Quite simply and empirically, there was a UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda when the genocide began, and they were ordered to stand by and do nothing. Surely nothing more than a diplomatic intervention by the US through the Security Council would have been sufficient to send that force into action, and to save many lives; reinforcements could also have been sent, beefing up the UN effort -- all without any direct US military intervention. Given the ease with which the military forces of the genocidal government were defeated by the relatively small and new RPF, a UN force could have done quite a bit. A great deal of the genocide took place in the latter weeks. Secondly, even prior to the actual start of the genocide, the US had been making it very difficult for Belgium and Tanzania to develop a strong UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, as an application of the supposed "lessons" of US intervention in Somalia. Thirdly, if the US had exerted diplomatic pressure, directly and through the UN, on France, that country might not have intervened militarily -- to the effect of allowing the genocidal Hutu Power army and militia/interahamwe to regroup inside Zaire/Congo, where they quickly seized control of the refugee camps and began to conduct exterminist raids back into Rwanda, all of which lead eventually to the spreading of the war to Zaire/Congo.
Rights are conceptually linked and intrinsically connected to obligations, both for individual citizens in a democratic polity and for nations. The question of the 'right' of the US to intervene in the Rwandan situation can not be separated, IMHO, from the obligations it -- and every other nation -- had to prevent and stop genocide. Consider the scale of this genocide: before the genocide, there were 7.5 million people in Rwanda; the genocide slaughtered 1 million -- virtually 1 in every 7 people in the country were killed in a matter of weeks. I don't know of any other genocide which was conducted on such a massive scale, in terms of the percentage of a nation murdered in so short a time. How could there not be an obligation to stop such mass murder, and how could that obligation not involve a right to take reasonable action to that end?
Now, of course, for some folks, it is the agents of action, and not the action itself, which is judged to be moral or immoral, right or wrong. This makes for very simple and easy ways to analyze world politics and dynamics, but like most simple analyses, it is also often quite misleading. The international sanctions on apartheid South Africa was certainly an intervention by, among others, the US in African affairs, and it was all for the better; I don't know of anyone who would argue that the transition to majority rule would have taken place without that pressure. I find it a bizarre type of "anti-imperialism" which would have the US do nothing under such circumstances, one which ends up in tacit alliance with the ultra-conservatives and far right in the US -- especially the Buchanans and their ilk -- which would just as soon see apartheid in power, and couldn't care less if a million Africans are slaughtered in a genocide. It also does not allow us to grasp that an immoral action can be taken in a generally moral cause -- such as the use of the A-bombs and the firebombing of Dresden in WWII -- and that the action can and should be opposed, even while the cause is supported.
<< Please Leo, in plain English, tell us why the US has any right at all to interfere in any way in the affairs of this continent. I think that history tells us that, if anything, US INaction is, for the rest of us, generally the best possible course. If you could perhaps provide a few examples of the positive consequences of US intervention, I might be moved to reconsider. Russell >>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --