As If Hitler Still Walked This Earth
A few months
ago I blogged: "Lenin,
Hitler and Stalin collectively make today’s mass murder look like child’s play."
But, today I realized that's not quite right. Reading "Peacekeepers At War" in this weekend's Wall Street Journal I
was reminded that "the
unrest in Congo has claimed more than five million lives since the late 1990's
- most of them civilians from starvation and disease..."
The article deals with how the UN's peacekeeping role has changed to more aggressive tactics. "On another occasion, U.N. attack helicopters with troops on the ground killed more than 200 members of a militia group moving on Goma."
Now, I ask you, have you ever seen the phrase "U.N. attack helicopters" used before?
The indigenous tribes of the Rwanda-Congo region murder villages of civilians whenever an enemy militia encamps nearby attempting to claim more territory. This is a part of their warfare culture. Does anything get any more primal than this? If those UN helicopters do not attack then hundreds of villagers will be killed. A complex quandry.
The Hutu in the region hate the Tutsis. Within each group there are multiple factions (each with its own armed militia), similar to the different strands of the Taliban America is at war with.
So, now the U.N. deployment to the region, featuring troops from Guatemala among other countries, which has a long history of ineptitude according to the WSJ article, is attacking militias if they attempt to harm civilians. This is something new...and controversial. The article points out that many disagree with this new U.N. display of force. It is too easy to end up affecting the power of one militia over another.
Beyond this superbly written feature article, I re-surmised my assessment of the scale of genocide in the postmodern world. The Rwandan Genocide claimed more than one million human beings in a mere 100 days. The Second Congo War, as the article points out, has claimed the lives of many millions more of innocent civilians.
In Rwanda and Congo there still live men who lead human beings to commit ruthlessness on the epic scale comparable to anything Hitler or Stalin dished out. As fixated as I have been lately on the horrible situation in Syria where 13,000 are now dead, in Africa things are far worse and have been for some time now.
The article deals with how the UN's peacekeeping role has changed to more aggressive tactics. "On another occasion, U.N. attack helicopters with troops on the ground killed more than 200 members of a militia group moving on Goma."
Now, I ask you, have you ever seen the phrase "U.N. attack helicopters" used before?
The indigenous tribes of the Rwanda-Congo region murder villages of civilians whenever an enemy militia encamps nearby attempting to claim more territory. This is a part of their warfare culture. Does anything get any more primal than this? If those UN helicopters do not attack then hundreds of villagers will be killed. A complex quandry.
The Hutu in the region hate the Tutsis. Within each group there are multiple factions (each with its own armed militia), similar to the different strands of the Taliban America is at war with.
So, now the U.N. deployment to the region, featuring troops from Guatemala among other countries, which has a long history of ineptitude according to the WSJ article, is attacking militias if they attempt to harm civilians. This is something new...and controversial. The article points out that many disagree with this new U.N. display of force. It is too easy to end up affecting the power of one militia over another.
Beyond this superbly written feature article, I re-surmised my assessment of the scale of genocide in the postmodern world. The Rwandan Genocide claimed more than one million human beings in a mere 100 days. The Second Congo War, as the article points out, has claimed the lives of many millions more of innocent civilians.
In Rwanda and Congo there still live men who lead human beings to commit ruthlessness on the epic scale comparable to anything Hitler or Stalin dished out. As fixated as I have been lately on the horrible situation in Syria where 13,000 are now dead, in Africa things are far worse and have been for some time now.
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