Lies About Rwanda Mean More Wars If Not Corrected
Saturday, 29 March 2014, 11:51 am
Article: David Swanson
By David Swanson
Urge the ending of war these days and you'll very quickly hear two
words: "Hitler" and "Rwanda." While World War II killed some 70
million people, it's the killing of some 6 to 10 million (depending on
who's included) that carries the name Holocaust. Never mind that the
United States and its allies refused to help those people before the
war or to halt the war to save them or to prioritize helping them when
the war ended -- or even to refrain from letting the Pentagon hire
some of their killers. Never mind that saving the Jews didn't become a
purpose for WWII until long after the war was over. Propose
eliminating war from the world and your ears will ring with the name
that Hillary Clinton calls Vladimir Putin and that John Kerry calls
Bashar al Assad.
Get past Hitler, and shouts of "We must prevent another Rwanda!" will
stop you in your tracks, unless your education has overcome a nearly
universal myth that runs as follows. In 1994, a bunch of irrational
Africans in Rwanda developed a plan to eliminate a tribal minority and
carried out their plan to the extent of slaughtering over a million
people from that tribe -- for purely irrational motivations of tribal
hatred. The U.S. government had been busy doing good deeds elsewhere
and not paying enough attention until it was too late. The United
Nations knew what was happening but refused to act, due to its being a
large bureaucracy inhabited by weak-willed non-Americans. But, thanks
to U.S. efforts, the criminals were prosecuted, refugees were allowed
to return, and democracy and European enlightenment were brought
belatedly to the dark valleys of Rwanda.
Something like this myth is in the minds of those who shout for
attacks on Libya or Syria or the Ukraine under the banner of "Not
another Rwanda!" The thinking would be hopelessly sloppy even if based
on facts. The idea that SOMETHING was needed in Rwanda morphs into the
idea that heavy bombing was needed in Rwanda which slides effortlessly
into the idea that heavy bombing is needed in Libya. The result is the
destruction of Libya. But the argument is not for those who pay
attention to what was happening in and around Rwanda before or since
1994. It's a momentary argument meant to apply only to a moment. Never
mind why Gadaffi was transformed from a Western ally into a Western
enemy, and never mind what the war left behind. Pay no attention to
how World War I was ended and how many wise observers predicted World
War II at that time. The point is that a Rwanda was going to happen in
Libya (unless you look at the facts too closely) and it did not
happen. Case closed. Next victim.
Edward Herman highly recommends a book by Robin Philpot called Rwanda
and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial
Fiction, and so do I. Philpot opens with U.N. Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali's comment that "the genocide in Rwanda was one
hundred percent the responsibility of the Americans!" How could that
be? Americans are not to blame for how things are in backward parts of
the world prior to their "interventions." Surely Mr. double Boutros
has got his chronology wrong. Too much time spent in those U.N.
offices with foreign bureaucrats no doubt. And yet, the facts -- not
disputed claims but universally agreed upon facts that are simply
deemphasized by many -- say otherwise.
The United States backed an invasion of Rwanda on October 1, 1990, by
a Ugandan army led by U.S.-trained killers, and supported their attack
on Rwanda for three-and-a-half years. The Rwandan government, in
response, did not follow the model of the U.S. internment of Japanese
during World War II, or of U.S. treatment of Muslims for the past 12
years. Nor did it fabricate the idea of traitors in its midst, as the
invading army in fact had 36 active cells of collaborators in Rwanda.
But the Rwandan government did arrest 8,000 people and hold them for a
few days to six-months. Africa Watch (later Human Rights Watch/Africa)
declared this a serious violation of human rights, but had nothing to
say about the invasion and war. Alison Des Forges of Africa Watch
explained that good human rights groups "do not examine the issue of
who makes war. We see war as an evil and we try to prevent the
existence of war from being an excuse for massive human rights
violations."
The war killed many people, whether or not those killings qualified as
human rights violations. People fled the invaders, creating a huge
refugee crisis, ruined agriculture, wrecked economy, and shattered
society. The United States and the West armed the warmakers and
applied additional pressure through the World Bank, IMF, and USAID.
And among the results of the war was increased hostility between Hutus
and Tutsis. Eventually the government would topple. First would come
the mass slaughter known as the Rwandan Genocide. And before that
would come the murder of two presidents. At that point, in April 1994,
Rwanda was in chaos almost on the level of post-liberation Iraq or
Libya.
One way to have prevented the slaughter would have been to not support
the war. Another way to have prevented the slaughter would have been
to not support the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi on April 6, 1994. The evidence points strongly to the
U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained war-maker Paul Kagame -- now president of
Rwanda -- as the guilty party. While there is no dispute that the
presidents' plane was shot down, human rights groups and international
bodies have simply referred in passing to a "plane crash" and refused
to investigate.
A third way to have prevented the slaughter, which began immediately
upon news of the presidents' assassinations, might have been to send
in U.N. peacekeepers (not the same thing as Hellfire missiles, be it
noted), but that was not what Washington wanted, and the U.S.
government worked against it. What the Clinton administration was
after was putting Kagame in power. Thus the resistance to calling the
slaughter a "genocide" (and sending in the U.N.) until blaming that
crime on the Hutu-dominated government became seen as useful. The
evidence assembled by Philpot suggests that the "genocide" was not so
much planned as erupted following the shooting down of the plane, was
politically motivated rather than simply ethnic, and was not nearly as
one-sided as generally assumed.
Moreover, the killing of civilians in Rwanda has continued ever since,
although the killing has been much more heavy in neighboring Congo,
where Kagame's government took the war -- with U.S. aid and weapons
and troops -- and bombed refugee camps killing some million people.
The excuse for going into the Congo has been the hunt for Rwandan war
criminals. The real motivation has been Western control and profits.
War in the Congo has continued to this day, leaving some 6 million
dead -- the worst killing since the 70 million of WWII. And yet nobody
ever says "We must prevent another Congo!"
ends
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