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c3a4bfb
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I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, . No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships--gone. She went on living, but with a as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths--until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.
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anonymity
born-again
clean-slate
extinction
family
genocide
germans
misery
nabokov
nazis
rwanda
rwandan-genocide
short-stories
signs-and-symbols
survivors
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Christopher Hitchens |
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f35c66d
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The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
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apathy
auschewitz
evil
genocide
good
hitler
hollow
holocaust
indifference
rwanda
sentiment
south-sudan
sudan
talk
tolerance
west
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Philip Gourevitch |
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5bb6eb0
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George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism--the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it--is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.
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al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory
anti-war
ba-ath-party
bill-clinton
democratic-party-united-states
evil
george-w-bush
iraq
iraq-war
leftism
liberalism
madeleine-albright
moral-absolutism
moral-relativism
morality
opposition-to-the-iraq-war
peace-movement
presidency-of-bill-clinton
presidency-of-george-w-bush
rwanda
rwandan-genocide
saddam-hussein
sudan
united-nations
united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0bcac6f
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In all my travels, I've never seen a country's population more determined to forgive, and to build and succeed than in Rwanda.
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forgiveness
genocide
rwanda
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Rick Warren |
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0995624
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Many signs point to the fact that the youth of the Third World will no longer tolerate living in circumstances that give them no hope for the future. From the young boys I met in the demobilization camps in Sierra Leone to the suicide bombers of Palestine and Chechnya, to the young terrorists who fly planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we can no longer afford to ignore them. We have to take concrete steps to remove the causes of their rage, or we have to be prepared to suffer the consequences.
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chechnya
international
palestine
politics
rwanda
sierra-leone
suicide-bombers
terrorism
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Roméo Dallaire |
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3e082c1
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Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.
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rwanda
war
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Philip Gourevitch |
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2b234bd
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(On the beginning of the mid-1990s' genocidal war in Rwanda:) Within six weeks, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing about three-quarters of the Tutsi then remaining in Rwanda, or 11% of Rwanda's total population, had been killed.
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genocide
rwanda
tutsi
war
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Jared Diamond |
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d12b120
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The last time I heard an orthodox Marxist statement that was music to my ears was from a member of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, during the mass slaughter in the country. 'The terms Hutu and Tutsi,' he said severely, 'are merely ideological constructs, describing different relationships to the means and mode of production.' But of course!
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ideology
marxism
rwanda
rwandan-genocide
rwandan-patriotic-front
tutsis
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Christopher Hitchens |