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Why Did the United States Fail to Intervene in Rwanda?

In an excellent piece written back in 2001, Samatha Power tries to understand why the United States and the rest of the international community failed to intervene to prevent the Rwandan genocide. The piece opens: In the course of a hundred days in 1994 the Hutu government of Rwanda and its extremist allies very nearly […]

March 5, 2013/by dpogreba

Should We Require Americans To Vote?

Daily Wisdom

Norman Ornstein argues that American political life would be improved if every American was required to vote: Indeed, there is a case to be made that the sharp polarization and tribalism that has come to dominate Washington has metastasized to the American public, and that the center of the electorate–nearly invisible in Congress–will soon be […]

March 5, 2013/by dpogreba

Why Did the United States Fail to Intervene in Rwanda?

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March 5, 2013/by dpogreba

Should We Require Americans To Vote?

Daily Wisdom

March 5, 2013/by dpogreba

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Why Did the United States Fail to Intervene in Rwanda?

Debate Class

In the course of a hundred days in 1994 the Hutu government of Rwanda and its extremist allies very nearly succeeded in exterminating the country’s Tutsi minority. Using firearms, machetes, and a variety of garden implements, Hutu militiamen, soldiers, and ordinary citizens murdered some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century.

A few years later, in a series in The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch recounted in horrific detail the story of the genocide and the world’s failure to stop it. President Bill Clinton, a famously avid reader, expressed shock. He sent copies of Gourevitch’s articles to his second-term national-security adviser, Sandy Berger. The articles bore confused, angry, searching queries in the margins. "Is what he’s saying true?" Clinton wrote with a thick black felt-tip pen beside heavily underlined paragraphs. "How did this happen?" he asked, adding, "I want to get to the bottom of this." The President’s urgency and outrage were oddly timed. As the terror in Rwanda had unfolded, Clinton had shown virtually no interest in stopping the genocide, and his Administration had stood by as the death toll rose into the hundreds of thousands.

Why did the United States not do more for the Rwandans at the time of the killings? Did the President really not know about the genocide, as his marginalia suggested? Who were the people in his Administration who made the life-and-death decisions that dictated U.S. policy? Why did they decide (or decide not to decide) as they did? Were any voices inside or outside the U.S. government demanding that the United States do more? If so, why weren’t they heeded? And most crucial, what could the United States have done to save lives?

Read the rest here.

March 5, 2013/by dpogreba

Should We Require Americans To Vote?

Daily Wisdom

Norman Ornstein argues that American political life would be improved if every American was required to vote:

Indeed, there is a case to be made that the sharp polarization and tribalism that has come to dominate Washington has metastasized to the American public, and that the center of the electorate–nearly invisible in Congress–will soon be hard to find in the rest of the country. But our best hope for changing the damaging culture which enhances the tribal wars and elects people who disdain compromise and embrace rigid and extreme ideas is to create more opportunities for more Americans to exert some influence in all elections.

March 5, 2013/by dpogreba