Genocide

Genocide is a new word but an old practice. A cynic once said that "genocide is God's way of settling territorial disputes." He had some Biblical evidence. The Bible is littered with cases where God either committed or commanded genocide - check out Joshua or Deuteronomy, for example.

The practice didn't die out in modern times. The three most catastrophic genocides of the twentieth century were notable for their scale: Stalin might have killed 30 million, Mao a comparable or greater number, and Hitler 11 million. Hitler's genocide was notable in that most of the victims were Jews, and that it took place in what had been considered one of the most advanced and civilized nations of Europe. Because the chief targets and victims were members of the most cultured and literate group in the world, and because they were widely dispersed and well placed to claim their grievance, the word and the concept became recognized in law and popular thought.

No such outcry greeted the earlier slaughter of the Amenians (the lack of outcry over their slaughter was noted by Hitler as a reason not to worry about an outcry over the murder of the Jews). Still less noted were the genocides in the Congo by Leopold II of Belgium, the extermination of the Tasmanians and other local slaughters in South America, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.

Post World War II, the world developed a few hints of conscience. The slaughter in Cambodia was eventually stopped by Vietnamese intervention. Rwanda was bewailed but left to its fate - probably the greatest moral failure of the Clinton Presidency. Against die-hard Republican opposition, Clinton did finally intervene to stop the slaughter in Kosovo.

George Bush, of course, is tempermentally disposed to commit genocide rather than prevent it.

No discussion of genocide would be complete without mentioning the biggest one of all - the near extermination of the Native Americans (and extermination of many subgroups thereof). The only mitigating circumstance is that that genocide was in large part accidental - far more Native Americans were killed by European diseases than by European bullets and steel. Of course many horrifyingly deliberate examples exist as well.

Whatever its antecedents, genocide is an unmitigated evil. We ought to exterminate it.

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