2016 Postmortem

chascarrillo

(3,897 posts) Thu Apr 7, 2016, 06:53 PM Apr 2016

Bill tells a story about a "place where black lives matter, Africa" on Rwandan genocide anniversary

The Rwandan genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government. An estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed during the approximately 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994, constituting as much as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.

---

Intelligence reports indicate that United States president Bill Clinton and his cabinet were aware before the height of the massacre that a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" was planned. However, fear of a repeat of the events in Somalia shaped US policy at the time, with many commentators identifying the graphic consequences of the Battle of Mogadishu as the key reason behind the US's failure to intervene in later conflicts such as the Rwandan Genocide. After the battle, the bodies of several US casualties of the conflict were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by crowds of local civilians and members of Aidid's Somali National Alliance. According to the US's former deputy special envoy to Somalia, Walter Clarke: "The ghosts of Somalia continue to haunt US policy. Our lack of response in Rwanda was a fear of getting involved in something like a Somalia all over again." President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings, saying "I don't think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it." Eighty percent of the discussion in Washington concerned the evacuation of American citizens.