Dallas Morning News, TX
Getting cozy with GENOCIDE
Now that it seems so common, is the word losing its
power to shock us into action? asks RON ROSENBAUM
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, September 16, 2007
It’s good that we’re beginning to get all relaxed and comfy about
genocide, isn’t it? Samantha Power’s important book on the subject was
called A Problem >From Hell. But in recent discourse, genocide seems
to have become A Problem From Heck.
One aspect of the shift is a new "realism" about genocide that
reflects the way the world has come to tolerate it: We now tacitly
concede that in practice, we can’t or won’t do much more than deplore
it and learn to live with it.
Another – more troubling – trend is toward what we might call
"defining genocide down": redefining genocide to refer to lesser
episodes of killing and thus lessening the power of the word to shock.
One has to admire the honesty of Barack Obama, who argued in the
Democratic YouTube debate that even if rapid withdrawal of troops from
Iraq might lead to genocide, he’d favor going ahead and getting the
troops out. He wasn’t saying he was happy about the possibility – he
was just expressing the view that the word genocide shouldn’t freeze
all discourse: He wouldn’t let it be a deal-breaker.
Some were shocked. Others agreed that fear of future genocide
shouldn’t stop efforts to end the current killing.
It’s something Mr. Obama has clearly thought about. As he told The
Associated Press later, "If [genocide is] the criteria by which we are
making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that
argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now – where
millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife –
which we haven’t done. We would be deploying unilaterally and
occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done."
In other words, let’s get real. Let’s not pretend we care about the
possibility of future genocide in Iraq if we do little or nothing
about it where it’s already happening now.
Mr. Obama’s comments came in the context of an emerging debate over
the consequences of U.S. withdrawal. The right half of the
blogosphere points to the genocide in Cambodia after the
U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and argues that something similar could
transpire in Mesopotamia; the left half contends that to stay in Iraq
is to contribute to an ongoing slow-motion genocide.
It’s an argument in which the definition of genocide can get lost in
the welter of terms that range from "ethnic strife" to "ethnic
cleansing" to "mass murder." But by blurring the definition of
genocide, by conflating it with various forms of what might be called
"genocide-lite," we risk diminishing the moral weight and admonitory
power of the term.
Samantha Power believes defining genocide properly is so important
that she devotes three chapters, nearly 50 pages, of her book to the
evolution of the definition first coined in the 20th century by
Raphael Lemkin. Mr. Lemkin’s definition, finally adopted in 1948 by
the U.N. General Assembly, classified as genocide "acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group."
It is a definition that has lasted nearly six decades, and it is
important to remember that it refers not merely to war between nations
or war within nations, however terrible. It is not about the death of
soldiers in armed combat or in foreign or civil strife. It is about
the mass murder of defenseless civilians – men, women and children –
because they belong to a certain kind of group.
The problem is that while it’s going on, when it can still be stopped,
it’s often not evident just how grave a crime is being committed or
whether it will eventually result in genocide if it’s allowed to go
unchecked.
At what point, for instance, does ethnic cleansing become genocide?
Ethnic cleansing can refer to the forced transfer of populations – bad
enough – rather than their indiscriminate murder. Ethnic cleansing
becomes genocide when it involves mass murder with the intent to
exterminate. Genocide is about annihilation.
In some respects, genocide occupies an unsettling moral category that
gives the scale of the killing less weight than the intention behind
it. Why was the death of an estimated 1 million Sunnis and Shiites in
the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s not genocide, but the death of a "mere"
tens of thousands in the former Yugoslavia often called at least
incipient genocide? Does getting punctilious about the difference
between ethnic cleansing and genocide tacitly serve to diminish
outrage over the former? (We must intervene to stop genocide. Ethnic
cleansing? It depends.)
In the run-up to the war, and in many retrospective defenses of it,
Saddam Hussein was often characterized as guilty of genocide; he was
certainly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. But one can
make arguments for and against the use of the term. Did the gassing
and slaughter of the Kurds and the murder of other dissidents and
groups constitute genocide or ethnic cleansing? And should it have
made a difference?
Mr. Obama’s comment that he would not let the prospect of genocide get
in the way of a troop withdrawal in Iraq highlights the problem we
have with the word and the thing. How would we distinguish between
ethnic strife or ethnic cleansing and genocide in the sectarian
violence that might follow an Iraq withdrawal? How much killing would
prompt cries for reintervention of some kind to stop it?
For a period in the ’90s, after 800,000 people were killed in the 1994
Rwandan genocide, and after President Bill Clinton’s 1998 apology for
failing to intervene and stop it, there was much brighter line:
Genocide was seen as something that demanded both immediate action and
blame for inaction. The lesson of Rwanda helped make the ultimately
successful case for action to halt the incipient genocide in the
former Yugoslavia.
And the success, however mixed, in the former Yugoslavia helped
convince a faction of liberals to support regime change in Iraq on
humanitarian grounds. Genocide and its prevention, not the illusory
weapons of mass destruction, was their prime rationale (if not
President Bush’s).
But now realpolitik has entered the world of genocide
calculations. For one thing, after Rwanda, after Yugoslavia and during
Darfur, there seems to be an emerging consensus that genocide is not
the exception but the rule in human affairs. The past century, from
the Armenians to the Jews to the Rwandans, from Bosnia to the Congo to
Darfur, certainly makes it seem that way.
And now that genocide seems so common, the word seems to have lost
some of its special power to move us, to shock us into action.
As a result, even if you call the chaos and killing that might follow
troop withdrawal genocide, it’s not enough to derail the
exit. Genocide: Happens all the time; we can’t be paralyzed by the
word.
While there’s little doubt something bad would happen in Iraq, it’s
impossible to know whether that badness will amount to genocide and
how we should react to the probability of cataclysmic violence that
falls short of it.
Our response to Darfur, however, an unequivocal ongoing genocide,
illustrates what one might call a feel-good reaction to the
phenomenon. It keeps going on and on, and we keep denouncing it and
feeling good about ourselves for denouncing it, and nothing gets
done. Again, the YouTube debate is illustrative. A question from a
Darfur refugee camp prompted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to say
he’d been there, at that very refugee camp. And Joe Biden, not to be
outdone, proudly boasted that he’d been there, too.
And look how much these powerful politicians who have been there have
accomplished! At least Mr. Biden offered some specific policies that
might help Darfur: a no-fly zone to prevent the strafing of the
starving and even, if I heard him right, U.S. troops. A vast army of,
um, 2,500 that could somehow save the day. Good luck, Darfur.
The real question – the question that should be asked of every
candidate, Republican and Democrat – is this one:
What would you do if you saw another Rwanda developing? In other
words, a genocide that has little to do with previous
U.S. intervention and is not our fault in any direct way, but one we
could prevent – at a cost: U.S. troops, U.S. lives. Mr. Clinton has
apologized for his failure to intervene in Rwanda. Do you agree that
the United States should commit itself to preventing genocide anywhere
it threatens to occur?
Of course, every presidential candidate would evade the hard question
by promising to "work with the United Nations and the world community"
to prevent any such eventualities. But look how well that’s worked in
Darfur. Tell us: When the U.N. fails, as it almost always does, how
many U.S. troops, how many U.S. lives? To save how many people? The
question asks the candidates to make a cold, hard calculation. But
then, they want to be president, don’t they? And that’s one of the job
requirements.
One of the most interesting discussions of this issue – an
intellectual defense of the idea of getting comfortable with genocide
– came in a recent column by the influential pseudonymous Asia Times
columnist "Spengler."
Spengler’s recent column cites David Rieff, a liberal who originally
supported Iraq regime change on "humanitarian" – anti-genocide –
grounds. Mr. Rieff has changed his mind about anti-genocide
intervention (see our Q&A with him in "Point of Contact" on 1P) on the
grounds that the U.S. doesn’t have the power to prevent the genocide,
nor is the cost one we can afford to pay.
Spengler argues that we should look at genocide as a "normative"
aspect of human history, not a new or especially abhorrent one.
He attempts to prove this by defining genocide down – by classifying
virtually all war of any kind as genocide, simply because lots of
people are killed. While Raphael Lemkin took pains to define genocide
as the deliberate attempt at the annihilation of groups, Spengler
incorporates it into the ordinary course of human events. Nothing new,
nothing to get excited about here. Move along.
He makes two questionable claims, for example: that the slaughter of
American Indians in America wasn’t genocide but that the Civil War
was, although he pays tribute to its "moral splendor." A new notion
entirely: morally splendid genocide.
Yes, war may have civilian casualties in great numbers. But defeating
an army is not committing genocide. Deliberately destroying civilian
populations is. The North didn’t intend to murder all slaveholding
Southern whites, only to end the secession and (belatedly) to free the
slaves. Intention matters, and it’s hard to have useful discussion if
terms are so far apart.
The outlandishness of Spengler’s reasoning, and the forcefulness of
Mr. Rieff’s rejection of the genocide argument about the Iraq
aftermath, indicate just how desperate we are not to be unduly
disturbed or hindered by the special cruelty and hatefulness of
genocide or even the word. If we say, "Look, it’s happened all the
time in the past, every war is a genocide, and it seems like it’s
going to keep happening no matter how much or little we do," there’s
less to be outraged about, less to be alarmed about, less to take
action against.
Of course, it’s more important to fight genocide than to fight over
the definition of genocide, but getting too comfortable with genocide,
blurring the definition, defining it down, can undermine the fight.
It’s still a "problem from hell."
Ron Rosenbaum is author of "The Shakespeare Wars." A version of this
essay first appeared on Slate.com.