Murdering Around the Globe

The term Genocide was brought to life by a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin who witnessed and heard stories of his family being brutally murdered at the hands of the Nazi’s during WWII and the Holocaust. After about 20 years and countless proposals, revisions, fights, confrontations and tears; Mr. Lemkin finally had the term Genocide applied to the crimes that would be so prevalent in the 20th & 21st century. The term Genocide has come to be known as the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group according to Wikipedia.

If we take a few seconds to look back at the mass murders that we now know as Genocide throughout the last 75 years, we see a long list that includes: Turkey’s killing of Armenians, the Holocaust, Pol PotPol PotPol PotPol Pot’s reign of terror, Iraq & Saddam HusseinSaddam HusseinSaddam HusseinSaddam Hussein’s slaughter of the Kurds, Bosnian Serbs mass murder of Muslims, Hutu’s dismembering of Tutsi’s in Rwanda and even the events of September 11, 2001. The list is astounding and the amount of lives that were taken number in the tens of millions. With history clearly behind us, can we see a reason these tragedies took place?

The response can be answered with a clear cut YES! There is obviously no sole reason or any one person or country that is responsible for not responding to the cries of the suffering; however the United States, NATO and western European countries have to take most of the blame. In every one of the Genocides I named above, the western world failed to act or acknowledge the fact that these events were actually taking place. When called out and asked why nothing was done to prevent these mass murders a common response was, “we didn’t know or couldn’t believe what we heard.”

However, when it boils down to the facts, the clear reason no intervention happened was because there was no political, economic or military benefit to intervening. The sad thing about all these deaths that have taken place over the years is that unless there is a benefit to getting involved, countries will just sit by the way side and pretend like nothing is happening. We as a nation and a uniting world, need to step up and be the voice of reason when our governments are too afraid or lazy to do so.