Great Throughts Treasury

"There are something like 300 anti-genocide chapters on college campuses around the country. It's bigger than the anti-apartheid movement. There are something like 500 high school chapters devoted to stopping the genocide in Darfur. Evangelicals have joined it. Jewish groups have joined it."

"There will be situations where the priority is self-defense."

"There is an enormous protection void."

"They all wear the Kurdish costume, and so you can't distinguish between one who carries a weapon and one who does not."

"They could not flirt. Only [the political body] could authorize sexual relationships. The pairings for weddings were announced en masse at the commune assemblies."

"They could not own private property. All money and property were abolished. The national bank was blown up."

"They could not pray. Chapels and temples were pillaged. Devout Muslims were often forced to eat pork. Buddhist monks were defrocked, their pagodas converted into grain silos."

"They could not reminisce. Memories of past life were banned. Families were separated. Children were 'reeducated' and induced to inform on parents who might be attempting to mask their 'bourgeois' pasts. 'Cambodia,' a colonial term, was replaced by 'Democratic Kampuchea.'"

"Throughout history, when societies face tough economic times, we have seen democratic reforms deferred, decreased trust in government, persecution of minority groups, and a general shrinking of the democratic space."

"Time and again though U.S. officials would learn that huge numbers of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalization that a firmer U.S. stand would make little difference. Time and again American assumptions and policies would be contested by Americans in the field closest to the slaughter, who would try to stir the imaginations of their political superiors."

"Tonight the OSCE will begin deploying monitors to Ukraine. These monitors can provide neutral and needed assessments of the situation on the ground. Their presence is urgently necessary in Crimea and in key cities in eastern Ukraine. The United States calls upon Russia to ensure that their access is not impeded. The leadership in Moscow may well be unhappy about former President Yanukovych?s decision to flee Ukraine and move in with them. Russia may be displeased with the new government, which was approved by Ukraine?s parliament by an overwhelming majority, including members of Yanukovych?s own party. Russia has every right to wish that events in Ukraine had turned out differently, but it does not have the right to express that unhappiness by using military force or by trying to convince the world community that up is down and black is white. Russia?s calls to turn back time to implement the February 21 Agreement ring hollow. It was Yanukovych who failed to abide by the terms of that agreement, fleeing Kyiv, and ultimately Ukraine."

"Through the years, many American presidents had supported the [Genocide Convention]. But when Ronald Reagan did so sincerely, it undermined the longstanding Republican opposition on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 'We couldn't have done it without Reagan,' Proxmire says. 'He cut the ground right out from under the right wing.'"

"Today in Vienna, Russia was the lone country to block an OSCE monitoring mission. There, Russia was dramatically outnumbered. It was the lone dissenting voice out of 57 countries. Fifty-six, it seemed, had a different view. Russian officials say that they understand the urgency, but they vote with their feet, relying on their military forces and refusing to allow the deployment of those who could help diffuse the crisis, and prevent further violence. After hearing my Russian colleague?s assault on the Assistant Secretary General?s report minutes ago, I see the logic of Russian obstruction. Objective information is inconvenient to the Russian tale. We call on all parties to support these observer missions, including their access to Crimea."

"Too many people in and out of government had staked their reputations, their careers, and their own self-esteem on the positions they took during the [Vietnam] war. Each side wanted the postwar era to shore up those old positions and prove them correct. News was [seen]? as potential ammunition against old American opponents, as proof of America's guilt or honor."

"Turkish deniers are becoming the equivalent--socially, culturally--of Holocaust deniers."

"Turkish representatives in the United States predictably blurred the picture with denials and defenses. The Turkish consul, Djelal Munif Bey, told the New York Times, 'All those who have been killed were of the rebellious element who were caught red-handed or while otherwise committing traitorous acts against the Turkish Government, and not women and children, as some of these fabricated reports would have the Americans believe.' But the same representative added that if innocent lives had in fact been lost, that was because in wartime 'discrimination is utterly impossible, and it is not alone the offender who suffers the penalty of his act, but also the innocent whom he drags with him?The Armenians have only themselves to blame."

"U.S. interest in Cambodia during the civil war was completely derivative of U.S. designs on Vietnam. So when U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam in January 1973, the bombing of Cambodia became harder to justify. In August 1973 Congress finally stepped in to ban the air campaign. President Nixon was furious. He blamed Congress for weakening regional security and 'raising doubts in the mind [sic] of both friends and adversaries' about U.S. 'resolve.'"

"U.S. officials spin themselves (as well as the American public) about the nature of the violence in question and the likely impact of an American intervention. They render the bloodshed two-sided and inevitable, not genocidal. They insist that any proposed U.S. response will be futile. Indeed, it may even do more harm than good, bringing perverse consequences to the victims and jeopardizing other precious American moral of strategic interests. They brand as 'emotional' those U.S. officials who urge intervention and who make moral arguments in a system that speaks principally in the cold language of interests. They avoid use of the word 'genocide.' Thus, they can in good conscience favor stopping genocide in the abstract, while simultaneously opposing American involvement in the moment."

"U.S. officials reluctant to criticize Iraq again took refuge in the absence of perfect information."

"U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States... Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Willie Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto, his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany."

"We are responsible for our incredulity."

"Virtually all of Darfur's six million residents are Muslim, and, because of decades of intermarriage, almost everyone has dark skin and African features."

"Vietnam's invasion had a humanitarian consequence but was not motivated by humanitarian concerns. Indeed, for a long time Vietnam and its Soviet backer had blocked investigation into the atrocities committed by their former partner in revolution. In 1978, however, as KR incursions into Vietnam escalated, Vietnam had begun detailing KR massacres."

"We fucked up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win" She is a monster, too ? that is off the record ? she is stooping to anything... if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

"We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, he will know what he is fighting against."

"We have also secured UN progress in reducing staff, freezing pay, cutting waste, increasing transparency, and strengthening oversight of peacekeeping operations. Much more needs to be done and much more can be done. With your support, we will continue our work to make the UN more effective, efficient, transparent, and accountable."

"We know that often holding those who have carried out mass atrocities accountable is at times our best tool to prevent future atrocities."

"We have all been bystanders to genocide. The crucial question is why."

"We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty. But that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact that those who were innocent today might be guilty tomorrow."

"What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid."

"We will lambaste Yasser Arafat, investing significant political capital in regime change, but we will only ritualistically take issue with Ariel Sharon."

"We worked seven days a week without a break. The only time we got off work was to see someone killed."

"We want to thank members of this Council for taking a strong stance on Russia?s intervention in Ukraine and for making clear that Russia stands alone in its failed, illogical, and mendacious attempt to justify actions that cannot be justified. Five days ago, when this Council accurately described the Crimean separatist referendum as invalid, only a single hand rose in opposition. When this Council declared that the referendum cannot form the basis for any alteration of the status of Crimea, only a single hand rose in opposition. Now, the referendum has taken place, but the national and international legal status of Crimea has not changed. A thief can steal property, but that does not confer the right of ownership on the thief."

"What we don?t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially (sic) 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. 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 that are meant to, anyway. It?s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called ?Sharafat? [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced."

"What is most shocking about America?s reaction to Turkey?s killing of Armenians, the Holocaust, Pol Pot?s reign of terror, Iraq?s slaughter of the Kurds, Bosnian Serbs' mass murder of Muslims, and the Hutu elimination of Tutsi is not that the United States refused to deploy U.S. ground forces to combat the atrocities. For much of the century, even the most ardent interventionists did not lobby for U.S. ground invasions. What is most shocking is that U.S. policy makers did almost nothing to deter the crime. Because America?s ?vital national interests? were not considered imperiled by mere genocide, senior U.S. officials did not give genocide the moral attention it warranted."

"When a major network sponsor, the American Gas Association, objected to the mention of has chambers in the 1959 teleplay version of [Judgment at Nuremberg], CBS caved in to pressure and blanked out the references. The world 'holocaust' did not appear in the New York Times until 1959."

"When Dallaire's troops had first arrived, in the fall of 1993, they had done so under a fairly traditional peacekeeping mandate known as a Chapter VI deployment ? a mission that assumes a cease-fire and a desire on both sides to comply with a peace accord. The Security Council now had to decide whether it was prepared to move from peacekeeping to peace enforcement ? that is, to a Chapter VII mission in a hostile environment. This would demand more peacekeepers with greater resources, more aggressive rules of engagement, and an explicit recognition that the UN soldiers were there to protest civilians."

"What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in service of 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 literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israeli's military, but actually in investing in the new state of Palestine."

"While the United States evacuated overland without an American military escort, the Europeans sent troops to Rwanda so that their personnel could exit by air. On April 9 [commander of UN peacekeeping forces] Dallaire watched covetously as just over 1,000 French, Belgian, and Italian soldiers descended on the Kigali airport to begin evacuating their expatriates. These commandos were clean-shaven, well fed, and heavily armed, in marked contrast to Dallaire's exhausted, hungry, ragtag peacekeeping force."

"Why and how did people live in 'a twilight between knowing and not knowing'? For starters, the threat Hitler posed to all of civilization helped overshadow his specific targeting of the Jews. Widespread anti-Semitism also contributed. It was not that readers' prejudice against Jews necessarily made them happy to hear reports of Hitler's monstrosity. Rather, their indifference to the face of Jews likely caused them to skim the stories and to focus on other aspects of the war. Others did not take the time to process the reports because they believed the Allies were doing all they could; there was no point in getting depressed about something they could not control."

"William Shawcross and others have argued that the Khmer Rouge ranks swelled primarily because of the U.S. intervention. Chhit Do, a Khmer Rouge leader from northern Cambodia who later defected, described the effect of U.S. bombing: Every time after there have been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched?.The ordinary people?sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came?.Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told?.That was what made it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over?.It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on cooperating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer rouge, sending their children off to go with them."

"When confronting most crises, whether historic or contemporary, aid agencies generally muddle along on a case-by-case basis. They weigh insufficient information, extrapolate somewhat blindly about long-term pros and cons, and reluctantly arrive at decisions meant to do the most good and the least harm."

"When dictators feel their support slipping among adults, it is not unusual for them to alter school textbooks in the hope of enlisting impressionable youths in their cause."

"When it came to the Vietnam War, Mr. McNamara was an early advocate of escalation but came to realize the flaws in the American approach earlier than many of his colleagues. Yet in public, he continued to defend the war."

"When leaders show up, nations take notice. It is also why, frankly, it is deeply concerning that even as anti-Semitism is rising in Europe, a third fewer countries are participating in the 2014 conference than took part in the 2004 conference, and only one in three of the countries that sent a foreign minister or other cabinet level official in 2004 has sent one at that level to this conference."

"When the dynamics on the ground warrant it, the United States should establish economic sanctions, freeze foreign assets, and use U.S. technical resources to deprive the killers of their means of propagating hate. With its allies, it should set up safe areas to house refugees and civilians, and protect them with well-armed and robustly mandated peacekeepers, airpower, or both."

"When they ignored genocide around the world, U.S. officials certainly did not intend to give the perpetrators the go-ahead. But since at least some killers thought they were doing the world a favor by ?cleansing? the ?undesirables,? they likely interpreted silence as consent or even support."

"When the president of the Security Council drew up a statement that named the crime 'genocide,' the United States objected. The original draft read: 'The Security Council reaffirms that the systematic killing of any ethnic group, with intent to destroy it in whole or in part constitutes an act of genocide?.The council further points out that an important body of international law exists that deals with perpetrators of genocide.' But the United States was having none of it. In a cable sent from New York to the State Department, a political advisor wrote: 'The events in Rwanda clearly seem to meet the definition of genocide in Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. However, if the council acknowledges that, it may be forced to 'take such action under the charter as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide' as provided for in Article VIII.'"

"With [the United States?] help, Israel has in recent months become a full member of two groups from which they had long been excluded? Slowly, but surely, we are chipping away at obstacles and biases."

"With almost every condemnation or citation of intelligence that appeared in the press about Cambodia in 1975 and 1976, reporters included reminders that they had only 'unconfirmed reports,' 'inconclusive accounts', or 'very fragmentary information.' This caution is warranted, but as it had done during the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, it blurred clarity and tempered conviction."