Citation
Shameful Dawdling on Rwanda
One can stipulate that the U.S. has no vital
interests or historical ties in Rwanda that might
justify sending troops to this tormented central
African country. That said, the Clinton Administra-
tion chose an awful time to delay logistical aid to
U.N. peacekeepers, and a worse time to apply a
semantic sponge to crimes against humanity.
Just the other day, President Clinton was in
France summoning the memories of a just war
against a genocidal foe. Meantime the appalling
butchery continues in Rwanda, where rebel militias
last week slaughtered three Catholic bishops; the
worth of a cease-fire agreement announced yester-
day remains to be tested. Yet a Paralyzed Pentagon
quibbles over nickels and dimes instead of rushing
U.S, armored vehicles to the first elements of a
projected force of 5,500 U.N, peacekeepers.
The bill to the U.N. for this logistical aid is $9.5
million, with delivery costs reckoned at about $6
million; the U.N. is aiso being charged a leasing fee
of $375,000 for the 50 M-113 armored personnel
carriers, Defense officials insist that the vehicles
cannot be flown from Frankfurt to Entebbe in |
Uganda until the lease agreement is concluded by
the U.N. The green-eyeshade brigade is doubtless
right, but this is not a routine arms transaction: it is
a response to a humanitarian disaster. Blame for
not slashing through this red tape rests with the
White House and the National Security Council...’
This haggling over leasing arrangements is
being perpetrated by the U.N.'s leading deadbeat;
the U.S. owes nearly $2 billion in treaty-mandated
dues and assessments. What adds a truly dismaying
flavor to this miserable affair is the Administra-
tion’s simultaneous admonition to its officials to
avoid describing the massacres in Rwanda as geno-
cide, Instead, spokesmen have been instructed to
say that “acts of genocide may have occurred."
This dainty euphemism flies in the face of daily
reports of ethnic killings that can only be called
genocidal. What really seems to worry the Clinton
team is that talk of genocide may increase clamor
for doing more to stop it, especially since the U.S. is
a party to the Genocide Convention.
