Weep

I finally got the chance to watch Hotel Rwanda last night. The video’s return date to the library was Saturday, but I kept leaving it at work. For once, I actually have to pay a late fee. Anyway, I cried for 90 minutes. I just couldn’t take how real Terry George presented those events in 1994. Then I watched it again with George and Paul Rusesabagina’s commentary, and it made it more difficult. I remember being in my middle school French class back then and having the teacher instruct us about the African francophones. Rwanda was one of them. Around the same time, the news about the genocides was announced. I wondered if the French would do anything to stop the fighting, but then I saw that they would not.

Six years later, I attended the second of the 2000 Presidential debates at Wake, the one the experts credited George W. Bush for winning. Jim Lehr asked Al Gore and Bush if they had been president during certain military expeditions, would they go for it. One was Rwanda. They both said no. The answer I remember the most was from Bush. He said yes to intervention in Bosnia but no in Rwanda. His answers summed up that he would most likely intervene in violence that occurs in Europe and the Middle East than in Africa and the Caribbean. I knew our country was doomed that night. And people wonder why we haven’t intervened in Sudan.

permalink | | | 05/09/2005

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