Rwanda Was Genocide. Libya Is a Civil War

By Paul D. Miller:

The president made it clear in his speech that the U.S.-led war against Libya is primarily motivated to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. “We were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale,” he said. “To brush aside America’s responsibility as a leader and – more profoundly – our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”

This gives credence to the reports that Hilary Clinton, the secretary of state, Susan Rice, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N., and Samantha Power, N.S.C. senior director for multilateral affairs, led the charge to war specifically to avoid “another Rwanda.” The latter two especially have been outspoken in their belief that the United States was wrong not to intervene to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which the ethnic Hutu Interahamwe militia slaughtered some 800,000 fellow Rwandans in a few weeks while the world watched. One diplomat told Power she shouldn’t let Libya become “Obama’s Rwanda,” according to the New York Times. Rwanda looms darkly in the liberal conscience as a powerful prod of guilt, whispering “Next time, do something. Do anything. Anything is better than nothing.”

Liberals have a point about Rwanda. It was grotesque that troop-contributing countries actually withdrew their forces from the U.N. Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), rather than beef it up with more resources and authority, as the genocide unfolded. (However, Power betrays her ignorance of military realities when she argued in her book, A Problem From Hell, that the U.N. could have stopped the genocide with the assets it had on the ground at the time).

But Libya is not Rwanda. Rwanda was genocide. Libya is a civil war.

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