Bill Clinton and Rwandan Genocide

A Gallup poll confirmed again what has been true for several years now. Bill Clinton remains

the most popular living ex president today, and the most popular president of the last quarter century.

Some of this is understandable. Look at the other choices. But what Clinton is remembered for shows

the tunnel vision of many Americans. Ask many Americans what the worst thing Clinton ever did,

and likely many don't remember, or never knew in the first place. Clinton refused to halt mass

murders in the 1994 genocide in the central African nation of Rwanda.

Using the shooting down of the plane of the Rwandan President by unknown forces as an

excuse, the Rwandan military and Hutu paramilitary militias carried out killings at a rate of 8,000 a

day, with little outside intervention. Genocide was finally ended by Rwanda's government being

overthrown by a largely Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

The final body count was horrifying: 800,000 murders of Tutsis and non-racist Hutus

killed in 100 days. This was a low technology genocide, carried out with mostly machetes, spears,

knives, and even farming tools. This was not for lack of trying to get small arms and other military

weapons. About one out of six genocide deaths was by guns, and had more guns been available, the

death count would have been far higher and the rate of murders more rapid.

Obviously Clinton was not the only guilty party:

1. Hutu bigots in the Rwandan Army and Interahamwe and Impuzamugambe militias who

carried out the genocide clearly deserve the greatest blame.

2. Belgian colonialists who ruled Rwanda for over forty years created the artificial and pseudo-

scientific categories of Hutu and Tutsi.

3. The French government played a direct role in arming and training the Rwandan army,

supplying advisers to the military. To the French government's credit, it ceased shipping weapons once

they knew the genocide was going on. The French government also created a safe zone both inside and

just outside Rwanda. This did save many Rwandan lives. But the French zone was also clearly set up

with the intent of protecting former Rwandan government and army members, those who had carried

out the genocide, since they were French allies.

4. Chinese businesses played a role in arming the militias with cheap machetes.

5. Pat Robertson, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Operation Blessing diverted

millions in aid intended for victims of the genocide.

Bill Clinton's main guilt during the Rwandan genocide is one of deliberate delay, much like a

man who blocks someone from calling an ambulance or the police when someone is being murdered.

Legally one calls the crime depraved indifference, but not murder. In recent years, Clinton himself

recognized his guilt and repeatedly publicly apologized.

What could Clinton have done? The disturbing truth is, any major power could have sent as

little as 5,000 troops and halted the great majority of the killings. This was a genocide carried out

by one of the least formidable militaries in the world, along with militias almost entirely armed with

just machetes and spears. Sending forces into Rwanda two weeks after news of the atrocities got out

would likely have saved perhaps three quarters of the victims. The death toll could have been

reduced from 800,000 to perhaps under 200,000. Possible US military losses would have been very

minimal, in the low hundreds, likely in the dozens. Even Clinton himself later admitted that at a

minimum 300,000 Rwandan lives could have been saved.

That atrocities were likely to break out, virtually anyone with a knowledge of East African

history could have predicted. There were earlier massacres on both sides in 1959, 1963, 1969, 1972,

and even 1988, only six years earlier.

Clinton cannot (and indeed today does not) claim he was ignorant about what was going on. For

Clinton had access to an enormous amount of information telling him exactly what was

happening in Rwanda. The US embassy in Rwanda and neighboring countries kept a steady stream of

reports on the genocide as it happened. The State Department, CIA, and other intelligence agencies also

steadfastly reported what was happening.

Clinton was even personally visited by Rwandan activist Monique Mujawamariya, who

strongly urged him to intervene. French officials also tried to intervene and work with the US, only to

be turned away. The Black Congressional Caucus also urged Clinton to act. But Clinton and all other

leaders of western powers except France limited themselves to evacuating their own citizens.

Most Clinton administration officials do not even recall cabinet level meetings on Rwanda. There were

not only no actions to stop genocide, there were actual actions to make sure no other governments,

or the UN, could stop genocide.

The United Nations had peacekeepers in the area monitoring a ceasefire prior to the outbreak of

massacres. Once violence began, the UN tried to limit genocide as much as its lightly armed monitors

could. The UN asked the Clinton administration for trucks to evacuate. Clinton's government actually

dithered over who would pay for the use of American trucks. This is equal to watching murder victims

dying slowly in front of you because you want someone else to pay for your gas before you take them

to the hospital.

UN troops were also poorly equipped, so most of their trucks broke down. The US government

refused to pay its back dues, making humanitarian rescue more difficult. The Clinton administration

went one step further, successfully pushing for all UN monitoring to stop and peacekeepers be

withdrawn. So using that analogy of a man letting victims die in front of him, Clinton in effect talked

medical personnel trying to save the victims, or police at the scene trying to arrest murderers, into

going away.

Not only did Clinton’s administration go out of their way to avoid stopping the genocide or aid

its victims, it did so publicly. One of the more surreal episodes in recent memory was to see Clinton’s

Press Secretary Mike McCurry and State Department Spokesperson Christine Shelley issue

elaborate denials that this was genocide. Instead the violence was always referred to as “acts of

genocide.” Kafka could have written such lines.

So why did Clinton avoid doing anything? Why did his administration refuse to act, delay,

obfuscate, and refuse to admit the reality of mass murders happening in front of them? Was it racism? A

third the number of deaths in Bosnia got a much stronger response only a few years later. Clinton was

rightfully proud of winning the support of Black voters and being called “America’s first Black

president” a decade before Barack Obama. Clinton did intervene to put President Jean Aristide back in

power in Haiti after his overthrow, something almost no Americans supported except civil rights

leaders and Black congressmen.

But Clinton also had a history of ignoring or even denigrating Black concerns when it aided him

politically. In the 1992 elections he denounced Sista Souljah, a homeless rights advocate, for comments

that the media took out of context. Souljah called for an end to Black on Black crime, and the media

and Clinton both bizarrely portrayed that as a call for Blacks to mass murder whites. Clinton also

supported the end of some forms of welfare, allowing his opponents to race bait and portray welfare as

chiefly a benefit to supposedly lazy Blacks. (Most on welfare are white and formerly middle class.)

Clinton calculated, correctly as it tragically turned out, that most Americans would not care

about Rwanda. It was a place most never heard of. Rwanda had no oil or other resources Americans

needed or wanted. There was no economic interest, no military interest, no political interest. The

number of Rwandans in the US was tiny.

Meanwhile, just prior to this, Clinton had invaded Somalia with humanitarian reasons as the

rationale. Poorly planned, US troops took several dozen casualties. Somali crowds mutilated several

bodies of American servicemen, publicly displaying them in a manner that outraged many Americans.

Support for the Somalia invasion, never very high, fell to almost nothing. Clinton became determined

not to send another invasion, so much so he and his administration likely exaggerated in their minds the

chances of one failing in Rwanda. The disturbing truth is Clinton was so determined to stay out,

not even 800,000 Africans dying in graphic detail in front of the world's cameras deterred him.

While some may lay the blame on the American public's indifference, this is too easy and lazy.

For Clinton always chose to put his political ambitions before all else. Even at the end of his two terms

in office, many of his own supporters said they did not know what Clinton actually believed. His

political positions often shifted with the wind. Republicans even complained he took their positions as

his own. Had Clinton been a man of actual strong convictions rather than constant political calculations

alone, there would be hundreds of thousands of Rwandans still alive.

It is a disturbing comment on American shortsightedness that so many focus on matters such as

the Monica Lewinsky scandal over oral sex. Clinton's admirers prefer to remember economic good

times. Clinton's detractors obsess over what a powerful man did below the waist, in a manner showing

they are far more obsessed with sex than any philanderer.

Almost no one on either side of the political aisle remembers how Bill Clinton stood aside and

let many die that he could have mostly saved fairly easily. Today Clinton spends much of his time

devoted to humanitarian efforts. That cannot erase his earlier failure, but it remains to be seen if he can

do as much good as he did harm.