Genocide

A detailed Summary of Genocide

Genocide as defined in international law is the intentional and systematic destruction, wholly or in part, by a government of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. When some people think of genocide they automatically think about World War II and the annihilation of the Jews by the Nazi's. Although genocide was committed, World War II is not the only example of it. In the mid 90's the people of the African nation of Rwanda were experiencing the same thing the Jews did in the 1940's. The Hutu government of Rwanda succeeded in murdering 800,000 Tutsi in the course of a hundred days (Powers 84). In Samantha Powers article "Bystanders to Genocide" she argues that if the United States interfered with the conflict earlier then so many Tutsi lives would not have been lost. It wasn't that cut and dry for the Unites States government they had to think about their own national interest, and they had to think about what would be the best for its people, and so many other factors.

Samantha Powers argues that the United States inherently stayed out of the Rwanda Hutu Tutsi conflict. She claims that the U.S government vowed never to let genocide occur again after World War II, and the development of the Genocide Conventi

The United States is always helping out other countries and intervening in conflicts. Just because they didn't do all that they could have in the Rwanda conflict the whole world is blaming them. Even though the U.S had nothing to do with the atrocities in Rwanda the sole entity that Powers is blaming in the U.S. government. In the U.S's defense it does not have to look out for other countries. It is not the mother country and doesn't not have tog et involved in everything, and if they don't get involved they shouldn't be looked down upon. The U.S is its own country, and what it did or did not do for Rwanda was what they felt was in there "best interest" at that time, and like always hindsight is always 20/20.

Powers main argument is that the U.S did not get involved into a conflict that obviously needed their attention. She uses the term "genocide" because it has a much stronger effect to the audience then saying that the Hutu government was killing the Tutsi. The term "genocide" implies murder on a large scope. After the "genocide" of World War II the world is very sympathetic and apathetic toward such atrocities, and would do anything to stop that from occurring again. She feels that if Clinton recognizes that it was genocide then he might be obligated to fight for what the government agreed to so many years before. She think that he is purposely avoiding the term, but since there was a civil war going on at the same time, Clinton might not have actually known about the thousands of Rwandans being killed each day because of genocide. The term genocide, Christopher Warren feels has a "particular magic" (97) because it is a term that eludes to terrible happenings around the world. If people use this word instead of something like murder it has a much stronger effect to the people. Powers uses this to get the reader to agree with her stance. She make the U.S seem responsible for what happened in Rwanda because they didn't do anything to stop something so extreme.

Powers also happens to oversimplify the fact that the United St

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Approximate Word count = 1408
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous