Monday, March 10, 2003

They Should Know.

Rwanda's President and many of its people disdain the U.N.'s diplomatic approach to Iraq:

"If it was simply a choice between war and peace, then the automatic choice is peace," he [President Paul Kagame] told reporters. "But if it is a choice between war and weapons of mass destruction, ...then I would say that war is a better evil than the alternative."

Maryland-sized Rwanda and its 7 million people may be a tiny piece of the African continent, but the hundreds of thousands of its people slaughtered during 100 days of 1994 - minority Tutsis and political moderates from the Hutu majority - lend its voice special weight.

"The history of the United Nations is punctuated by spectacular and tragic failures in many places, and a good example is right here in Rwanda," said Jean-Pierre Sagahutu, a cab driver. He survived the genocide by hiding for two months in a pit latrine as soldiers massacred people in his neighborhood.

Had a Rwandan rebel force not intervened as the Security Council debated whether a genocide was indeed under way, "then the tragedy here would have been even greater, and I might not have survived," Sagahutu said.


Food for thought. By the way, I don't think I've seen a more preposterous headline for a news story in some time, given how quickly it was refuted by the content.

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