y. ”We did support a racist army, and didn’t take the necessary distance at the moment of the genocide. I think France would do a good thing in accepting its responsibility.”
Also (via Roger Simon) here:
Nothing the outside world has learned in the intervening decade dilutes the guilt of those who stood by and allowed the killing to go on, when (as Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire pointed out) 2,000 Western troops could probably have stopped it in its tracks.
Indeed, the two big things we have learned are:
* The Rwanda genocide was no spontaneous outburst of traditional tribal hatred, but a carefully planned mass murder operation. And,
* France played a key role in enabling that operation. […]
What eventually brought the massacres to an end was the victory of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front.
But the killing continued even after the RPF took control of the capital Kigali – thanks to a belated, U.N.-authorized intervention by French troops. One of the most cynical and immoral acts of the 20th century, this French intervention (“Operation Turquoise”) was actually on behalf of the Hutu murderers in the “Interhamwe” militia and the (French trained and equipped) Rwandan army.
The French troops created a “safe area” where the old Hutu government retained control – and there the slaughter of Tutsis continued under the noses of the so-called peacekeepers until July.
Which makes it all the more sickening that the American Left and much of European opinion now hold France up as the bulwark of international law, multilateralism and morality in international politics.
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