IT'S FOR THE PUPPIES!
Posted on 10/17/2002 7:20:49 AM PDT by hoosierskypilot
After World War II, the "international community" determined that the most important goal of the new international system created for the post-war era would be the prevention of genocide. "Never again," we were told, and nations signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in large numbers.
Among the nations who signed were Cambodia (1950), the Congo (1962) and Rwanda (1975), though Rwanda was originally covered by Belgium’s agreement in 1952, when Rwanda was a Trust Territory administered by Belgium.
These three nations, of course, went on to become the greatest sites of genocide in the second half of the 20th century. (China's mass murders and starvation under Mao are more properly called "democide," as they did not single out a particular group or culture.)
In every case, the "international community" stood aside while the genocide took place unimpeded by the parchment barriers of international agreement. Tea, sympathy and peacekeeping forces were provided after the killing was done, but no action was taken to seriously inconvenience the killers while they were at work. International agreeements, and the international community, have proved as useless as the League of Nations was in confronting Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia.
As one article on the Rwandan genocide in Foreign Affairs puts it:
As reports of genocide reached the outside world starting in late April, public outcry spurred the United Nations to reauthorize a beefed up "UNAMIR II" on May 17. During the following month, however, the U.N. was unable to obtain any substantial contributions of troops and equipment. As a result, on June 22 the Security Council authorized France to lead its own intervention, Operation Turquoise, by which time most Tutsi were already long dead.
Nor have efforts to deter genocide by trying killers after the fact done very well. As the magazine Legal Affairs reports, Rwandan killers have turned up actually on the payroll of the "International Court" designated to try war criminals. It is, said one observer, as if Klaus Barbie had turned up on the staff at Nuremberg. Pol Pot, meanwhile, apparently died in bed.
This has led some observers to suggest that genocide isn’t something that can be addressed by international conventions or tribunals. A recent article in the Washington University Law Quarterly argues that the most important thing we can do to prevent genocide is to ensure that civilian populations are armed:
The question of genocide is one of manifest importance in the closing years of a century that has been extraordinary for the quality and quantity of its bloodshed. As Elie Wiesel has rightly pointed out, "This century is the most violent in recorded history. Never have so many people participated in the killing of so many people."
Recent events in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and many other parts of the world make it clear that the book has not yet been closed on the evil of official mass murder. Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage.
Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered--one does not usually lead to the other--but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed. (Emphasis added).
The result, conclude law professor Daniel Polsby and criminologist Don Kates, is that "a connection exists between the restrictiveness of a country's civilian weapons policy and its liability to commit genocide."
Armed citizens, they argue, are far less likely to be massacred than defenseless ones, and armed resistance to genocide is more likely to receive outside aid. It is probably no accident that the better-armed resistance to genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo drew international intervention, while the hapless Rwandans and Cambodians did not. When victims resist, what is merely cause for horror becomes cause for alarm, and those who are afraid of the conflict’s spread will support (as Europe did) intervention out of self-interest when they could not be bothered to intervene out of compassion.
It is no wonder that genocide is so often preceded by efforts to disarm the people.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
"...even if one believes that widespread ownership of firearms by law-abiding citizens leads to somewhat more crime, that is not by itself an argument against creating such a right, merely a cost to be set against the increased protection from genocide that such a right would provide."
Nuff 'ced.
1. Regardless of degrees or letters following a name, a $hit-for-brains is still a $hit-for-brains, and it seems there's a direct relationship there.
2.If these SFBs think totalitarianism is so great, why don't they emigrate to country where that's the feature, rather than staying here trying to convince us?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.