Probably the single greatest test of the so-called international community is whether it can prevent or stop genocide and civilian slaughter. By that measure over the last 20 years, the states that collectively comprise the United Nations have failed miserably.
In scarred but recovering places like Bosnia and Rwanda, and in suppurating wounds like Syria, the madness of intra-state slaughter continues with a cold, internal logic, impervious to external constraint.
Working with existing structures, can humankind put an end to the killing of innocents? Are genocide and ethnic cleansing ‘Western constructs,’ as many maintain? Does national sovereignty trump all considerations, even genocide?
Clearly, butchery and systematic slaughter by nations against their own have universal actuality. Clearly, genocide and ethnic cleansing have a shared human meaning.
Genocide is the suicidal expression of man’s death wish on this planet, the self-directed corollary of the mass extinction of animals now underway. At the root of genocide (whether intentional with ‘other’ groups of humans, or unintentional, with other’s species of animals), is the cancerous tendency in human consciousness to fragment the earth, and human society, beyond the breaking point.
Unspeakable rage lurks in the human heart, the malevolent accretion of millennia of grievance–the sum total of hidden hatreds as well as incalculable internal repression. That content can erupt at any time, either in the individual, or in a government under the cool, calculated direction of evil through the likes of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
It is cold-bloodedly absurd to maintain, as Assad and his supporters do, that the ‘Western’ outrage over atrocities committed in Syria is the product of the same desire for ‘regime change’ that motivated the American invasion of Iraq. And it’s evil to assert that the Obama Administration is using a ‘humanitarian pretext’ for invasion of Syria.
The invasion of Iraq has addled many people’s minds, and not just in the US and UK. Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution on February 4th that would have backed an Arab plan urging Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up power. Those vetoes unleashed hell on the people of Homs, and made the conflict in Syria another proxy war between the West and the rest.
In terms of recent history, this is the true legacy of Bush-Cheney. They not only eroded whatever moral authority the United States had left when they took power, but also blinded millions of progressives to the glaring difference between invasion by the most powerful nation-state, and international intervention to prevent or halt genocide and civilian slaughter.
The attempt to eradicate an entire population, or to decimate a dissenting group of people, whether in Rwanda, or now, in Homs, Syria, is genocide.
In 1948 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 260, under which Article I states: “Genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which [member states must] undertake to prevent and to punish.”
Because the most powerful nations are not subject to intervention does not mean that a UN pronouncement of genocide or slaughter is inherently prejudicial, and irredeemably false and flawed. Because we’ve been here before with Sarajevo in the ’90’s, in which the ‘international community stood by and let 10,000 people be slaughtered, does not mean that we can turn our backs on Homs.
The invasion of Iraq, and acts of torture and rendition by the US government and its allies, did not just violate the values and principles of America with regard to human rights. No, these illegal and immoral acts by the most powerful nation–formerly a promoter and defender, at least nominally, of human rights–have seriously eroded the possibility that the worst scourges of man may be put behind us.
Nonetheless, viewing genocide and ethnic cleansing through the warped prism of recent history, much less the corrupt lenses of Western governments, leads to a heartless disregard of the indescribable suffering of millions of people at the hands of evil regimes.
National sovereignty the highest political principle is a dead letter in a global society. Maintaining it, under present circumstances, as the highest principle is the definition of reactionary, and contributes to genocide and slaughter.
Martin LeFevre
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