Just
over 12 years ago when Théoneste Bagosora
and the Fascist Hutu Power movement in Rwanda were
planning their genocide against the Tutsis, they
appreciated that freedom from international intervention
was essential if they were to achieve maximum output
from their killing industry. A small but persistent
obstacle had for some time stood in their way, thwarting
their annihilationist ambitions. It was in the form
of the Canadian army general, Romeo Dallaire and
the miniscule United Nations peacekeeping force
under his command. For months Dallaire had been
doing his utmost to alert the United Nations to
the situation on the ground in Rwanda. His efforts
went unheeded. Rather than put more troops in to
pre-empt the massacre, the UN withdrew them.
The
UN stomach finally collapsed into its bowels when
Hutu Power murdered ten Belgian paratroopers on
the first day of the genocide. It was a clinically
planned military strike aimed at frightening off
any international intervention. As Philip Gourevitch
has observed, 'one of the greatest fears of anybody
who thinks about engaging in peacekeeping forces
is having body bags come back ...' It worked. The
US under the Clinton presidency a few months earlier
had its fingers burnt in Somalia when it lost 18
of its men fighting Somali warlords. The figure
of around 1,000 dead Somalis in the same incident
seems to have gone as one of those underreported
after facts.
Rwanda
better known for its gorillas than any capacity
to produce oil, was never listed as one of those
countries that would benefit from the spread of
Western democracy. The Clinton administration insisted
on the deletion of the term 'genocide' from any
internal paperwork discussing the Rwandan terror.
If genocide slipped into the discourse then there
was an obligation on the part of the UN to intervene
with US troops to the fore. The US stayed its hand:
gorillas - what use are they to Texan oil billionaires?
Internationally
the eyes of many in officialdom were averted. Military
intervention came from the French who mounted Operation
Turquoise late into the genocide as a means to protect
the fascists of Hutu Power, who by then were on
the back-foot as a result of a table-turning offensive
launched by Paul Kagame and the largely Tutsi Rwandan
Patriotic Front. The fascist genocidaires had been
given the green light to proceed with their butchery.
The killing of the Belgian UN troops had served
its purpose.
Although
current Israeli deputy premier Shimon Perez, in
May 1994 while serving his country as its foreign
minister, spoke out strongly against the Rwandan
genocide, his government has since taken a leaf
out of the Hutu Power book. This week Israelofascism
lashed out at UN peacekeepers, murdering four of
them. The bomb used in their murders was a precision
guided missile provided by the US who rushed batches
of them to the Israeli military after it had launched
its assault on Lebanon and at a time when it was
clear that the civilian infrastructure, rather than
the Hezbollah network, was the primary target. UN
secretary general Kofi Anan accused the Israelis
of deliberately targeting the UN troops, as did
Irish foreign minister Dermot Ahern. Israeli military
commanders had been informed of the location of
the observers on numerous occasions. The senior
Irish commander in the area Lieutenant Colonel John
Molloy warned his Israeli counterparts on six occasions
that their bombs were perilously close to the position
of the UN soldiers. Other UN forces made a further
four calls. It is hard to draw any conclusion other
than their murders were planned given that UN soldiers
who went in to retrieve the bodies were also subject
to Israeli attack.
The
Israelis want no restraining hand on their shoulder
as they go about their murderous wrath, nothing
to interfere with their preparations for slaughtering
sections of the civilian population in Lebanon.
In the US president they have found their type of
guy. His administration's contempt for the UN is
one shared by Israel. One vetoes UN resolutions
critical of Israeli as frequently as the other defies
them.
The
Israeli murder machines would never make it off
their runways was it not for American power. This
makes the US wholly culpable in the Lebanon massacres.
As one former US assistant secretary to the Treasury
has commented, President Bush 'has blocked every
effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese
civilians.' Despite the dance of deceit performed
by the Bush administration to portray current US
strategy as a major break with the realpolitik of
the Kissinger/Nixon era, which was premised on ignoring
human rights in favour of US national interest,
there is continuity from that era to today which
belies neocon spin. Any change has been in form,
not content. During the Argentine Dirty War Henry
Kissinger met with the country's military dictatorship
and gave it the green light for a murderous repression
which led to torture, killing, and disappearances
by the thousand: 'We want a stable situation. We
won't cause you unnecessary difficulties. If you
can finish before Congress gets back, the better.'
'Plus
ca change, plus c'est la meme chose' - Israel, like
Argentina, is being advised to murder quickly and,
if possible, out of sight.
