Where was the moral responsibility that US has had and has exercised towards other countries and nations gone? Or is it the classic case of EITHER we are fully engaged or not interested at all?
The role that the United States could play in preventing or at least lessening the intensity of the massacre was twofold. As a country with political, economic and technical ability to intervene and with moral values to justify, United States could not be completely ineffective. As a major contributor the United Nations, both financially and militarily, US had immense influence in UN decisions, a fact which Power rightly emphasizes upon when giving the details of the response that Dallaire expected from UN head quarters in New York.
United States chose to play none of the above roles. Was it an intentional policy of avoidance or not is not so hard to answer in the light of the warnings that the US government had continuously received before April 6, 1994. From diplomatic cables to CIA reports and the report of the International Commission of Investigation, all of which collectively suggest with quite certainty towards high probability of mass violence, none raised alarms in Washington enough to serve or cause a call for action.
I find it very strange that despite US diplomatic presence in Rwanda, US government did not have Rwanda experts and had to depend on the services of a private citizen Alison Des Forges. It is great that Forges could help, but what this demonstrates is anything but American style of maintaining presence in the world. Or perhaps, as argued by Power, it was the other way around. American officials were familiar with Rwanda to a higher level which drove them to expect and consider normal some degree of violence. What still remains unanswered is how come they did not notice when violence went beyond their normal range of some degree of violence. This argument seems contradictory altogether to me. Power initially states quotes Lieutenant General Wesley Clark of Pentagon whose staff officers did not even know the names of the two sides to the conflict. Is it possible for Pentagon officers to be so unaware of a country that they have presence in, even if that is only a diplomatic presence? If yes, then how and on what basis could state department officials be so familiar with Rwanda to be a victim of “blindness bred by familiarity?”
The second weakness that Power associates with American diplomacy in Rwanda is also very abnormal for American way of foreign presence. American diplomatic and intelligence offices have always worked through and with a range of sides to a conflict in most countries, including, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and many other countries. It is strange to see that in Rwanda they depended, in good intentions I hope and I assume, on the assurance of Hutu government and military forces, about both of whom there existed alarming reports. If this is just another face of American diplomacy and way of interaction with the world and if Rwanda was not an anomaly, then it surely was a classic case of OR… where OR meant “not bothered at all.”