America's Role in the Rwanda Genocide
The worse decision President Clinton made of his career was failing to act, to stop, to intervene, the mass genocide of Rwanda in the mid-1990's. Eventually, over 800,000 were slaughtered as the 100 day crime wave ripped through the country after the airplane carrying the Rwandan president was show down. It was a war between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. The Hutus greatly out manned and gunned the feeble Tutsi tribe. The butchery and rape haunts American policy because America could have intervened, which would have stopped it.
After the 100 days, American psyche and policy was one guilt. It is one of atonement. The Rwandan president today is Paul Kagame who came to power after the genocide. He is Tutsi and with his forces, drove the Hutus away. At first, after the 100 days ended, Kagame, was as ruthless as the Hutu tribe conducting their own mass murders of Hutus. It was revenge. Like the Nazis with Jews, his men would round up unarmed Hutus by the thousands and simply machine gun them down. The UN confirms this. Between April and September, 1994, 35,000 died in this manner as Kagame approved this. The UN report indicated that the operations were systematic and military like, not random. It was a planned operation to remove the Hutu tribe.
Did the US know this? Yes, the report stated and did nothing because it did not want to weaken the new Rwandan government! In 1995, the Rwandan government under Kagame received at least 50% of its budget from US and other foreign aid. Kagame was the new African Hitler that America supported trying to atone their not stopping the first Hutu genocide. His troops would kill any outside journalists or others who spoke negatively about him or the government. Political rivals were tossed in jail or killed. Kagame, with tacit US support, attacked into Zaire and the Congo in 1996, on the premise that many armed Hutus were gathering planning to enter Rwanda to take revenge. These were not small clashes, but the UN estimates that over the years it has been occurring, five million have been murdered. The battle within the Congo has been very bloody because Kagame is certain that the Congo government supported the original Hutu genocide.
The Rwandan search and destroy missions into the Congo over the past decade has resulted in over 300,000 Hutus killed. According to the UN report date in 2010, most of these Hutus were not armed Hutu men, but women and children. Kagame, like Hitler, wanted to erase the Hutu tribe from earth. The US gave the tacit approval of these missions because it was thought the Hutus were the bad guys. They had started the mess back in 1994. The UN report called it genocide in any sense of the word.
The UN calls Paul Kagame a war criminal that the US "basically" approved of through inaction or omission regarding controlling his genocide against the Hutu. Worse, Kagame, today, tours the US college campuses and receives honorary degrees for his "good" in the world. He is toasted as a great man. These students and men probably are naive about what his history really is and only hear about what good he has done for Rwanda. When Kagame speaks, he tells America what they want to hear. That is, an advance, modern, African country that is vibrant and likes Western investment. Even now, Kagame controls the Rwandan Patriotic Party like Hitler controlled his. He will remain in power until 2017.
Even now, there is still the American atonement and guilt that Kagame exploits almost like blackmail. The American government remains complicit in the murders that continue in the Congo by looking the other way.
Tragic.
