found more than a few caches, especially when they were stashed around the country.

I agree with your last statement---what Clinton tried to do was just plain wrong. If he didn't want to be involved with Rwanda in the first place, then why did his people do their utmost to undermine the peacekeepers?
Makes no sense.

The fact that he said he didn't know is one of Clinton's worst traits---when you get into a jam, just start rolling off excuses.

[TrustingDog]

2. lots to be pissed about... East Timor too...

ugly shit happening all along, there are no good guys in this game - just some who aren't quite as bad.

[Telly Savalas]

3. If ya wanna read more about it...

Check out Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands With the Devil. It's a great book. Dallaire was the head of the UN peacekeeping mission there and the book describes what he witnessed and his frustration over the fact that nobody stood behind him in trying to alleviate the situation.

[Zuni]

5. A much better book on Rwanda is

We Wish to Inform you that Tommorow we will be killed with our families...
It is by Phillip Gourevitch.
I have both books here, and General Dallaire's book, in my opinion, is not nearly as well written as this one, which I consider to be an absolutely amazing job of reporting.
Gourevitch's book is one of those books you cannot bear to put down...it captures the tragedy and the after effects.
I cannot recommend this book enough

[jonnyblitz]

11. I just finished Gourevitch's book and I totally agree

with your assessment of the book. I haven't read Dallaire's book so I can't comment on that. What an eye opener Gourevich's book was! Who knew that the refugees I saw pictures of on tv who had fled Rwanda were the ones committing the genocide! One of the best (yet depressing) books I have read in awhile. Seeing Hotel Rwanda and the comments of a DUer in a thread on the topic a few weeks back inspired me to read it.

[sir_captain]

6. It's complicated

I did quite a bit of work on this in college and came to the conclusion that it all happened so quickly that the West in large part didn't realize what was going on until it was too late. A lot of this was due to horrible mismanagement and questionable moral decisions on the part of the UN's military wing, run at the time by everyone's best buddy Kofi Annan--on whom I would place far more blame than the US. Among other things, Annan did not allow African troops, who were ready to intervene, into the country. In addition, the French and Belgians, who are largely responsible for creating the conditions that lead to the massacre (introduction of the Hamitic myth, etc) not only didn't lift a finger, but had troops in the field who were pulled out. Nor have they taken any resposibility post-fact, unlike Clinton, who flew to Rwanda to ask for forgiveness for not intervening.

Read Gourevitch's book--it's good journalism, though not very good scholarship. He makes a lot of claims without any footnotes, which raises a few eyebrows, but packs a lot of info in for sure.

[Zuni]

9. Belgium pulled their troops out

France sent troops in at the end, but basically to aid the Hutus. They were pro-Hutu throughout the genocide, even shipping arms to the Hutu power regime during it to fight the Aglophone RPF.

Clinton deserves critiscm---but if he intervened to prevent or stop genocide, how many times would we hear even here that he was an imperialist war monger, the Hutu Interhamwe weren't so bad etc, etc.

[Garbo 2004]

13. That's the thing, it didn't happen that quickly. It was planned and that

was known months in advance. The US did not support the UN peacekeeping troops when they were initially deployed in 1993, insisted on a reduced level than had been planned and wanted them all removed when things heated up. Apparently even Albright balked at that and African nations protested so all but 450 UN troops were withdrawn.

Other nations certainly had a more active role in creating the problems, but the evidence from Clinton Administration documents released in 2004 doesn't support their claims they didn't realize what was going down until it was too late.

[Zuni]

15. What Clinton did was ridiculous

It must have been clear what was going on. I didn't believe Clinton did not know ever.
I can understand why Clinton would not like to put US troops in Rwanda after the Somalia debacle. But I never really understood why he worked to undermine the UN mission in Rwanda.

Of all the things Clinton did that i disagree, this is probably the lowest of the low. If he did not want US troops used---fine. But I see no reason for him to work against stopping the killing makes no sense.

[Garbo 2004]

18. That's the point that bothers me too. But the US was paying a part of

the bill even without supplying troops or armaments. So partly it was about money in a matter in which the US has no stated national interest. (Which is also why they so studiously avoided the word "genocide" which would have required the US to act.)

In May, while events in Rwanda were transpiring, Presidential Directive 25 was released, limiting US participation and support for UN peacekeeping efforts to those in which the US has a national interest. This was something in the works for some time. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd25.htm

But the way the Clinton Administration handled the Rwanda episode was just cheesy.

[SoCalDem]

12. Africa has always been seen as a continent full of "savages"

"Western/'civilized'" nations see internal wars as "nothing for outsiders" to care about.. They have assigned a less-than-zero value for African life (except for the wildlife) , so a bunch of Africans killing each other is just "no biggie" to the outside world.

Stories reported about the strife usually are accompanied by a litany of past wars and feuds, and tends to leave the reader with the impression that "those people" are warlike, and cannot ever live in peace, so why "waste" westerner's lives trying to get them to "behave".

Africa is an exploited continent.. always has been ..and probably always will be. They have always lacked unity due to geography and language barriers, so they were ripe for the picking. Look at all the countries who had colonies there.. They did not do it because they wanted to "help the people". Colonization is always about taking resources away from the "host country".. The trade off for colonization may be a little education, but not enough to actually manage well after the colonization ends, so even though the many small countries eventually did get "independence", they did not benefit much from it.

Just as a rebellious 14 year old longs for freedom, they would not succeed if Mom dropped them off somewhere and never came back. Africa is a teen aged continent. They have passion, hope and a little education now, but they no longer have any real infrastructure to help them succeed.. Border wars are violent and ugly and westerners just do not care..

The fact that so many dark-skinned people across the globe have turned to Islam is just one more reason why they get little real empathy. Islam by its very nature excludes females, so they cannot get much sympathy from the religious people who love to travel around preaching and converting.

I feel deep down that right wingers everywhere, not just the US, see AIDS as a "solution" to "the African Problem"..(if they can manage to keep AIDS from overrunning western countries). AIDS in African attacks the middle aged and young, so in an area where life expectancy is already low, it's a "useful" tool in depopulation that huge and resource-laden continent. Right wingers think long-term, so a disease like this, running rampant throughout all populations could mean easy pickings in about 25 years.

That's why I think the west does not care about Africa.. The politicians say all the "right" words, but they rarely back up the words with any positive action. If the people in control take no action, what other reason could there be?

[Garbo 2004]

19. Ack. Yes "tribal warfare" is one expression used that explains away much

unpleasantness and reduces interest, should events rise to the level of public consciousness. For example, the warfare in the Congo has resulted in millions of deaths but it's not been a "front burner" issue for the West as far as I can recall.

Ironically it occurs to me that this statement "...a litany of past wars and feuds, and tends to leave the reader with the impression that "those people" are warlike, and cannot ever live in peace..." could also be applied to the last 1,000+ years of European history as well.

[SoCalDem]

20. Of course you are right, but Europeans and other westerners

have the luxury of writing their own histories, and "amending" things like that :)