Great Throughts Treasury

"It was knowingly and lightheartedly that Genghis Khan sent thousands of women and children to their deaths. History sees in him only the founder of a state?The aim of war is not to reach definite lines but to annihilate the enemy physically. It is by this means that we shall obtain the vital living space that we need. Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?' [Hitler] A week later, on September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. In 1942 Hitler restored Talaat's ashes to Turkey, where the Turkish government enshrined the fallen hero's remains in a mausoleum on the Hill of Liberty in Istanbul."

"It was not until September 1988 that the flight of tens of thousands of Kurds into Turkey forced the United States to condemn the regime for using poisonous gas against its own people."

"It was Vietnam, the enemy of the United States, that in January 1979 finally dislodged the bloody Communist radicals. In response, the United States, which in 1978 had at last begun to condemn the KR, reversed itself, siding with the Cambodian perpetrators of genocide against the Vietnamese aggressors."

"Just as the Iraqi government had done while it was gassing the Kurds, the Serbs stalled brilliantly during this period, employing tactics that they had mastered in the war. They never refused access to international observers; they granted it so as not to arouse suspicious but then blocked or 'postponed' it on the grounds that they could not guarantee the safety of visitors. Despite the repetitiveness of the sequence, diplomats and ICRC officials joined the pantomime, failing to grasp that they had a very short time to influence Serb behavior."

"It was Tutsi (RPF) rebels under the command of Paul Kagame who eventually brought the genocide to a halt."

"Kurdish refugees were adamant about what they witnessed and experienced. David Korn, a State Department Middle East specialist who later interviewed dozens of Kurdish survivors, recalls, 'The facts were available, but you don't get the full facts unless you want the full facts.'"

"Lemkin simply could not believe that diplomats, drafters, and concerned citizens would attempt to make low-level rights abuses the subject of international law, which he was convinced should be reserved for the most extreme crimes, which were most likely to elude national prosecution. Slavery and genocide were appropriate international crimes: abridgement of speech and press, which were patently unenforceable, were not."

"Lemkin also attempted to mobilize American grassroots groups. The international human rights organizations familiar to us today did not yet exist. Amnesty International was not founded until 1961, and Helsinki Watch, which later grew in Human Rights Watch, was set up only in 1978."

"Listening to the representative of Russia, one might think that Moscow had just become the rapid response arm of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. So many of the assertions made this afternoon by the Russian Federation are without basis in reality. Let?s begin with a clear and candid assessment of the facts. It is a fact that Russian military forces have taken over Ukrainian border posts. It is a fact that Russia has taken over the ferry terminal in Kerch. It is a fact that Russian ships are moving in and around Sevastapol. It is a fact that Russian forces are blocking mobile telephone services in some areas. It is a fact that Russia has surrounded or taken over practically all Ukrainian military facilities in Crimea. It is a fact that today Russian jets entered Ukrainian airspace. It is also a fact that independent journalists continue to report that there is no evidence of violence against Russian or pro-Russian communities."

"Morgenthau had to remind himself that one of the prerogatives of sovereignty was that states and statesmen could do as they pleased within their own borders. "Technically," he noted to himself, "I had no right to interfere. According to the cold-blooded legalities of the situation, the treatment of Turkish subjects by the Turkish Government was purely a domestic affair; unless it directly affected American lives and American interests, it was outside the concern of the American Government." The ambassador found this maddening."

"Many came around once they had personal contact with the traumatized refugees."

"My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed."

"NATO?s desire to avoid risks to its pilots appeared to increase the civilian toll of war."

"McGovern argued that the United States should take the lead politically and militarily. To him Vietnam and Cambodia had little, apart from geography, in common. In Vietnam U.S. force had squared off against an indigenous independence movement headed by a popularly backed leader, Ho Chi Minh. In Cambodia, by contrast, Pol Pot and a 'handful of fanatics' were imposing their vision on millions of Cambodians. In light of Pol Pot's 'bloodthirsty' rule, his victimized populace could not possibly support him; indeed, McGovern believed the Cambodians would welcome rescue from the 'murderous, slaughtering regime.'"

"More than 1 million soldiers and civilians on both sides had died in the war. Not an inch of land had changed hands. On August 20, 1988, Iran and Iraq signed an armistice ending their bloody struggle."

"Nearly four decades would pass before the United States would ratify the treaty, and fifty years would elapse before the international community would convict anyone for genocide. Article 2: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

"Obama, like every other leader on earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president? So much of it is about: 'Is he going to be good for the Jews?'"

"No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do."

"No one has to explain to Ukraine?s new government the need to have open communications, not only with leaders of the country?s Russian ethnic minority in the Crimea and elsewhere, but also with its neighbors. That is why, when the current crisis began, the government sent its former Chief of Defense to the region to try to defuse the situation. A second emissary was prevented from entering the Crimean Rada to engage in discussions. And it is why Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly reached out to Russia. Russia needs to reciprocate and begin to engage directly with the Government of Ukraine."

"On April 10 a New York Times front-page article quoted the Red Cross claim that 'tens of thousands' were dead, 8,000 in Kigali alone, and that corpses were 'in the houses, in the streets, everywhere.' The Post the same day led its front-page story with a description of 'a pile of corpses six feet high' outside the main hospital."

"On April 16, 1991 [after the Gulf War], the United States joined with its allies and launched Operation Provide Comfort, carving out a 'safe haven' for Kurds north of the thirty-sixty parallel in northern Iraq. Allied ground forces would set up relief camps in Iraq , and U.S. , British, and French aircraft would patrol from the skies. Provide Comfort was perhaps the most promising indicator of what the post-Cold War world might bring in the way of genocide prevention. Under the command of Lieutenant General John M. Shalikashvilli, some 12,000 U.S. soldiers helped patrol the region as part of a 21,000-troop allied ground effort. This marked an unprecedented intervention in the internal affairs of a state for humanitarian reasons. Thanks to the allied effort, the Iraqi Kurds were able to return home and, with the protection of NATO jets overheard, govern themselves."

"On April 9 and 10, in five different convoys, Ambassador Rawson and 250 Americans were evacuated from Kigali and other points. 'When we left, the cars were stopped and searched,' Rawson says. 'It would have been impossible to get Tutsi through.' All told, thirty-five local employees of the U.S. embassy were killed in the genocide.'"

"On December 25, 1978, twelve Vietnamese divisions, or some 100,000 Vietnamese troops, retaliated against KR attacks by land. Teaming up with an estimated 20,000 Cambodian insurgents, they rolled swiftly through the Cambodian countryside. Despite U.S. intelligence predictions that the KR would constitute a potent military foe, McGovern's earlier forecast of rapid collapse turned out to be prescient. Lacking popular support, the Khmer Rouge and its leaders almost immediately to the northern jungle of Cambodia and across the Thai border. The Vietnamese completed their lightning-speed victory with the seizure of Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979."

"On July 11, 1995, a year after Tutsi rebels finally halted the Rwandan genocide and a full three years into the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces did what few thought they would dare to do. They overran weak UN defenses and seized the safe area of Srebrenica, which was home to 40,000 Muslim men, women, and children."

"On April 19 Human Rights Watch, which, through Des Forges, had excellent sources on the ground in Rwanda, estimated the number of dead at 100,000 and called on the Security Council to use the term 'genocide.' The 100,000 figure (which proved to be a gross underestimation) was picked up immediately by the Western media, endorsed by the Red Cross, and featured on the front page of the Washington Post.'"

"On May 24, 1999, two months into NATO?s campaign, the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which had been set up originally to respond to atrocities committed in Croatia and Bosnia, indicted Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the previous two months in Kosovo. It was the first time a head of state had been charged during an armed conflict with violations of international law."

"On the rare occasions when U.N. blue helmets have made the news in the past, it has unfortunately too often been in the context of situations where peacekeepers have failed to shield civilians, or even when the peacekeepers themselves have been involved in abuse."

"One mechanism for altering the calculus of U.S. leaders would be to make them publicly or professionally accountable for inaction."

"One of the things that a president needs in the face of genocide is resolve."

"Only U.S. resources and leadership can turn such institutions [as the International Criminal Court] into forces for the international stability that is indispensable to U.S. security. Besides, giving up a pinch of sovereignty will not deprive the United States of the tremendous military and economic leverage it has at its disposal as a last resort."

"Only with the thawing of the Cold War and the visit of Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to former arch-enemy China in May 1989 did Cambodia cease to be a pawn on the superpowers' chessboard. With the Chinese and the Soviets no longer interested in fighting a proxy war through the KR and the Vietnamese, the United States had no reason to maintain support for the KR. Not until July 1990 did Secretary of State James Baker write a letter to Senate majority leader George Mitchell laying out a new U.S. policy toward the KR at the UN. Henceforth, the United States would vote against the KR coalition at the United Nations and at last support the flow of humanitarian aid into Vietnam and Cambodia ."

"Our ability to exercise leadership in the UN ? to protect our core national security interests ? is directly tied to meeting our financial obligations."

"Op-ed writers, human rights activists, former diplomats, and journalists had spoken out quite forcefully throughout the war in opposition to Clinton's policy, but nothing ignited their fury quite like the fall of the so-called safe area. The events of mid-July provoked a rare degree of unanimity on the editorial pages in the United States, and those in Paris and London as well."

"Over the course of the last century, the United States has made modest progress in its responses to genocide. The persistence and proliferation of dissenters within the U.S. government and human rights advocates outside it have made a policy of silence in the face of genocide more difficult to sustain."

"Over the years, Western governments have been criticized for working with foreign police who have proved abusive or corrupt."

"Our citizens will do better and be safer in a world where rules are observed, prosperity is increasing, human suffering is alleviated, and threats to our well-being are contained. The United Nations is an indispensable partner in all of this."

"Policy ? good, steady policy ? is made by the 'tough-minded? To talk of suffering is to lose 'effectiveness,' almost to lose one's grip. It is seen as a sign that one's rational arguments are weak.' He had urged that policymakers elevate human costs and benefits to the category of 'one of the principal and unashamedly legitimate considerations in any decision.'"

"Our Armenian fellow countrymen? because? they have? attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state? have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior? and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined upon all Ottomans."

"President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president."

"President Wilson, reflecting the overwhelming view of the American people, stayed on the sidelines of World War I as long as he could. And when the United States finally entered the conflict against Germany in April 1917, he refused to declare war on or even break off relations with the Ottoman Empire. 'We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us,' Wilson told Congress, 'but it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us and not heed any others.' In the end it was Turkey that broke off ties with the United States."

"Part of the problem in galvanizing a firm response lies in the instruments that were intended to serve as the solution. The Genocide Convention, which will celebrate its fifty-year anniversary in December, never received either the commitment of the United States or the teeth for enforcement that it needed to become "law" in any meaningful sense. Despite the indispensability of the United States in drafting the 1948 Convention -- and some 3,000 speeches by Senator William Proxmire on the Senate floor on behalf of it -- the Senate did not pass the Act until 1988 -- a full forty years after President Truman signed it. American law-makers were petrified that African- or Native Americans would haul the United States before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on genocide charges, or that other states would infringe upon American national sovereignty. By the time the Convention had finally become U.S. law, the Congress had attached so many reservations that ratification was rendered largely meaningless. For instance, by requiring that the United States would never be brought before the ICJ on a genocide count, the Congress barred the United States (under the legal rule of reciprocity) from filing charges against other nations -- such as Hussein's Iraq or Pol Pot's Cambodia. The United States has tended to further international law, only so long as it does not find its sovereignty impinged or its practices or officials called before international judiciary bodies. When it came to enforcing the convention's provisions, the drafters envisioned that a standing International Criminal Court would come into existence almost immediately. Ironically, that court may very well be established this year - the very same year that the Convention celebrates its fifty-year-anniversary. And, already Washington's insistence that the United States (via the UN Security Council) retain prosecutorial authority, indicates that, as with the Convention itself, Washington's reluctance to have its own citizens and soldiers held accountable under international law may well impair the legitimacy and effectiveness of the new body."

"Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import."

"President Reagan, of course, did more than any other person to entrench the Republican reputation for toughness on national security."

"Raphael Lemkin was looking for an all-encompassing word that would describe the assaults on all aspects of nationhood ? physical, biological, political, social, cultural, economic and religious. He wanted to connote not only full-scale extermination but also other means of destruction: mass deportation, the lowering of birthrate by separating men from women, economic exploitation, progressive starvation, and the suppression of the intelligentsia who served as national leaders."

"Reports from Rwanda were severe enough to distinguish Hutu killers from ordinary combatants in civil war. And they certainly warranted a heightened intelligence gathering operation to snap satellite photos of large gatherings of Rwandan civilians or of mass graves, to intercept military communications, and to infiltrate the country in person."

"Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen."

"Russian mobilization is in response to an imaginary threat."

"Russia has every right to wish events had turned out differently. It doesn't have the right to express that using military force."

"Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence."

"Russian military action is not a human rights protection mission. It is a violation of international law and a violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the independent nation of Ukraine, and a breach of Russia?s Helsinki Commitments and its UN obligations. The central issue is whether the recent change of government in Ukraine constitutes a danger to Russia?s legitimate interests of such a nature and extent that Russia is justified in intervening militarily in Ukraine, seizing control of public facilities, and issuing military ultimatums to elements of the Ukrainian military. The answer, of course, is no. Russian military bases in Ukraine are secure. The new government in Kyiv has pledged to honor all of its existing international agreements, including those covering Russian bases. Russian mobilization is a response to an imaginary threat. A second issue is whether the population of the Crimea or other parts of eastern Ukraine, are at risk because of the new government. There is no evidence of this. Military action cannot be justified on the basis of threats that haven?t been made and aren?t being carried out. There is no evidence, for example, that churches in Eastern Ukraine are being or will be attacked; the allegation is without basis. There is no evidence that ethnic Russians are in danger. On the contrary, the new Ukrainian government has placed a priority on internal reconciliation and political inclusivity. President Turchinov ? the acting President ? has made clear his opposition to any restriction on the use of the Russian tongue."