Assorted Ramblings

I've filled my blog requirement, so I actually want to use this occasion just to write about things important to me. I'm watching a documentary as we speak about genocide around the world and those who have tried to stop it as the years have past. I look at history as a realist. I don't hold a lot of countries accountable for not intervening in many cases. For instance, I see it as being so difficult to actually provide any element of stability in Darfur, and American intervention could make the situation worse. Yet somehow, I can't just sit by and look at something like the genocide in Rwanda and, knowing it's more than wrong, let it happen. Probably my favorite part in Quantum of Solace was the part where Felix Lighter was sitting on the plane with the American officer right after meeting with the movie's antagonist. The mustachioed American, when Lighter questions why the US was allying with someone with so clearly negative intentions in Bolivia, replies that if the US allied only with good people, there wouldn't be an ally to be had. I agree with this statement. Sometimes, allying with a Pervez Musharraf can be necessary to maintaining a status in the larger context of regional stability. But when I look at every instance of genocide around the world, the United States does not stand to gain from allying with a Juvenal and Agathe Habyarimana, Slobodan Milosevic, Omar al Bashir, etc.. However, I see the United States historically tying itself to Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein in a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of mentality, and I can't help but feel disgusted.

Genocide is an unforgivable crime. The fact that these situations keep occurring, even though we say "never again" repeatedly shows me how humanitarians are all too often all talk. They don't have the power to stop what happens. States are the only ones with those powers. If Srebrenica or Rwanda are any indicators, the UN only makes situations more disgusting when soldiers stand by and do nothing. It's why Romeo Dallaire nearly killed himself when he was unable to do anything for the people he had worked with for months before the genocide began following Juvenal Habyarimana's assasination, possibly performed by his wife Agathe and her inner circle (the akazu). But at the same time, I don't see states as providing the necessary stability in the recooperation of genocide-ravaged communities. When I view modern reconstruction efforts, I see the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia, the Iraq War, the Hutu-Tutsi tensions coming to a head in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (and their previous manifestations in Burundi), or the other numerous attempts at reconstruction, I don't think we've had a truly successful attempt at restoring a society since World War II. This provides so many complications to my ultimate instinct that intervention is vital to prevention of genocide.

As the documentary comes to a close, I see how TV can't possibly portray how horrific genocide is. It didn't even get the point across as strongly as I have seen done in literature, such as in Philip Gourevitch's We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Yet even this book can't display how horrendous genocide is. What shocks me more than anything about genocide as a crime is the instinct it creates, where people are more shocked to survive than to die. In Rwanda, Tutsis had just had this instinct driven into their minds that they would die. I hate sitting here knowing that I have these opportunities before me, solely on the basis of my birth in this nation, and other people live only awaiting death. I don't know what can be done about genocide. Don Cheadle isn't going to stop Darfur, no matter how many celebreties think he has the right idea. Ideally, yes we can stop any genocide. We can stop the janjaweed in Darfur. We could have stopped the genocidaires in Rwanda, or bombed the camps in Germany during WWII. But could we have done what is required to stop further perpetration of the crimes? Would American intervention in Darfur stop the JEM from coming into power and oppressing Arabs? Or would intervention in Rwanda have prevented the rise of Laurent Nkunda and his Tutsi backlash? Somehow, I don't think so. I just wish there was something that could be done.