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If anyone is interested in the backstory you can search the movie Black Hawk Down.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/
Or read the book
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War https://www.amazon.com/dp/080214473X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_NCQ6B50ZYRHAR1NJ0CC0
It's weird as fuck (but strongly in line with white colonialism) how fixated western Christians are with Africa. North Africa was one of the key regions of the world as far as Christian history goes. It's like they don't even know their own past.
I went to HS in NJ. It was a public school, but a pretty good one.
I sort of keep in touch with a number of former classmates via FB. They are an interesting lot. We have a Naval Academy graduate, an attorney in DC who has presented to the Supreme Ct among others.
But yesterday I learned that one of my students won a Pulitzer. I had no idea. Looking at her books on Amazon, they are history books about the decline of the British Empire. The Pulitzer winning one is
Yet if you go to our schools wiki page the only notable alumni are the Nies brothers (one who was on the Real World and the other a punter in the NFL) and a couple of other athletes.
Read about how ineffective the UN was during the Rwanda genocide. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting them to do anything.
This is a great/depressing book about it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0099478935
Read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Shake-Hands-Devil-Failure-Humanity/dp/0786715103
If you wish to know exactly how and where and why the UN has failed to stop genocides in the past. (Specifically in Rwanda)
I warn you though, it is the most difficult book I have ever read. Even setting aside the horrific details of the genocide itself (which is not a small thing to set asside) there are truckloads of acronyms, long unfamiliar african names and many, many (real)characters to keep track of.
But, tl;dr: Yes. The UN definitely could have stopped that genocide if the organization weren't so beholden and paralyzed by fear of retribution from member states.
In short: The UN mostly exists as a scapegoat to heap blame upon for general international failings that, really, belong to its member states. And an organization to steal credit from upon successful missions.
The excerpt he's referencing is from a book by Caroline Elkins, professor of history at Harvard
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
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If anyone ever has doubts about why an absolute monarchy is a shit idea, please read this book...
The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679722033/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_sgLPBb0N603E1
I read it because my gf is Ethiopian and because I'm kinda fascinated by the fact that Rastafarians consider him the Messiah and the living spirit of God. The whole time I was reading it though, I just kept thinking, "Holy shit. Thank God I don't live in a monarchy." The potential (come true in this example) for corruption and dysfunction is truly next level.
> wonder what the UN achieved there. They saved the lives of thousands or even tens of thousands of people while the rest of the world sat back and did nothing.
A little recommended reading on the subject: Shake Hands with the Devil
> Do you think the world would sit back and watch, like it did other genocides? Or would it be stopped quickly?
Hate to say it, but that depends on who is being killed. In my experience, people don't tend to do things - Shake Hands with the Devil speaks to this. This is a life changing book, I wouldn't read it unless you feel prepared...thinking about genocide in an abstract way with numbers in one thing. Reading a first hand account of how we collectively failed hundreds of thousands of Rwandans is another. Rwanda happened in 1994, I'm old enough to remember that and I'm not that old. It speaks to where we were and where we still are. So yeah, I think these things continue to happen and I think we let them happen all the time.
I mean there is a large scale civil war happening in Syria right now and most of the country has been gutted. I wouldn't say people are really "helping" the situation...and nobody wants the refugees (especially the USA). Technically its a civil war, but I feel we could be doing a lot more positive things to help out the situation.
Millions are/have being tortured and killed in slave labour camps in North Korea and absolutely dick all is being done about that.
Everyone is simply watching and waiting as Duterte in the Philippines is encouraging his country men to kill other countrymen based on suspicions of selling drugs, being rapists, murderers....Death toll isn't super high just yet, but people are being killed without consequence.
Huh, never heard of that before. Seems to have happened years before the genocide and whether that influenced anything is debatable, after all the genocide was committed mostly with the help of machetes.
Annan on the other hand was head of peacemaking during the genocide and according to the UN forces commander it was him who ordered the peacekeepers not to intervene multiple times.
Another example would be Blackhawk Down.
On occasion, rules have more than one exception.
Are you getting all this? Are we ready to move on?
Just a correction: The genocide in Rwanda was not the result of no one preventing it. The reason was that the US and EU were not interested at all in Rwanda for economical reasons. I recommend the lecture of General Dallaire's book about it.