RWANDA REDUX

In 2011, after both President Obama and Vice President Biden repeatedly claimed credit for winning the war in Iraq, Obama removed the last of our troops there. As he put it, “[W]e're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.... And we are ending a war not with a final battle, but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement....” The abrupt withdrawal of all American forces was roundly criticized at the time, especially since Obama himself had earlier acknowledged that “There's no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing US presence there.”

Welcome to 2014.

It is twenty years since 1994, and Bill Clinton is generally regarded as a lovable old rogue and America's potential “First Laddie,” once Hillary is swept into power. We no longer mention the rape, the perjury, the “bimbo eruptions,” the disbarment, the impeachment, stealing the White House silverware---it's all so very last millennium, you see.

But some of us remember. And eventually, history books will be written, and Bill's little peccadilloes will have to be mentioned. And the one thing for which he will never be forgiven is the Rwandan genocide. The number the commentators have settled upon is 800,000. That's how many Rwandan Tutsis were murdered in a four month period in 1994, and they were killed not with bombs and machine guns but one by one, with machetes, with knives, with clubs, with sharpened sticks, until the Kagera River was choked with corpses. Clinton saw it all coming (I did too---it was on CNN), and did nothing. He could have stopped it, in Christopher Hitchens' famous formulation, “with a telephone call,” but he didn't bother. He (and Madeline Albright) allowed UN peacekeepers to be ordered to stand down so the Tutsis would be helpless. Later, French forces were permitted to aid the killers, again with no objection from America. Clinton's indifference to the slaughter in Rwanda will follow him forever.

There have been Christians in Northern Iraq as long as there have been Christians. There have been Yazidis for even longer. Now, however, ISIL (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has been exterminating the members of these religious minorities. They have been doing it for months. Men have been summarily executed, children have been beheaded, women have been raped and taken for sale into slavery. Obama has done nothing. Yesterday, he finally decided to drop some food and water on a mountaintop where Yazidis are trapped and starving. He also took out an ISIL artillery unit with an airstrike. Way to go, Barack.

Northern Iraq is Obama's Rwanda. In moral terms, it is far worse. Bill Clinton, though he could easily have stopped the Rwandan killing, was not responsible for it. America had nothing to do with the tribal hatred there that boiled over into genocide. Obama, however, with his precipitous withdrawal of troops from Iraq, created the conditions that have led to the current horror. He was warned of the danger when he did it. He even admitted the possibility of this happening. And now he does virtually nothing.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki