Editorial - 02 January 2012
Rwanda - What Happens When Threats are Downplayed
B altimore Sun Letter writer Paul Schlitz can't seem to grasp the fact that an acknowledgement of Iraqi WMD potential doesn’t necessarily indicate current agreement with the decision to invade, nor does it require someone to justify the invasion. It’s simply an acknowledgment of the situation.
We do not invade every country that has the potential to produce WMD.
We would also point out that failure to acknowledge threats is no less dangerous than inflating threats. Mr. Schlitz’s “head in the sand” policy has been tried before, and is currently being advocated by presidential candidate Ron Paul. Witness the Holocaust.
Witness Rwanda. Despite full knowledge as to what was transpiring on the continent, President Clinton, in the 1990's, failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide because he feared the political bullying tactics of people like Paul Schlitz. The result is the 800,000 or more Africans were slaughtered. Now, I'm not advocating that we should have invaded Africa (although Schlitz will certainly say so in his next letter), but there are obviously some steps that could have been taken if the will had been there.
The final chapters on Iraq will be written well in the future, and the Arab Spring and other unfolding
Middle East events indicate that the Iraq war’s influence on history is an emerging story,
not yet etched in stone except in the minds of the cognitively feeble or intellectually dishonest.
The Iraq War may well be an example of what happens when threats are inflated. Rwanda is what happens when threats are ignored. Full and accurate recognition of threats is imperative, not to be downplayed or ignored for political expediency or editorial justification.
Editor - bethesite.com
