[Peace-discuss] Humanitarian imperialism

[David Green]

This is also a corrective to our alleged "inaction" in Rwanda.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/100501herman-peterson.php

"In the Rwanda “genocide” case, the “human rights” community played an unusually 
active role in supporting the real aggressors and killers, in close parallel 
with their own governments’ perspectives and policies. As in the case of the 
Western aggressions against Yugoslavia (1999) and Iraq (2003), Human Rights 
Watch and other nongovernmental organizations simply ignored the “supreme 
international crime” (or “act of aggression by Uganda,” in Herman Cohen’s 
phrase), while conveniently, and in hugely biased fashion, paying attention to 
lesser human rights violations.48 They downplayed or ignored entirely the 
refugee crisis created by the Ugandan-RPF invasion and occupation of northern 
Rwanda and the armed penetration and de facto subversion of the rest of the 
country by the RPF. Every response to these by the Habyarimana government, from 
October 1990 on, was scrutinized for “human rights” violations and framed as 
evidence of unlawful state repression. The NGOs systematically evaded the 
massive evidence of RPF responsibility for the April 6, 1994, shoot-down, surely 
because the finding conflicts with their deep commitment to the model of a 
preplanned Hutu genocide and the RPF’s self-defensive rescue of Rwanda—the twin 
components of the established perpetrator-victim line. We believe that their 
biases played an important role in supporting the RPF’s aggression, its 
penetration of the country, and the execution of its final assault on power. 
Above all, we believe that their biases and propaganda contributed substantially 
to the mass killings that followed—all in accord with the needs of actual U.S. 
policy."




________________________________
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Sun, March 6, 2011 4:00:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Humanitarian imperialism

Clinton's attack on Serbia is the model for "humanitarian intervention," and it 
was a lie from the beginning.  78 days of NATO bombing in 1999 did not prevent 
Serbian reprisals but caused them. Even Clinton administration officials now 
admit t that it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political 
and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains 
NATO’s war. The real reason for the bombing was that Yugoslavia was a lone 
holdout in Europe to the political and economic programs of the Clinton 
administration and its allies. 



On 3/6/11 3:33 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote: 
[If you're US foreign policy planners named "Power" and "Slaughter," you may be 
disposed from that reason alone to recommend killing - "from the best possible 
motives." Or maybe it's simply female sympathy for (some) victims - that happens 
to serve US imperial interests...] 

>
>
>From <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/weekinreview/06protect.html?_r=1&hp>:
>>
...Mr. Obama has told his staff to study previous uprisings in Eastern Europe, 
the Middle East and Southeast Asia for lessons about how they unfolded and what 
role the United States played. He won’t lack for impassioned advice: Among his 
staff members is Samantha Power, a human-rights expert who won a Pulitzer Prize 
for a book chronicling American foreign-policy responses to genocide. 


Former officials are also taking up the call. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently 
resigned as the State Department’s director of policy planning, said in a tweet: 
“The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan 
protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted.” 


Ms. Slaughter, a former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and 
International Affairs at Princeton, said winning support for a no-flight zone in 
the United Nations Security Council would be tricky, given Russian and Chinese 
resistance. Instead, she favors a request by a provisional government in Libya, 
endorsed by the African Union and the Arab League. 


The trouble is figuring out who might make up such a government... 


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