A Problem From Hell: Why America should prevent every single possible genocide from Rwanda to Romania, from Uganda to Uzbekistan, everywhere everytime

[basquebromance]

we, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsability. every single soul is precious and priceless wherever it is born. either we protect all humanity...or we all die

The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention

Samantha Power made a career arguing for America’s “responsibility to protect.” During her years in the White House, it became clear that benevolent motives can have calamitous results.

www.newyorker.com

 

[pknopp]

Great idea in theory but as we have seen time and again, we only end up making it worse and worse yet, many times the government lies about it to achieve some other goal that they only fail at.

 

[Moonglow]

we, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsability. every single soul is precious and priceless wherever it is born. either we protect all humanity...or we all die

The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention

Samantha Power made a career arguing for America’s “responsibility to protect.” During her years in the White House, it became clear that benevolent motives can have calamitous results.

www.newyorker.com

How many genocides, wars, pestilence, famine, diseases or pandemics have you stopped?

 

[JGalt]

we, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsability. every single soul is precious and priceless wherever it is born. either we protect all humanity...or we all die

The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention

Samantha Power made a career arguing for America’s “responsibility to protect.” During her years in the White House, it became clear that benevolent motives can have calamitous results.

www.newyorker.com

Isn't that the job the UN is supposed to be doing? We're contributing about 30% of the UN's budget so they can have "peacekeeping forces."

 

[luiza]

Agree entirely with pknopp , OP .

However horrific genocide is, I think you need to put your own house in order first . Otherwise it is difficult to take any self appointed "police man "seriously and with respect.

Look at the US , the planet's biggest and most widespread terrorist group .
How can it ever be taken seriously other than as a source of bullying ?

 

[rightwinger]

Why don’t we just use our money to kill Russians?

 

[basquebromance]

The US govt is a supporter of the coup in Peru, the US ambassador announced a big grant for Peru's security forces AFTER they started killing indigenous protesters. This is like asking Kissinger to condemn Pinochet.

 

[basquebromance]

Biden gave Peru's regime forces 8 million USD when the death toll was about 30. It's now nearly 50.

 

[pknopp]

The US govt is a supporter of the coup in Peru, the US ambassador announced a big grant for Peru's security forces AFTER they started killing indigenous protesters. This is like asking Kissinger to condemn Pinochet.

Denounce it. I'm not sure how that solves anything but those who call for it understand it's the first step in getting us involved directly.

 

[basquebromance]

“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide

www.americanprogress.org

from the article:

My introduction to Sidbela Zimic, a nine-year-old Sarajevan, came unexpectedly one Sunday in June 1995. Several hours after hearing the familiar whistle and crash of a nearby shell, I traveled a few blocks to one of the neighborhood’s once-formidable apartment houses. Its battered façade bore the signature pockmarks left from three years of shrapnel spray and gunfire. The building lacked windows, electricity, gas, and water. It was uninhabitable to all but Sarajevo’s proud residents, who had no place else to go.

Sidbela’s teenage sister was standing not far from the entrance to the apartment, dazed. A shallow pool of crimson lay beside her on the playground, where one blue slipper, two red slippers, and a jump rope with ice-cream-cone handles had been cast down. Bosnian police had covered the reddened spot of pavement with plastic wrapping that bore the cheery baby blue and white emblem of the United Nations.

On that still morning, Sidbela had begged her mother for five minutes of fresh air.

Mrs. Zimic was torn. A year and a half before, in February 1994, just two blocks from the family’s home, a shell had landed in the main downtown market, tearing sixty-eight shoppers and vendors to bits. The graphic images from this massacre generated widespread American sympathy and galvanized President Bill Clinton and his NATO allies. They issued an unprecedented ultimatum, in which they threatened massive air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs if they resumed their bombardment of Sarajevo or continued what Clinton described as the "murder of innocents."

"No one should doubt NATO’s resolve," Clinton warned. "Anyone," he said, repeating the word for effect, "anyone shelling Sarajevo must be prepared to deal with the consequences." In response to America’s perceived commitment, Sarajevo’s 280,000 residents gradually adjusted to life under NATO’s imperfect but protective umbrella. After a few cautious months, they began trickling outside, strolling along the Miljacka River and rebuilding cafes with outdoor terraces. Young boys and girls bounded out of dank cellars and out of their parents’ lines of vision to rediscover outdoor sports. Tasting childhood, they became greedy for sunlight and play. Their parents thanked the United States and heaped praise upon Americans who visited the Bosnian capital.

Within months of the market massacre, Clinton had adopted this mindset, treating Bosnia as his problem from hell-a problem he hoped would burn itself out, disappear from the front pages, and leave his presidency alone.

Serb nationalists took their cue. They understood that they were free to resume shelling Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns crammed with civilians. Parents were left battling their children and groping for inducements that might keep them indoors. Sidbela’s father remembered, "I converted the washroom into a playroom. I bought the children Barbie dolls, Barbie cars, everything, just to keep them inside." But his precocious daughter had her way, pressing, "Daddy, please let me live my life. I can’t stay at home all the time."

On June 25, 1995, minutes after Sidbela kissed her mother on the cheek and flashed a triumphant smile, a Serb shell crashed into the playground where she, eleven-year-old Amina Pajevic, twelve-year-old Liljana Janjic, and five-year-old Maja Skoric were jumping rope. All were killed, raising the total number of children slaughtered in Bosnian territory during the war from 16,767 to 16,771

 

[basquebromance]

It’s really a tragic problem. The hatred between all three groups–the Bosnians and the Serbs and the Croatians–is almost unbelievable. It’s almost terrifying, and it’s centuries old. That really is a problem from hell.

 

[basquebromance]

" It never dawned on me that General Mladic would or could systematically execute every last Muslim man and boy in his custody." - Bill Clinton

a lot of things didn't dawn on Slick Willie!

 

[basquebromance]

the American response to the Bosnia genocide was in fact the most robust of the century. The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred.

 

[Harry Dresden]

we, even we here, hold the power, and bear the responsability. every single soul is precious and priceless wherever it is born. either we protect all humanity...or we all die

The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention

Samantha Power made a career arguing for America’s “responsibility to protect.” During her years in the White House, it became clear that benevolent motives can have calamitous results.

www.newyorker.com

why does the US have to do this?.....what the hell is the fucking UN for?....

 

[Sunni Man]

There is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that requires the American government to become involved with other countries and solve their internal domestic problems.

 

[basquebromance]

There is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that requires the American government to become involved with other countries and solve their internal domestic problems.

the constitution is not a suicide pact, sir

 

[basquebromance]

Every American president in office in the last 5 decades– from Nixon to Biden–made decisions related to the prevention and suppression of genocide. Yet notwithstanding all the variety among cases and within U.S. administrations, the U.S. policy responses to genocide were astonishingly similar across time, geography, ideology, and geopolitical balance

 

[basquebromance]

People have explained U.S. failures to respond to specific genocides by claiming that the United States didn’t know what was happening, that it knew but didn’t care, or that regardless of what it knew, there was nothing useful to be done. I have found that in fact U.S. policymakers knew a great deal about the crimes being perpetrated. Some Americans cared and fought for action, making considerable personal and professional sacrifices. And the United States did have countless opportunities to mitigate and prevent slaughter. But time and again, decent men and women chose to look away. We have all been bystanders to genocide. The crucial question is why.

 

[Harry Dresden]

People have explained U.S. failures to respond to specific genocides by claiming that the United States didn’t know what was happening, that it knew but didn’t care, or that regardless of what it knew, there was nothing useful to be done. I have found that in fact U.S. policymakers knew a great deal about the crimes being perpetrated. Some Americans cared and fought for action, making considerable personal and professional sacrifices. And the United States did have countless opportunities to mitigate and prevent slaughter. But time and again, decent men and women chose to look away. We have all been bystanders to genocide. The crucial question is why.

so like what has been brought up above.....what is the UN for?.....

 

[basquebromance]

Despite graphic media coverage, American policymakers, journalists, and citizens are extremely slow to muster the imagination needed to reckon with evil. Ahead of the killings, they assume rational actors will not inflict seemingly gratuitous violence. They trust in good-faith negotiations and traditional diplomacy. Once the killings start, they assume that civilians who keep their heads down will be left alone. They urge cease-fires and donate humanitarian aid.