>> What about Rwanda?
>
> Hi Justin,
>
> "As in any genocide, the question of who actually gave the orders is not an
> easy one to answer. Even in the well-researched case of the German genocide
> of the Jews, although everyone knows by now relatively well how it was
> carried out, the precise decision-making mechanism which set the process in
> motion remains shrouded in uncertainties. But in the case of Rwanda, after a
> number of political actors have spoken of their roles, doubts are relatively
> limited and they concern more the 'how' than the 'who.' The same names crop
> up again and again, whether in the reports of human rights groups or in the
> testimony of independent observers of various political persuasions.
I really cannot see what is gained by narrowing the definition of genocide as you have done. Now the chickens come home to roost: you end up having to come up with this humungous red herring that genocides need to be centrally controlled. That's rubbish, as a casual review of the history of pogroms indicates pretty clearly. You might say that those were not genocides... well, but what do you call it when the people's crusade casually wipes out almost the entire Jewish population of France? I don't like Norman Cohn's writing on millenarian movements all that much, but he definitely has a point in showing that the kind of totalizing violence the Nazis perfected has very ancient roots. And the history of the Americas is full of tribes and whole culture groups that were wiped out without anyone signing off on them, without a masterplan. Call it "criminally negligent genocide" if you like, but not calling it genocide is like saying that someone who accidentally (half-deliberately) mixes arsenic in milk because he could not care less is not a homicide.
On the other hand, I would strongly object to Callinico's argument, which to my ears sounds like a leftwing version of Goldhagen, but that's another matter entirely.
Thiago