PROCÈS-VERBAL

For the record (hold onto your hat, MB, I’ll return to this), I’m not in favor of a no-fly zone over Libya. Not only is it a slap in the face to international norms, it’s needlessly dangerous.

One can envision the line of universal monarchs, of great empires, stretching from the Pharaohs in Egypt, through Persia, Macedonia, Rome to the Holy Roman Empire and Ottomans. Today, the notion of empire, of a universal regime, is not all that far behind us. Cpl. Frank Buckles, the last WWI veteran died just 13 days ago as I write. A man who fought in the war that brought down the last two empires left in Europe.

And of course, there’s always PNAC.

The western notion of state sovereignty has largely been endorsed by the entire world. It was not easily won. Perhaps eclipsed only by WWII and the holocaust, the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was one of the worst catastrophes ever visited on Europe. Over a majority of the territory now part of Germany, one third of the population vanished. Throughout large swaths of that territory—almost half—the figure rises to 66%.

It is out of this carnage that the modern state arose, and here’s how it happened.
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In a few days, the GOP takes formal control of the House, and it seems I’m not alone in taking stock of the situation. As usual, I take the broad view, not into finding the way forward for the liberal-progressive agenda, but in taking stock. I begin with the question, “where are we today?” and proceed from there. However, no matter how I try to get away from it, I find myself focused lately on the seminal moment, that period from 1776 to 1789 and the American movement from royal subject to politically empowered citizen. It was a rocky road.
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Author’s Note:  This diary is dedicated to the memory of Alison Des Forges, of Human Rights Watch, and author, or principle author, of “Leave None to Tell the Story,” Human Rights Watch’s narrative of the events of the Rwandan Genocide. It surpasses excellence. It’s not that I knew or ever met her, but I’m sure she felt personally compelled, as I have, to write about Rwanda, and certainly found it even more difficult. In her memory, in the memory of those both living and dead who have been touched by this, I have done my level best here. And like General Romeo Dallaire, head of the failed UN peacekeeping mission for Rwanda, I find I can take no consolation from that fact.

Virtually the entire world ignored this genocide, and why that happened is what I try to answer here.

We had a couple of friends over, and you know, I just–we just sat down to dinner, and all of a sudden, there was this huge explosion. And I–I–didn’t naturally, you know, come to me what that was because I wasn’t used to hearing those kinds of sounds.” –Laura Lane, U.S. Embassy, Kigali, Rwanda[1]

“And it went from “There’s been an explosion at the airport” to “We think it’s the ammunition dump at Kinumbi that’s blown up” to “It’s a plane that’s crashed” to “It’s the presidential plane that crashed.” –Brent Beardsley, Military Assistant to General Dallaire[2]

On the evening of 6 April 1994, the presidential airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana as well as Cyprien Ntaryamira, President of Burundi was shot down as it slowed and descended on approach to the airport in Kigali, Rwanda. Two shoulder mounted surface-to-air missiles struck the aircraft, the first hitting a wing, and the second impacting the tail. A pair of empty SA-16 missile tubes were later found, their serial numbers indicating that they had once been part of the Iraqi arsenal. Even today, it’s not known who was responsible, but what is known is that within hours, maybe within minutes, certain neighborhoods in Kigali were being patrolled by units of the elite Rwandan Presidential Guard and by the National Police. By daybreak the killing had begun.

The bloodshed continued and spread for eleven weeks, and by the time it was over, an estimated 657,000 men, women and children had perished.

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