by Danny Brownstein

Created on: February 20, 2008

There was once a time in America's history when we perpetrated the mass kidnapping of millions upon millions of innocent people, depopulating entire countries and enslaving and torturing their people. We assumed that they were somehow inexplicably less than human because the color of their skin was different. The terrible time in America's history has passed, and we have moved far beyond that point of racial hatred. Instead of causing crimes against humanity, we sit idly by and do nothing while they are committed! Oh wait. That's just as bad.

Obviously, no country can go to war with every despot that abuses his own people. The United States could not have gone to war with Stalinist Russia, a full-sized industrial nation, despite its poor human rights record. It would have been unfeasible to have launched a war against powerful China during Mao's cultural revolution, despite the thousands killed by it. But just because you cannot intervene in every case does not mean the opposite should be true: that you should never intervene. The most famous instance of the United States turning a blind eye to genocide was in Rwanda, when the assassination of the country's president in April 1994 sparked one of the most horrific genocides in world history. Over 500,000 Tutsis (the minority tribe of Rwanda) were boxed into the cities by roadblocks and then killed, along with 300,000 Hutus (the majority tribe) that were accused of being Tutsi sympathizers. And all the while, as this horrific genocide played itself out, the United States did nothing to stop this country's ruthless persecution of humanity. Rwanda was not a powerful nation to be feared in a war. There was no reason not to go in there, except lack of will. Even in the Holocaust, when Adolf Hitler led the mass murder of 6 million jews, we only intervened in response to the Japanese and German declarations of war upon us. And even then, instead of bombing railroads to stop the transport of Jews to concentration camps, or undertaking missions to liberate such camps, the US only fought to stop Germany's army, not their vicious genocide.

The pattern has not changed. Right now in Darfur a death toll of over 200,000 has been the result of government sponsored violence. But right now, we are too busy fighting unnecessary wars to save the lives of innocents. Of course, in all these instances it must be remembered that while the US did nothing, it was not entirely their fault. After all, no other countries intervened in the

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