Rwandan Genocide

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Leo wrote:
>I have made it clear that I believe the Rwandan genocide
>to be an issue of political import and gravitas; and further, that the
>failure of the US to intervene to stop it, as well as the complicity of
>France in protecting its perpetrators, are matters on which Americans and
>French of minimal democratic or even 'humanitarian' sentiment would want to
>hold these states responsible. Jim will persist in his view that a genocide
>never took place.

Heartfield has never said that mass killings did not take place in 
1994.  (The history of Rwanda did not begin and end in 1994, however; 
to explain the killings, you need to understand what went on before 
and after them.)

More to the point, your claim that the USA failed to intervene is 
contrary to the truth.  Just because the US government did not bomb 
Rwanda does not mean that it never intervened.  It intervened by 
supporting Paul Kagame.

In this particular US intervention, the stakes for the USA are, 
ultimately, probably not Rwanda but Congo (formerly Zaire).  The US 
government finally decided that it wanted Mobutu out (dictatorships 
of the old-fashioned kind ceased to be a useful defense against 
Communism, now that the threat of Communism disappeared from the 
world stage) & sought to replace him by a new instrument.  Kabila 
went out of American favor after his break with the Rwandans, but the 
USA can still use Kagame to help it reshape the Central African 
region.

Yoshie