Anthony Lake revisits Rwanda

After reading John Darnton's report of watching the new film, Hotel Rwanda, with Anthony Lake, I was struck by how a former Clinton advisor discusses past decisions with how Bush advisors do. For the latter, admitting a mistake or a failure is failure while Lake, at least, can look at, understand, and admit the crucial mistakes he was party to during the Rwandan genocide.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - In a pivotal scene in "Hotel Rwanda," which opens Wednesday, the colonel in charge of a beleaguered United Nations peace-keeping force rushes to talk with the commanding officer of a fresh and heavily armed United Nations contingent that has just arrived at a hotel packed with refugees from the bloody genocide outside its walls. The colonel, played by Nick Nolte, suddenly throws his blue beret on the ground in anger. The eyes of the hotel manager, played by Don Cheadle, slowly register concern, then fear. The awful truth becomes clear: the new soldiers are there to evacuate the mostly white foreigners, leaving the black Rwandans to their fate.

"That gets to you - they were counting on the U.N. and they were abandoned," whispered Anthony Lake, as he watched the scene in an otherwise empty theater here. Mr. Lake, the national security adviser in the Clinton administration, played a role in determining United States policy in Rwanda a decade ago, and he had agreed to attend the screening of a movie that, even before its release, is provoking uncomfortable memories of the collective failure by Western powers to confront an atrocity.

[...]

Mr. Lake visited Rwanda in the fall of 1994, after the slaughter had stopped. His throat tightens as he describes a visit to a churchyard where the mutilated bodies of women and children were scattered on the ground and stacked inside sheds. "We couldn't get out without stepping on them," he said, his voice breaking. It was "shameful," he added, that his administration refused to employ the term "genocide" for a period of six weeks.

"It was based on the belief that if you used the word, then you're required to take action," he said. "They didn't go the sophistry route - using the word and finding a way to weasel out of it. Now in Sudan, we've used it and we're wriggling out of its meaning. Which is more unattractive? I don't know."

It's an interesting article.

Meanwhile, Darfur goes on.