If I could go back in time and fix one thing about the nineties, it would be Rwanda. Bill Clinton has indicated he felt the same way:
"...we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred" in Rwanda."
That's true. Of course, he fudges a bit when he claims the U.S. did not know or understand fully what was going on. Okay, he fudged a whole lot: Read the whole article.
Now he's fudging again: Out on the campaign trail, he's claiming that his wife Hillary urged him to intervene.
Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, who's long been interested in the Rwandan genocide, takes this apart:
So: Clinton didn't mention that she advocated military intervention in Rwanda in her memoirs. Neither did Madeleine Albright. Neither, as far as I can tell, did anyone else. Military intervention was not considered as an option, "never even debated", which means that any advocacy she did engage in must have been pretty ineffective.
Keep reading. It gets worse.
As, indeed, it did for the 8000 people a day who were slaughtered in Rwanda. You want to talk about monsters? There were the real monsters: butchers who hacked and sawed at their Tutsi neighbors while the rest of the world turned their heads and covered their ears.
Half a million people died during those months, yet the Clinton administration recommended to the UN that the peacekeepers leave Rwanda. After Somalia, it was just too politically risky.
Ironically, it was Samantha Power who helped to uncover just how willfully the world, including the U.S. president, ignored the situation in Rwanda.
About the time Clinton was in Rwanda apologizing to the Rwandans for not intervening, I picked up a book by Philip Gourevitch at the library. It was painful reading, but it was something I couldn't ignore. Who could ignore a title like "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda"? The title refers to a letter written by a priest taking refuge at a church, which later was the scene of the slaughter of thousands.
I don't think Rwanda should ever be forgotten. I don't accept the apology of Bill Clinton. And I abhor his using the genocide as a political tool to get his wife elected. In fact, the word 'monstrous' just about describes my feelings toward the Clinton administration, and the Clinton campaign's 'do-anything say-anything' strategy at this point.
