Meget bra artikkel om Rwanda.
Mvh,
Per
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http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2000/07/21/3.html
7.21.00
THE LOYAL OPPOSITION: An International Commission Calls Clinton A Liar
by David Corn
"A man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our
greatest presidents."
That was the judgment of Bill Clinton that Al Gore pronounced during a tacky
pep rally at the White House shortly after the House of Representatives
voted to impeach Clinton on December 19, 1998. Republican and conservative
foes of the vice president are fond of playing that sound bite repeatedly to
remind voters, especially conservative-leaning ones (as if reminding were
necessary), that Gore, perhaps more so than Hillary, faithfully stood by a
sex-scandalized Clinton. Yet Gore's excessive, lackeyish praise of Clinton
came to mind for a different reason, as I read a report released this month
on the Rwanda genocide by a panel established by the Organization for
African Unity.r
The seven notables on the commission -- including the past chiefs of state
of Botswana and Mali, the chairwoman of the Swedish Committee for UNICEF, a
former chief justice of India's Supreme Court, and a former Canadian
ambassador to the UN -- were asked by the OAU to review the 1994 genocide in
which 500,000 to 800,000 people were slaughtered, the actions that preceded
the April-to-July massacre, and the world's response to the killings. Their
verdict is hardly shocking to anyone who has paid attention to this gruesome
episode in which Hutu extremists attempted to wipe out the minority Tutsi.
The nations and international bodies that could have attempted to stop the
killing, the report concludes, chose not to do so. The report, which
received modest but insufficient media attention, convincingly condemns the
United Nations, Belgium (a former colonial occupier), France (which
maintained close relations with Rwanda), and the United States -- meaning,
the Clinton Administration.
The report recalls that after the genocide began the Clinton Administration
refused "to accept publicly that a full-fledged ... genocide was in fact
taking place." Under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, once a genocide is
recognized, the nations of the world are obligated to prevent the killings
and to punish the murderers. But the Clinton gang did not want to become
involved in Rwanda -- after eighteen American soldiers had been killed in
Somalia six months earlier. In addition to resisting mention of the G-word,
the report says, "the Clinton Administration held that there was no useful
role for any peacekeeping operation in Rwanda under the prevailing
circumstances." Clinton's position was that there was no obligation to act
and nothing much to do. Canadian Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire, who
commanded the hand-tied UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda, believed that with
a larger force -- 5000 instead of 2000 soldiers -- he could halt much of the
slaughter.
As the genocide proceeded, the Clinton Administration went along with -- or
forced -- the UN Security Council decision to reduce Dallaire's force to
what the OAU report calls "a derisory 270 men." And as the carnage
continued, "the UN dithered in organizing any kind of response to the
ongoing tragedy. The Americans, led by U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright,
played the key role in blocking more expeditious action by the UN." For
instance, in early May -- a month into the genocide -- the UN considered
sending in a force of 4000 soldiers with a mandate to end the bloodshed and
to restore law and order. The Clinton Administration, though, expressed
reservations about establishing such a mission -- even though U.S. troops
would not necessarily be part of this action. "It is unclear," Albright said
then, "what the peace-enforcement mission would be or when it would end."
The OAU commissioners have a sharp response for her: "This was a shocking
statement, since it was perfectly obvious the purpose was to stop the
genocide. But since the Clinton Administration would take any steps to avoid
acknowledging that a genocide was in fact taking place, its spokespeople
were forced right into June to resort publicly to weasel words about 'acts
of genocide' that made them look ridiculous to the rest of the world --
except, of course, to peers on the Security Council who had adopted the same
shameful position." The report observes: "At every stage ... U.S. Ambassador
Madeleine Albright could be found tossing up roadblocks to speedy decisions
for effective action."
Eventually, the Security Council did approve a new UN mission in Rwanda of
5,500 troops. But, the OAU study says, "the U.S. did all in its power to
undermine its effectiveness." The deployment of this force was delayed as
Albright pressed conditions upon the UN. Then after Washington promised to
lease fifty armored personnel carriers (APCs) to the UN forces in Rwanda,
the Clinton Administration caused "another extraordinary delay." (Commander
Dallaire felt the APCs could play an important role in saving trapped
civilians.) The report notes: "Before [the U.S.] would agree to send its
APCs to Rwanda, the world's wealthiest nation raised the original estimate
of the cost of the carriers by half, and then insisted that the UN (to which
the U.S. was already in serious debt) must pay for returning the carriers to
their base in Germany." That is, the Clinton Administration nickel-and-dimed
while thousands of men, women and children were being hacked to pieces. (By
the way, the total cost of the APC deployment was $15 million -- less than
what Hillary Clinton will spend on her Senate campaign.) It took the United
States weeks to get the APCs to ... Uganda, where they sat unused. By the
time the genocide ended on July 17 -- when the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a
Tutsi rebel force pushed out the Hutu military -- not one of the vehicles
had made it to Rwanda. And none of the soldiers of the beefed-up UN mission
had reached Rwanda. "Let us say," the report notes, "that this Panel
considers it beyond belief, a scandal of the most shocking kind, that the
genocide was ended before a single Blue Helmet [UN peacekeeper] representing
[the new mission] ever materialized" in Rwanda.
The report damns the other players besides the United States. It assumes
that prompt and forceful UN action could have stopped the killings. That
proposition -- obviously open to discussion -- does make sense. Even a
skeptical analysis of possible UN military options in Rwanda published by
Foreign Affairs earlier this year conceded that 125,000 lives could have
been saved through outside military intervention. For our purposes, the main
point is this: Clinton didn't bother to try.
In March of 1998, Clinton visited Rwanda and apologized. "All over the
world," he said, "there were people like me sitting in offices who did not
fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by
this unimaginable terror." The United States and the international community
had not responded swiftly enough, he admitted, declaring "Never again." This
was a classic Clinton apology, for he found a way to excuse his lack of
action: We didn't do anything to stop the genocide, but we didn't know a
horrific nightmare was happening.
Clinton was prevaricating -- and lying about genocide is bit more outrageous
than lying about sex. The OAU report refers to the well-known fax that
Dallaire sent the UN three months before the genocide began. In that
dispatch, Dallaire warned an extermination campaign was coming. A few weeks
later, the report notes, "Human Rights Watch was told that a U.S. government
intelligence analyst had estimated that if conflict was renewed in Rwanda,
the worst-case scenario would involve one-half million people dying.
Apparently, this analyst's work was usually highly regarded, but this
assessment was not taken seriously." In February, the U.S. State Department
reported on the existence of death squads. Three days before the genocide
started, a Hutu leader told several high-ranking UN officials that "the only
plausible solution for Rwanda would be the elimination of the Tutsi." The
report sadly states: "There were a thousand early warnings that something
appalling was about to occur in Rwanda."
Once the insane killing was under way, information and news of the genocide
flowed to Washington and the West. "There was," the OAU report asserts, "no
issue of insufficient information in the U.S. Human Rights Watch and the
U.S. Committee for Refugees, both of whom had first-hand knowledge from
within Rwanda, persistently held public briefings and issued regular updates
on the course of events. That it was a genocide was beyond question. Within
two weeks, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that
perhaps hundreds of thousands were already dead." The report challenges
Clinton directly: "President Clinton insists that his failure was a function
of ignorance. The facts show, however, that the American government knew
precisely what was happening. ... But domestic politics took priority over
the lives of helpless Africans." They are calling Clinton a liar -- and a
political coward.
Madeleine Albright, now secretary of state, promptly attacked the report,
declaring it was wrong for the commissioners to blame the United States.
But, she added, while she was UN ambassador, "I followed instructions
because I was an ambassador, but I screamed about the instructions that I
got on this. I felt they were wrong, and I made that point." Isn't that an
admission the OAU and others are right to question and criticize U.S.
actions (or lack thereof)? Moreover, if Albright believed the Clinton
Administration she served was pushing the wrong policy regarding a genocide,
why did she not resign in protest? She wasn't willing to take a career hit
to help end mass-murder?
I'd like to see Albright explain that to a woman the commissioners met at
clinic in Rwanda that provides services to women brutalized during the
genocide. This woman told the panel she had been imprisoned, tied to a bed
for several months, and gang-raped continuously: "Her final words to us were
the stuff of nightmares, vivid, awful, impossible ever to forget. She said,
with a chilling matter-of-factness: 'For the rest of my life, whether I am
eating or sleeping or working, I shall never get the smell of semen out of
my nostrils.'"
Clinton displayed little greatness during the Rwanda genocide. Ask General
Dallaire. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder related to his
Rwanda service and in April retired early from the Canadian military for
medical reasons. A few weeks ago, this poor soul -- hounded by the belief he
could have forestalled the mass-murders had the UN and world powers
authorized him to act in the early moments of the genocide -- was found
drunk, lying in a park in Canada, curled in the fetal position. He recently
revealed that he has twice tried to kill himself. A search of Lexis-Nexis
turned up but one mention of Dallaire's suicide attempts in the American
media -- a Toronto Star story that was published in the Baltimore Sun. In
that article, Dallaire described his gut-wrenching struggle with PTSD: "You
become very leery of the dark and the silence. The silence is intolerable."
Not for all. Clinton pushed silence at the time of the genocide, and Gore,
Albright and other Clintonites tolerated that silence. If the history books
do register Clinton as one of the "greatest," it will be an insult to the
memory of hundreds of thousands slaughtered Rwandans.
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