Great Throughts Treasury

"Four years after Lemkin had introduced 'genocide' to the world, the General Assembly had unanimously passed a law banning it."

"History is laden with belligerent leaders using humanitarian rhetoric to mask geopolitical aims. History also shows how often ill-informed moralism has led to foreign entanglements that do more harm than good."

"Human rights groups were quicker than they had ever been to document atrocities. Helsinki Watch, the European arm of what would become known as Human Rights Watch, had begun dispatching field missions to the Balkans in 1991."

"Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere."

"Halabja quickly became known as the Kurdish Hiroshima. In three days of attacks, victims were exposed to mustard gas, which burns, mutates DNA, and causes malformations and cancer; and the nerve gases sarin and tabun, which can kill, paralyze, or cause immediate and lasting neuropsychiatric damage. Doctors suspect that the dreaded VX gas and the biological agent aflatoxin were also employed. Some 5,000 Kurds were killed immediately. Thousands more were injured. Iraq usually justified its attacks against the Kurds on the grounds that it aimed to destroy the saboteurs aligned with the Iranians."

"I actually think in the Palestine-Israeli situation there?s an abundance of information and what we don?t need is some kind of early warning mechanism. What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in helping the situation. And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing, or investing I think more than sacrificing, really billions of dollars not in servicing Israel?s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine; investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support I think what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old, you know, Srebrenica kind or the Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage?and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses which we?re seeing there?but you have to go in as if you?re serious. You have to put something on the line. And unfortunately imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful, it?s a terrible thing to do, it?s fundamentally undemocratic. But sadly, we don?t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy?or they?re meant to anyway. And there, it?s essential that the same set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to people who are fundamentally, politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called ?Sharafat.?"

"I happen to miss the Constitution; I thought it was a good document."

"Human Rights Watch decided that henceforth anytime that 'genocide or mass slaughter' could be diagnosed around the world, the group would have to put aside its mistrust of military power and recommend armed intervention."

"I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with."

"I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world."

"I believe the United States is the greatest country on Earth. I really do."

"I think I would like the sort of job where you can work away in obscurity to try and improve things, without being caught up in the political maelstrom."

"I note that Russia has implied a right to take military action in the Crimea if invited to do so by the prime minister of Crimea. As the Government of Russia well knows, this has no legal basis. The prohibition on the use of force would be rendered moot were sub-national authorities able to unilaterally invite military intervention by a neighboring state. Under the Ukrainian constitution, only the Ukrainian Rada can approve the presence of foreign troops."

"I think Obama is right when he talks about the rule of law as a cornerstone of what the United States should stand for. That can encompass our elected officials' adherence to law and our country's return to the Geneva Conventions."

"I worry about Zimbabweans. They bend, they bend, they bend, they bend - where do the people break? How long can they go on scrounging for food in garbage dumps and using the moisture from sewage drains to plant vegetables?"

"I think the United States must change its relationship to the Millennium Development Goals. It would make an enormous difference practically and in terms of public diplomacy if we were not second-to-last among rich countries in giving aid away; if we were giving money away, investing in societies that actually don?t have anything to do with our national security. The instances where we make sacrifices strictly in order to benefit other people are so few and far between. Even our democracy rhetoric is so rooted in a story about security and how non-democracies become threats and so on."

"If American leaders ever used the word "genocide" to describe atrocities, it is likely that this public support would have grown. A July 1994 Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll found that when citizens were asked, "If genocidal situations occur, do you think that the U.N., including the U.S., should intervene with whatever force is necessary to stop the acts of genocide" - 65 percent said "always" or "in most cases," while 23 per cent said "only when American interests are also involved" and just 6 percent said "never." When asked how they would react if a U.N. commission decided that events in Bosnia and Rwanda constituted genocide, 80 percent said they would favor intervention in both places. It is possible that such support is superficial and would fade once U.S. forces incurred casualties, but it also arose without prompting from American leaders. In no postwar case of genocide has an American president attempted to argue that mass atrocity makes military or political intervention morally necessary. Yet it is notable that when the United States has intervened for other reasons, its leaders have garnered popular support by appealing to American sensibilities regarding mass killing. In the lead-up to the Gulf War, for example. Saddam Hussein was transformed into American "Enemy #1" not so much because he seized Kuwaiti oil fields but because he was "another Hitler" who "killed Kuwaiti babies." The advancement of humanitarian values in fact appears to "sell" in a way that "protecting American oil interests" in Kuwait or "saving the NATO alliance" in Bosnia do not. When it came time to deploy American soldiers as part of a postwar NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, for instance, two-thirds of Americans polled found "stopping the killing" a persuasive reason for deploying troops (64 percent, CBS/NYT 12/9/95), while only 29 percent agreed with Clinton that deployment was necessary so as to maintain a stable Europe and preserve American leadership."

"If you represent everyone, in some ways you represent no one. You're un-owned."

"If we are concerned about the rights of Russian-speaking minorities, the United States is prepared to work with Russia and this Council to protect them. We have proposed and wholeheartedly support the immediate deployment of international observers and monitors from the UN or OSCE to ensure that the people about whom Russia expresses such concern are protected from abuse and to elucidate for the world the facts on the ground. The solution to this crisis is not difficult to envision. There is a way out. And that is through direct and immediate dialogue by Russia with the Government of Ukraine, the immediate pull-back of Russia?s military forces, the restoration of Ukraine?s territorial integrity, and the urgent deployment of observers and human rights monitors, not through more threats and more distortions."

"In 1982 the United States began to provide nonlethal covert assistance [to Cambodia ]. Estimated initially at $5 million a year, this funding grew to $12 million by 1985, when Congress authorized up to $5 million in overt aid. The Khmer Rouge coalition continued to occupy the UN seat as its guerillas battled the Heng Samrin regime from the countryside. KR tactics changed little. KR soldiers captured and executed foreign tourists and inflicted terror upon those Cambodians who had the misfortune to live under KR control."

"If Dole might pick up a stray political point or two, his long track record of concern for the suffering of people in the Balkans indicated that the prime reasons he hounded Clinton about his Bosnia policy was that he [sic] wanted to see it changed."

"If every abuse were to become a subject of international concern, Lemkin worried, states would recoil against international law and would not respond to the greatest crime of all."

"In April 1984 Nicaragua had sued the United States at the ICJ for mining its harbors. When the court sided with Nicaragua and accepted jurisdiction, the United States walked out of the case. Neither the Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee nor the president was prepared to see the United States judged by an international court, so they now conditioned their acceptance of the genocide convention on a potent reservation, an a la carte 'opt-out' clause. The reservation held that before the United States could be called as a party to any case before the ICJ, the president would decide whether it would appear before the World Court."

"In 1995 Milosevic had given in to allied demands over Bosnia after a two-week burst of NATO bombing. Remembering the Serbs? paltry resistance and quick concessions, Pentagon officials and Clinton cabinet members predicted NATO would need to bomb for a week at most."

"In closing, Madam President, let me just emphasize again what Russia has done is wrong as a matter of law, wrong as a matter of history, wrong as a matter of policy, and dangerous. What happened in Crimea cannot be recognized as valid. We must stand together denying recognition and imposing consequences for this illegal act. In doing so, we must also be very clear that what happened in Crimea cannot be repeated in other parts of Ukraine."

"In the 2000 election, George W. Bush, who had shirked military service, succeeded in presenting himself as more reliable on national security than Al Gore."

"In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights."

"In the absence of full-fledged Congressional investigations, American policymakers rarely look back. They are bound by continuity and fealty across administrations and generations."

"In its senselessness and savagery, the conflict between Iran and Iraq bore striking parallels with World War I. The Iraqis employed chemical weapons against the Iranians; the front remained static for years; and in vicious trench warfare, wave after wave of Iranian soldier went over the top, obliterating a generation of young men and boys. The ayatollah encouraged martyrdom, which gave him spiritual cover to mask the ridiculous losses and the hollow cause. He famously deployed Iranian children as minesweepers, tying them together to walk across fields and across no-man's-land. He instructed them to wear around their necks plastic keys that would enable them to unlock the gates of paradise. Often the children were sent with no training in full frontal charge across open terrain against enemy machine-gun posts."

"In Burundi in the spring and summer of 1972, after a violent Hutu-led rebellion, members of the ruling Tutsi minority hunted down and killed tens of thousands of Hutus?And although the United States was the world's main purchaser of the country's coffee, which accounted for 65 percent of Burundi's commercial revenue, the State Department opposed any suspension of commerce. Melady assured Washington that his response had been 'to follow our strict policy of noninvolvement in the internal affairs and to associate ourselves with urgent relief efforts.'"

"In July 1995 Secretary of State Warren Christopher signed a communiqu‚ that found Iraq had committed genocide against Iraq's rural Kurds and that endorsed Human Rights Watch's efforts to file a case against Iraq. To this day, however, no Iraqi soldier or political leader has been punished for atrocities committed against the Kurds."

"In many cases the Senators and their staffs overreact in terms of what they feel needs to be done to placate the special interests. They go one better. Or they anticipate a problem even before somebody has complained. They are so sensitive. They don't say to themselves, 'We vote with this lobby nine out of ten times, so we can afford to go our own way this time.' It is not a rational calculation. They feel that nothing is worth the risk of losing the support."

"In May 1987 Iraq became the first country ever to attack its own citizens with chemical weapons."

"In most of the cases of genocide documented in this book, U.S. officials who ?did not know? or ?did not fully appreciate? chose not to."

"In phase one NATO jets had struck Serb antiaircraft defenses and command bunkers. On March 29, 1999, NATO entered phase two, increasing the number of planes from 400 to 1,000 and broadening its list of targets to include Yugoslavia ?s infrastructure below the forty-fourth parallel, far south of Belgrade. On April 3, day eleven of the war, NATO moved into phase three, which permitted attacks on targets in Belgrade."

"Indeed, if there was ever a time to be concerned about human rights in Crimea, it is now. Credible reports indicate that cases of harassment have been directed by Russian allies against ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars. The Tatar community, which constitutes 12 percent of the population, is rightly fearful of again falling victim to deportation or discrimination. The Crimean First Deputy Prime Minister has recently announced that Crimean Tatars will be evicted from some of their land, which he claimed is needed for, quote, ?infrastructure projects.? The body of Reshat Ahmetov, a Crimean Tatar, was discovered Sunday. He had last been seen at a protest in Simferopol on March 3rd. Ahmetov?s body reportedly showed signs of torture. Russian troops are reportedly storming apartment buildings housing Ukrainian troops, border guards, veterans and their families, threatening them and demanding their immediate departure. In addition, we are seriously concerned about activists, civil society leaders, media restrictions, and journalists in Crimea. Accordingly, the United States supports the rapid deployment of international observers in all parts of Ukraine, and we believe it is instructive that the Government of Ukraine has repeatedly welcomed their deployment, and the Russian Federation has not."

"In the last fifty years, nothing has gone quite as planned. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will also celebrate its fiftieth birthday in December, has become a bedrock document in international law, outlining the basic rights that individuals all over the world are entitled to claim. The Genocide Convention initially succeeded in articulating a post-war international consensus that genocide was a monstrous evil. But, as Pol Pot, Hussein, Karadzic and the Rwandan Interahamwe discovered, neither it nor the rhetorical commitments of the American leaders have translated into a willingness to halt the masterminds of genocide."

"In the Bosnian war, the truth had never been in short supply. What was missing was U.S. willingness to risk its own soldiers on the ground or to convince the Europeans to support NATO bombing from the air. As a result, the ethnic cleansing and genocide against the country's Muslims proceeded apace, and more than 200,000 Bosnians were killed."

"Iraq had its cover: Kurdish rebels had fought alongside Iranians, Iraq was at war with Iran, and the war, everyone knew, was brutal. The fog of war again obscured an act of genocide."

"India is at the vanguard of figuring out how to exploit technology and innovation on behalf of democratic accountability."

"Influence is best measured not only by military hardware and GDP, but also by other people's perceptions that we, the United States, are using our power legitimately. That belief ? that we are acting in the interests of the global commons and in accordance with the rule of law ? is what the military would call a 'force multiplier.' It enhances the U.S. ability to get what it wants from other countries and other players."

"International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police."

"Iran's Khomeini in turn began urging Iraqi Shiites to rise up against Hussein. Iraq countered by pledging to support Iranian rebel movements. Border skirmishes commenced. In April 1979Iraq executed the leading Shiite clergyman, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr. And on September 4, 1980, Iran began shelling Iraqi border towns. To this day, when Iraqis celebrate the war, they mark its beginning as September 4. But it was not until September 22 that Iraq launched a strike into the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzistan."

"Iraqi president Saddam Hussein appointed his cousin Ali Hassaan al-Majid as secretary-general of the Northern Bureau, one of five administrative zones in Iraq?.Al-Majid ordered Kurds to move out of the homes they had inhabited for centuries and into collective centers, where the state would be able to monitor them. Any Kurd who remained in the so-called 'prohibited zones' and refused to resettle in the new government housing complexes would henceforth be considered a traitor and marked for extinction. Iraqi special police and regulars carried out al-Majid's master plan, cleansing, gassing, and killing with bureaucratic precision. The Iraqi offensive began in 1987 and peaked between February and September 1988 in what was known as the Anfal campaign?.In eight consecutive, carefully coordinated waves of the Anfal, they wiped out (or 'Saddamized') Kurdish life in rural Iraq?.Hussein did not set out to exterminate every last Kurd in Iraq, as Hitler had tried against the Jews. Nor did he order all the educated to be murdered, as Pol Pot had done. In fact, Kurds in Iraq's cities were terrorized no more than the [sic] rest of Iraq's petrified citizenry. Genocide was probably not even Hussein's primary objective. His main aim was to eliminate the Kurdish insurgency. But it was clear at the time and has become even clearer since that the destruction of Iraq's rural Kurdish population was the means he chose to end that rebellion. Kurdish civilians were rounded up and executed or gassed not because of anything they as individuals did but simply because they were Kurds. In 1987-1988 Saddam Hussein's forces destroyed several thousand Iraqi Kurdish villages and hamlets and killed close to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds, nearly all of whom were unarmed and many of whom were women and children."

"Iraqi gas attacks received public attention, but most Kurds who died in the Anfal were killed in mass executions."

"It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter."

"It may more crucially mean sacrificing ? or investing, I think, more than sacrificing ? billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel?s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you?re serious, you have to put something on the line."

"It is easy to view these individuals as overly credulous or politically obtuse. But how many of us who look back at the genocides of the twentieth century including the Holocaust, do not believe that these people were right?"

"It did not take long to discover that the American response to the Bosnia genocide was in fact the most robust of the century. The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point on condemning it as it occurred."

"It may mean sacrificing?or investing I think more than sacrificing?literally billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel?s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine."