"In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something deeper---namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God, and, naturally, hope that I'm right about my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."
Thomas Nagel, "The Last Word"
Friday, April 30, 2004
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-----C.S. Lewis, "God in the Dock"
-----C.S. Lewis, "God in the Dock"
Monday, April 19, 2004
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
-----T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion" lines 33-47
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
-----T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion" lines 33-47
"I have read all of Chekhov now. He is so great, and his letters and his life and what people remember of him is greater. Yet it is consoling that if he did not know all about cruelty, gluttony, cowardice, coldness in himself, he could not have written about them. Great men feel and know everything that mean men feel, even more clearly, but they seem to have made some kind of an ascension, and these evil feelings, though they still understand them sympathetically, no longer exert any power over them."
-----Brenda Ueland, "If You Want to Write"
-----Brenda Ueland, "If You Want to Write"
Friday, April 09, 2004
on loving one's neighbor. . .
"---to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not."
-----Mere Christianity
"---to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not."
-----Mere Christianity
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Remember the Blood Frenzy of Rwanda
Genocide prevention must become a foreign policy priority to avoid a repetition of those hideous crimes.
By Samantha Power
Samantha Power is the author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction
April 4, 2004
BOSTON — When Hutu began murdering Tutsi in Rwanda 10 years ago this week, many Rwandans had to decide whether to desert their loved ones. At a church in the town of Kibuye, two Hutu sisters, each married to a Tutsi man, faced such a choice. One of the women decided to die with her husband. The other, hoping to save her 11 children, chose to leave. Because her husband was Tutsi, her children had been categorized as Tutsi and thus were technically forbidden to live. But the machete-wielding Hutu attackers had assured the woman that the children would be permitted to depart safely if she joined them.
When the woman stepped outside the church, however, the assailants butchered eight of her 11 children as she watched in horror. The youngest, a 3-year-old boy who saw his brothers and sisters slain, pleaded for his life. "Please don't kill me," he said. "I'll never be Tutsi again." The killers, unmoved, struck him down.
In three short, cruel months, between April and July 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide more efficient than that carried out by the Nazis in World War II. The killers were a varied bunch: drunk extremists chanting "Hutu power, Hutu power"; uniformed soldiers and militia men intent on wiping out the Tutsi inyenzi, or "cockroaches"; ordinary villagers who had never themselves contemplated killing before but who decided to join the frenzy.
The murderers, and their ebullient abettors, were turned into ghastly marionettes, consumed by a manic wrath. Men and women, young and old, religious and agnostic, became killers. They killed with machetes in one hand and radios broadcasting instructions in the other. They killed in churches, at traffic lights, in supermarkets and in homes. They killed after taunting, after savagely beating and, often, after raping.
The Clinton administration's response was best captured by a State Department press conference two days into the slaughter. Prudence Bushnell, the midlevel official who had been put in charge of managing the evacuation of Americans — and only Americans — from Rwanda, spoke with journalists about the Rwandan horrors. After she left the podium, State Department spokesman Michael McCurry took her place and seamlessly turned to the next item on the day's agenda: U.S. criticism of foreign governments that were preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film "Schindler's List."
"This film movingly portrays the 20th century's most horrible catastrophe," McCurry said. "And it shows that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference." McCurry urged that the film be shown worldwide.
"The most effective way to avoid the recurrence of genocidal tragedy," he declared, "is to ensure that past acts of genocide are never forgotten."
No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's, between Rwanda and the Holocaust. Neither journalists nor officials in the United States were focused then — or in the ensuing three months — on the fate of Rwanda's Tutsis.
By July 1994, when Tutsi rebels took control of the country, the killers had accomplished much of what they set out to achieve. At least 800,000 people — half of the Tutsis who had lived in Rwanda three months earlier — had been eliminated.
The Rwandan genocide revealed, more than any other event in the 20th century, the shallowness of the pledge of "never again." Again, a dozen key plotters managed to organize a society around mass murder. Again, an inconvenient minority found itself targeted for extermination. And again, the world watched.
Indeed, the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council didn't simply watch. They voted to withdraw the U.N. peacekeepers who were in Rwanda, abandoning Rwandans who had relied upon the blue helmets for their protection.
While it was once possible to view the world's neglect of Europe's Jewry as a monstrous aberration, the Rwanda genocide shows how three patterns persist: The U.S. and other states ignore the warning signs that would enable them to act early. When the killing starts, "mere genocide" doesn't command high-level attention or resources. And domestically, U.S. leaders do not fear they will pay a political price for being bystanders to genocide.
Genocide comes with ample early warning, as would-be perpetrators are careful to test the waters before plunging in. In the months preceding their slaughter, the Rwandan killers staged a number of mini-massacres in order to gauge international reaction. By January 1994, Rwanda had become so militarized — and imported machetes had become so omnipresent — that the U.N. commander in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, urgently cabled Kofi Annan, the U.N. head of peacekeeping, in New York. Dallaire warned that militia members could exterminate "up to 1,000 [Tutsis] in 20 minutes."
Dallaire sent his cable three months after 18 U.S. soldiers had been killed in a Somalia firefight. Annan, believing that the United States and its allies were unwilling to confront the militants, opted not to cross what became known as "the Mogadishu line." He buried what has become known as the "genocide fax," and the militia members took their cue.
Annan was wrong not to sound an alarm, but he accurately predicted the U.S. attitude: Stopping Rwanda's massacres was not seen as in the U.S. national interest. The foreign policy of the United States is devoted to advancing a narrow national interest, which has long been defined in terms of economic and security gains for American citizens. Genocide rarely affects such interests, so no matter how many men, women and children are killed, the occurrence of genocide rarely rises within the bureaucracy to command the attention of influential U.S. policymakers. Focusing foreign policy attention on acts of genocide would require presidential leadership, which has rarely been forthcoming.
More shocking than the U.S. avoidance of military intervention in Rwanda was the fact that President Clinton never even convened his Cabinet to discuss what might be done about the murder of nearly a million human beings. The response was low-level, and neither Bushnell nor the other career bureaucrats nor Africa specialists had the clout needed to move the machinery of a risk-averse system in time to save lives. Thus, the U.S. not only failed to intervene, it also failed to even denounce the "genocide," or to use its technology to jam the "hate radio," or to rally additional U.N. troops from other countries, or to freeze the financial assets of the killers. The Rwandan killers went utterly unchallenged.
It's easy and right to hold Clinton accountable for American by- standing, but his administration's inaction was affirmed by societywide silence. While U.S. officials dithered, the rest of us failed to generate the "noise" that would have gotten their attention. Editorial writers at the major newspapers who pushed for intervention in Bosnia made no such appeals on behalf of the Rwandans.
The Congressional Black Caucus was consumed with the refugee crisis in Haiti. And we voters never picked up our telephones, so the congressional and White House switchboards didn't ring.
Then-Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) described the relative silence in her district. "There are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas," she said, noting that Colorado was home to a research group that studied Rwanda's imperiled gorilla population. "But — it sounds terrible — people just don't know what can be done about the people."
The Clinton administration didn't help inform Americans — indeed it distorted the facts, deliberately avoiding use of the word "genocide" — and then it invoked the public and congressional indifference as yet one more alibi for its inaction.
On this historic 10-year anniversary, we must try not to allow 800,000 to become a faceless statistic. Each Rwandan lived a precious life and died a horrible death. And if we are serious about learning the "lessons of Rwanda," we must do more than remember and regret; we must press our leaders to make genocide prevention and suppression the foreign policy priority it has never been. Otherwise, when we pledge "never again Rwanda," what we will really be saying is "never again will Rwandan Hutus kill 800,000 Tutsis between April and July, 1994."
___________ Samantha Power is the author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and a lecturer in human rights policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Genocide prevention must become a foreign policy priority to avoid a repetition of those hideous crimes.
By Samantha Power
Samantha Power is the author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction
April 4, 2004
BOSTON — When Hutu began murdering Tutsi in Rwanda 10 years ago this week, many Rwandans had to decide whether to desert their loved ones. At a church in the town of Kibuye, two Hutu sisters, each married to a Tutsi man, faced such a choice. One of the women decided to die with her husband. The other, hoping to save her 11 children, chose to leave. Because her husband was Tutsi, her children had been categorized as Tutsi and thus were technically forbidden to live. But the machete-wielding Hutu attackers had assured the woman that the children would be permitted to depart safely if she joined them.
When the woman stepped outside the church, however, the assailants butchered eight of her 11 children as she watched in horror. The youngest, a 3-year-old boy who saw his brothers and sisters slain, pleaded for his life. "Please don't kill me," he said. "I'll never be Tutsi again." The killers, unmoved, struck him down.
In three short, cruel months, between April and July 1994, Rwanda experienced a genocide more efficient than that carried out by the Nazis in World War II. The killers were a varied bunch: drunk extremists chanting "Hutu power, Hutu power"; uniformed soldiers and militia men intent on wiping out the Tutsi inyenzi, or "cockroaches"; ordinary villagers who had never themselves contemplated killing before but who decided to join the frenzy.
The murderers, and their ebullient abettors, were turned into ghastly marionettes, consumed by a manic wrath. Men and women, young and old, religious and agnostic, became killers. They killed with machetes in one hand and radios broadcasting instructions in the other. They killed in churches, at traffic lights, in supermarkets and in homes. They killed after taunting, after savagely beating and, often, after raping.
The Clinton administration's response was best captured by a State Department press conference two days into the slaughter. Prudence Bushnell, the midlevel official who had been put in charge of managing the evacuation of Americans — and only Americans — from Rwanda, spoke with journalists about the Rwandan horrors. After she left the podium, State Department spokesman Michael McCurry took her place and seamlessly turned to the next item on the day's agenda: U.S. criticism of foreign governments that were preventing the screening of the Steven Spielberg film "Schindler's List."
"This film movingly portrays the 20th century's most horrible catastrophe," McCurry said. "And it shows that even in the midst of genocide, one individual can make a difference." McCurry urged that the film be shown worldwide.
"The most effective way to avoid the recurrence of genocidal tragedy," he declared, "is to ensure that past acts of genocide are never forgotten."
No one made any connection between Bushnell's remarks and McCurry's, between Rwanda and the Holocaust. Neither journalists nor officials in the United States were focused then — or in the ensuing three months — on the fate of Rwanda's Tutsis.
By July 1994, when Tutsi rebels took control of the country, the killers had accomplished much of what they set out to achieve. At least 800,000 people — half of the Tutsis who had lived in Rwanda three months earlier — had been eliminated.
The Rwandan genocide revealed, more than any other event in the 20th century, the shallowness of the pledge of "never again." Again, a dozen key plotters managed to organize a society around mass murder. Again, an inconvenient minority found itself targeted for extermination. And again, the world watched.
Indeed, the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council didn't simply watch. They voted to withdraw the U.N. peacekeepers who were in Rwanda, abandoning Rwandans who had relied upon the blue helmets for their protection.
While it was once possible to view the world's neglect of Europe's Jewry as a monstrous aberration, the Rwanda genocide shows how three patterns persist: The U.S. and other states ignore the warning signs that would enable them to act early. When the killing starts, "mere genocide" doesn't command high-level attention or resources. And domestically, U.S. leaders do not fear they will pay a political price for being bystanders to genocide.
Genocide comes with ample early warning, as would-be perpetrators are careful to test the waters before plunging in. In the months preceding their slaughter, the Rwandan killers staged a number of mini-massacres in order to gauge international reaction. By January 1994, Rwanda had become so militarized — and imported machetes had become so omnipresent — that the U.N. commander in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, urgently cabled Kofi Annan, the U.N. head of peacekeeping, in New York. Dallaire warned that militia members could exterminate "up to 1,000 [Tutsis] in 20 minutes."
Dallaire sent his cable three months after 18 U.S. soldiers had been killed in a Somalia firefight. Annan, believing that the United States and its allies were unwilling to confront the militants, opted not to cross what became known as "the Mogadishu line." He buried what has become known as the "genocide fax," and the militia members took their cue.
Annan was wrong not to sound an alarm, but he accurately predicted the U.S. attitude: Stopping Rwanda's massacres was not seen as in the U.S. national interest. The foreign policy of the United States is devoted to advancing a narrow national interest, which has long been defined in terms of economic and security gains for American citizens. Genocide rarely affects such interests, so no matter how many men, women and children are killed, the occurrence of genocide rarely rises within the bureaucracy to command the attention of influential U.S. policymakers. Focusing foreign policy attention on acts of genocide would require presidential leadership, which has rarely been forthcoming.
More shocking than the U.S. avoidance of military intervention in Rwanda was the fact that President Clinton never even convened his Cabinet to discuss what might be done about the murder of nearly a million human beings. The response was low-level, and neither Bushnell nor the other career bureaucrats nor Africa specialists had the clout needed to move the machinery of a risk-averse system in time to save lives. Thus, the U.S. not only failed to intervene, it also failed to even denounce the "genocide," or to use its technology to jam the "hate radio," or to rally additional U.N. troops from other countries, or to freeze the financial assets of the killers. The Rwandan killers went utterly unchallenged.
It's easy and right to hold Clinton accountable for American by- standing, but his administration's inaction was affirmed by societywide silence. While U.S. officials dithered, the rest of us failed to generate the "noise" that would have gotten their attention. Editorial writers at the major newspapers who pushed for intervention in Bosnia made no such appeals on behalf of the Rwandans.
The Congressional Black Caucus was consumed with the refugee crisis in Haiti. And we voters never picked up our telephones, so the congressional and White House switchboards didn't ring.
Then-Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) described the relative silence in her district. "There are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas," she said, noting that Colorado was home to a research group that studied Rwanda's imperiled gorilla population. "But — it sounds terrible — people just don't know what can be done about the people."
The Clinton administration didn't help inform Americans — indeed it distorted the facts, deliberately avoiding use of the word "genocide" — and then it invoked the public and congressional indifference as yet one more alibi for its inaction.
On this historic 10-year anniversary, we must try not to allow 800,000 to become a faceless statistic. Each Rwandan lived a precious life and died a horrible death. And if we are serious about learning the "lessons of Rwanda," we must do more than remember and regret; we must press our leaders to make genocide prevention and suppression the foreign policy priority it has never been. Otherwise, when we pledge "never again Rwanda," what we will really be saying is "never again will Rwandan Hutus kill 800,000 Tutsis between April and July, 1994."
___________ Samantha Power is the author of "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, and a lecturer in human rights policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Friday, April 02, 2004
do you see the way that tree bends?
does it inspire?
leaning out to catch the sun's rays
a lesson to be applied
are you getting something out of this all encompassing trip?
you can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense
have you ideas on how this life ends?
checked your hands and studied the lines
have you the belief that the road ahead ascends off into the light?
seems that needlessly it's getting harder
to find an approach and a way to live
are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
you can spend your time alone redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense
-----Pearl Jam, "Present Tense"
does it inspire?
leaning out to catch the sun's rays
a lesson to be applied
are you getting something out of this all encompassing trip?
you can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense
have you ideas on how this life ends?
checked your hands and studied the lines
have you the belief that the road ahead ascends off into the light?
seems that needlessly it's getting harder
to find an approach and a way to live
are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
you can spend your time alone redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who cannot forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense
-----Pearl Jam, "Present Tense"
Thursday, April 01, 2004
I may repeat 'Do as you would be done by' till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbour as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbour as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you , we are driven on to something more inward---driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home."
-----C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"
-----C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"
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