Another cover-up of genocide
Jerusalem Post - 1 hour ago
By THANE ROSENBAUM, RAFAEL MEDOFF 06/25/2014 21:43
The path to every genocide, it seems, is paved by the inaction of
government officials with their self-serving rationales for not
rescuing those who could otherwise be saved.

ARMENIANS VISIT a memorial to the Armenian Genocide in Yerevan
Photo: REUTERS
Twenty years ago this week, machete-wielding militias of the Hutu
tribe in Rwanda were carrying out nationwide massacres of members of
the country's ethnic minority, the Tutsis. Detailed information about
the genocide began reaching the West almost as soon as it started.
This has always been an uncomfortable truth for those in the Clinton
administration who were responsible for matters of state, global
affairs and human rights. To his great credit, president Bill Clinton
has acknowledged that America's silence during the genocide in Rwanda
was one of the failures of his presidency. Others in his
administration, however, have been neither as honorable nor as
forthcoming.
Newly released cables about the 1994 genocide flatly contradict
previous accounts by some of those officials, and the refusal of the
Obama White House to declassify additional documents hasn't helped
clear up this moral morass. The fact that some of the Clinton-era
figures involved in this episode now work in the Obama administration
adds yet another troubling layer to this unfolding story.
Three days after the mass killings started, frontpage newspaper
articles cited Red Cross eyewitnesses who reported that "tens of
thousands" had already been murdered, with corpses piled "in the
houses, in the streets, everywhere." Separately, the Clinton White
House was receiving detailed intelligence about the murders from its
diplomats and other sources on the scene.
Yet, as Samantha Power reported in her book, A Problem from Hell
, a Defense Department memo revealed that the State Department was
"worried" that acknowledging the genocide "could commit [the US] to
actually 'do something.'" Susan Rice, then director of Africa Affairs
for the National Security Council, asked her colleagues: "If we use
the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the
effect on the November [congressional] elections?" Rice's remark
briefly attracted public attention in 2012 when she was nominated by
President Barack Obama to serve as his national security adviser. When
asked, she claimed not to recall having made this statement, and then
added that had she done so it would have been "inappropriate."
Try "appalling." And the convenient memory lapse sounds unconvincing.
The new release of some 300 cables between the US and other
governments as the genocide raged raises new questions about the
response of senior American officials. The cables concern the United
Nations peacekeeping force stationed in Rwanda.
After 10 members of the force were murdered, some of the participating
nations wanted to cut and run – even though that meant leaving the
Tutsis without any protection and granting the Hutus a green light to
hack the Tutsis to death.
Former secretary of state Madeline Albright, who was America's
ambassador to the United Nations at the time, was a pivotal figure in
these discussions. Later, in her autobiography and in media
interviews, Albright blamed the State Department and the National
Security Council for urging withdrawal of UN forces. But the newly
released cables tell a very different version of events.
On April 12, 1994, ambassador Albright sent a cable to the State
Department urging that the US take the lead in advocating a withdrawal
of all the peacekeepers except for "a skeletal staff." Albright wasn't
thinking about rescue; she was identifying a "window of opportunity"
for UN forces to escape through an airport still under Belgian and
French control.
Secretary of state Warren Christopher, heeding Albright's advice,
threw his support behind the withdrawal proposal and the UN Security
Council voted to pull out all but 273 of the peacekeepers.
Over the next three months, in full view of an indifferent
international community, Hutu death squads slaughtered 800,00 Tutsis.
This is not, however, just another sad story about the abandonment of
a far-away people in a distant land. With the release of these cables,
this is now the story of a cover-up involving prominent government
figures – one, in fact, who holds a senior position in the Obama
administration.
Albright, although retired from government, remains an influential
elder stateswoman of diplomatic affairs and is said to serve as an
unofficial foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton. Incredibly,
Albright was chosen to co-chair a Genocide Prevention Task Force in
2007.
Of even greater concern is the role of Rice, who is now chief national
security adviser to the president.
At the time of the genocide, Rice worked directly under Richard A.
Clarke, the National Security Council official who argued most
vehemently for the US to stay out of Rwanda and to withdraw the UN
forces. But aside from her unfortunate statement in which she drew a
moral equivalence between saving Rwandan lives and winning
congressional elections, what else did she know and say? Rice has in
the past year served as a lightning rod for criticism over her
statements concerning the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi,
Libya. And more recently she described returned prisoner of war Sgt.
Bowe Bergdahl, who apparently deserted his post, as having served with
"honor and distinction."
The Obama administration may have good reason not to declassify
internal White House e-mails from 1994 regarding America's response to
the genocide in Rwanda: when Rice speaks, her employers often end up
looking foolish.
Moral failure in the face of genocide is surely not new. The path to
every genocide, it seems, is paved by the inaction of government
officials with their self-serving rationales for not rescuing those
who could otherwise be saved. It is no consolation that these recent
disclosures about America's failure to intervene in Rwanda place it in
the derelict company of other nations that likewise stood by. Yes,
it's a sad story, but worst of all – it's an old one.
Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and law professor at New York University,
teaches human rights and has written widely on Holocaust-related
themes. Dr. Rafael Medoff is a historian and founding director of The
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&wsc=yh&source=s&u=http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Another-cover-up-of-genocide-360570&hl=en-CA&ei=tSerU4rEEejMsAep3ICgCA&ct=np&whp=3186
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