Supplemental Post 1

http://ericswanderings.blogspot.com/2008/07/of-african-genocide.html
             
            This cartoon, while about the crisis in Sudan, is an uncomfortably accurate description of the International Community’s feelings on intervening in Africa and other non-Western European countries. UN forces were used primarily to evacuate Americans and other foreign nationals instead of the Tutsi who were actually being targeted. This policy of Western Centrism is particularly infuriating to me. While trying to find good sources for my main post on Wikipedia I came across a link to the article on war rape. Given that this was a common charge for those tried at the ICTR I thought it would be best to familiarize myself with the definition. Several links later I was reading an article on the Abu Ghraib tortures, in which American solders tortured captured Iraqi prisoners through all kinds of inhumane sexual humiliation. One officer claimed that she had been instructed by Psy-op (a department I can only assume specializes in psychological warfare) to commit the acts. In my mind this fits the definition of war rape, as it was used to establish dominance over the prisoners. The solders involved in the incident were sentenced to a collective total of about 26 years. There were 14 soldiers sentenced total. None were charged with the murder of an inmate who died. It is infuriating to me that this sort of thing happens and the ones responsible are let off the hook seemingly because they are American. At least with Rwanda most of the bad guys got appropriately punished but here the average was loss of pay and a few years with the commanding officers getting off completely. It’s the same idea that the West perpetuates that somehow we are better than the rest of the world.