Ignoring Real Genocide

Another shameful episode of US foreign policy:

Declassified U.S. documents show the Clinton administration refused to label the 1994 mass killings in Rwanda as a genocide. One State Department document read: "Be careful … Genocide finding could commit U.S.G. to actually 'do something.'" At a press briefing in 1994, Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner asked: "How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?" State Department spokesperson Christine Shelly responded, "Alan, that’s just not a question that I’m in a position to answer." Samantha Power, who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, described the U.S. inaction in her 2001 article, "Bystanders to Genocide." She wrote, "The United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements." We speak to Emily Willard of the National Security Archive, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, Professor Scott Straus, author of "The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda."

If you watch the clip, you can see Clinton making some flowery excuse for not doing anything.

I'm going to make a new rule here:

The more elaborate the rhetoric, the more colorful the prose that a leader uses-- the greater the evil and the larger the lie they are covering up.