1 Then Kofi should step down. I don't think he'd consider the Japanese solution to losing face.

2 From what I've read, and that's admittedly not much, the Rwanda massacre could have been prevented if Bill Clinton and M Albright had decided to act. Because, apparently, the warning signs were all there and General Dallaire forced they key people to see them. If this is true, it has to make you wonder if Holocaust education has had any effect at all, one of the key messages being that the bystanders are also implicated. Am I missing something here? I'd like to know.

3 thanks for pointing out just one more case of sanctimonious canadian blather. as far as i can recall, the UN has NEVER been successful at dealing with any major crisis, anywhere. still, our trained seals in ottawa fall over each other to kiss annan's rear end. pitiful. truly pitiful. the two nations with the greatest historical and political links to rwanda, belgium and france, also failed to impede that genocide. as far as i am aware, no african nations attempted to intervene either. it must be washington's fault. /sarcasm

4 Sandy, the reader sending the link had some very strong words accompanying it. At least your suggestion is printable! Keith pretty much nailed it. Words, words, words. These people are bureaucrats, not statesmen! CH - I started to answer you but it turned into pages of rants. Leave it that I don't accept UN leadership for bake sales, much less military missions. They are more interested in looking good than doing good. The minute the US is blamed it conveniently ends the conversation whereas it should scare the bejesus out of you. If no UN action is possible without US leadership, troops, and blood, then what does that really say about the rest of the world? If we really had imperialist ambitions, how long could Canada stand against us? All the excuses Canada has for not supporting a strong military doesn't hold water when we look at Australia, and they have intervened in places like East Timor and the Solomon Islands with success. They were first on the ground in Iraq. What do they have that Canada doesn't? Leadership? Guts? Will? My challenge to Canada is simple: Was Rwanda an awakening of the recognition that Canada needed to beef up their military capabilities in order to meet challenges like Rwanda, Kosovo, Serbia-Herz., Congo, Haiti, and so on? Can you imagine running a business like that? And I freaking HATE Bill Graham for his feckless handling of the Zahra Kazemi crisis. Canada was in a unique position to help the dissidents in Iran and sided with the mullahs. Increasingly Canada is on the wrong side. What do you want to bet that Chretien's trip to China wasn't merely a social call?

5 Canadian Headhunter: If you do a search Rawanda genocide the name that comes up most often is that of Samantha Power, who is a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some of her publications just look like intelligentsia critique of US administrations (she seems equally critical of both Bushes and Bill Clinton), but there are interesting articles in Atlantic monthly archives. In http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/09/power.htm she states: “Once the killing of thousands of Rwandans a day had begun, the President could have deployed U.S. troops to Rwanda. The United States could have joined Dallaire's beleaguered UNAMIR forces or, if it feared associating with shoddy UN peacekeeping, it could have intervened unilaterally with the Security Council's backing, as France eventually did in late June. The United States could also have acted without the UN's blessing, as it did five years later in Kosovo. Securing congressional support for U.S. intervention would have been extremely difficult, but by the second week of the killing Clinton could have made the case that something approximating genocide was under way, that a supreme American value was imperiled by its occurrence, and that U.S. contingents at relatively low risk could stop the extermination of a people.” I also learned in this article, which is very respectful of Dellaire, that Canada did not deploy 5,000 troops to Rawanda because the US would only pay for the deployment of 2,500. I also learned that, at that time, the US footed the bill for a full 1/3 of UN peacekeeping missions. The article does not state whether the cost of the Canadian deployment was included in that cost. Kofie Annan was the director of the UN Peacekeeping Operations department at that time. I wondered, given Powers’ proposal of unilateral US intervention in Rawanda, how she felt about the Iraq situation. I found this: http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2003-12-03.htm where she states: “If we needed a reminder of how dangerous military intervention is, I think we've all gotten that reminder in Iraq. My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed. I think the trigger for it, on the humanitarian side, anyway, has to be something on a mass scale like genocide. Tony Blair said, "Well, I would go to Zimbabwe if I could, but I can't. So let me go to Iraq." That level of trigger-happiness is unwise because of all the risks inherent in military intervention. The visible evidence through history is that the most successful transitions come when they are organic. Neither the African Union nor the West has even begun to exhaust high-level diplomatic options.” I’m sick of the perennial self-flagellation by the US. It just invites other countries to participate in our punishment. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

6 Hi Sammie, thanks for all of the research. I am familiar with Samantha Power having seen her interviewed by Evan Solomon on CBC Newsworld. I thought she was pretty good looking.

7 Besides, under HRW? no one's supposed to interfere in another country's killing of its own people until it's 1m or over. There's rules about this now, you know. And the rules are set by the people who "care." We're damned if we do, damned if we don't. The US could have stopped it, but we don't want the US to stop it! China's got a big army, call on them.

8 Rantburg's always chockful of bloggy goodness: ...Linda MelvernÂ’s book .... reveals, for instance, that in 1993 the government of Rwanda imported, from China, three quarters of a million dollars worth of machetes. This was enough for one new machete for every third male. Machetes were used for many of the murders committed during the genocide. The details of pre-genocide arms imports from Egypt and France are also given, as is the extent of French military cooperation with the parts of the Rwandan army most responsible for the genocide...."

9 It also bears noting that while everyone is talking about Rwanda ten years after the fact, there is currently an ethinic cleansing program in Sudan. And the UN is prepared to do what? Absolutely nothing. But we can count on lamentations and bewailing after the fact.

10 Debbye, you're right about Sudan. I often wonder if it's a big issue in the Muslim community that goes unreported or if it's a non-issue and therefore goes unreported. It strikes me that this would be an ideal terrain for Muslims to demonstrate the virtues and rigour of their moral culture. I don't read the Arab press online. Is it ever mentioned?

11 Hi CH! I haven't seen anything in the translated Arab media or seen references from other bloggers to Sudan in them, but I don't read them as regularly as others, and that's not the same as knowing absolutely that the warfare, child slavery, etc., isn't discussed. But I would have no knowledge about what may be in untranslated reports in Arabic either. I hope it's a concern for some Muslims (and logic tells me it probably is, but how public is the concern?)

12 I saw an interview with Annan in which he suggested that the UN and Canada had learned from their errors ... implying rather offensively that Canada had been party to the UN decision to abandon Rwanda. In fact, after the UN ordered Dallaire out of Rwanda, Dallaire was able to remain there and defy UN directives only because of unilateral Canadian military support. It's hypocritical now to lot Canada in with a UN position that was largely determined by the French, the Belgians, and the Americans, particularly when Canadians in theatre and Canada's military was forced by moral obligations to 'go it alone' (along with small contingents from Ghana and Tunisia). The UN not only ordered Dallaire out, they cut off his supplies and reinforcements, and even stopped responding to his communications. Dallaire got all the support that his own country could give him, and no support from the UN. Annan's revisionist view of that well-documented history is shocking and political, and needs to be challenged. Things that have now become impolite to mention include the Americans' kafka-esque refusal to allow the use of the word 'genocide' by the UN (as the US tried to avoid getting involved), French logistical support to the 'genocidaires', and the fact that Belgium in its colonial period in Rwanda from the 1940s to the 1980s created the very situation that led to the genocide. With regards to Canada's failure to build up its military, I wonder why Canada should be under any international military obligation. Canada's current military needs more funding, but that funding should be focused first and foremost on the protection of Canadian interests, such as fishing territories and Arctic sovereignty. Canada's military expertise in peacekeeping should not obligate it to become involved in every peacekeeping operation that arises. Canada has never been a colonial power and - with the exception of a gold mine here and there - has few 'strategic interests' in the rest of the world. Canada's only credible enemies are those formed from its association with the US. So why is Canada on the hook to spend money and lives in conflicts with which Canada has no connection - particularly when other colonial countries like Belgium, France and the US get involved only when it is politically or strategically advantageous? Why should Canada be footing the bill for defence measures made necessary by European or American colonial and corporate misbehaviour throughout the world?