Not coming to the aid of fellow man is criminal
The Universe
(August 10, 2003)
As I write this, the mortal rounds are falling on the helpless people of Monrovia in Liberia. It is a horrible war the is killing innocent civilians, hunger and disease is spreading. The word watches while the poor die and the weeping and crying for help goes on.
The people have made banners calling on the US to intervene and save them from certain death. So the US Marines arrived by helicopter to protect their embassy and their citizens. The bodies of the dead are piled up at their gates.
The heart of Christianity and the basic value underpinning humanitarian concern is to help others without selfish rewards. This is lost on many political leaders and bureaucrats today who ignore suffering humanity. There has to be something big in it for them before they will act to do good and end evil. Their national interest is too frequently that of big business. What shameless hypocrisy it is when we see these leaders piously going to church as thousands die and they do nothing to help.
The point is
that if nation as powerful as the US and Britain resort to deception and
scare tactics to justify war against a hated and tyrannical regime as in
Iraq, then it must be consistent and do the same where disport reign and the
victims cry out for peace.
In Liberia, a peace-keeping force could save thousands of lives. The swift
invasion of Iraq by hundreds of thousands of troops, costing $ 1 billion a
week, was drive by motives of gain and profit.
Where there is nothing to gain no oil gold or diamonds but the lives of the poor, nothing is done. Inaction in Rwanda and the political paralysis that overcame the UN in the face of this genocide was its hour of greatest shame. It allowed a bloody genocide to go on week after week. It is a history of moral ineptitude and criminal neglect. Will the same happen in Liberia?
By April 7, 1994, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, manned mostly by Belgian troops, knew about the massacre of Tutsis by the Hutus, who were the ruling power. However, the troops were forbidden by the UN assistance to Kofi Annan to intervene as the slaughter murder and torture went on all around them. It would violate their monitoring mandate. Ten UN troops were tricked into surrendering their weapons to the killing and were tortured and murdered.
President
Clinton did nothing but say how sad he was. Two days later, the American,
French, and Belgium government sent in planes to airlift their embassy
people and citizens to safety. The embassy cats and dogs were also
evacuated.
However they abandoned all their faithful Rwandan staff to terrible fate
death by clubbing, hacking with machete, stabbing with knifes or sometimes a
merciful bullet.
The troops pulled out as the weeping people blocked their trucks, begging them to stay. They left as ordered and byn dawn, every one of the refugees were brutally slaughtered.
The US and the UN would not call it genocide. Reminders of the do nothing attitude that led to the holocaust were too politically sensitive. By mid- May 500,000 Rwandans were killing but there was still no intervention.
By the middle of July 1994, the Tutsi Liberation troops broke through to the capital Kigali and the Hutus fled to Zaire. The genocide ended. It was the most efficient ever recorded, 800,000 murdered in 100 days, better than the Nazi killing rate. Virious gorenments and the UN officials said sorry and I suppose they went to church.
