war

“The triumph of evil occurs when good men do nothing.” This quote was said by the modern day political philosopher, Edmund Burke. This quote means that it is when good people don’t take action that bad things are allowed to happen. This relates to the recent genocide in Rwanda, when the Hutus massacred the Tutsis over a period of 100 days in the summer of 1994. Three major ways in which good men did nothing is the UN’s avoided action, the soldiers who abandoned the Tutsis, and the United States’ refusal to use the word “genocide,” and took no action to prevent it.

The UN did a large deal of procrastinating during the ordeal in Rwanda. At first, they wouldn’t even address that there was a problem, since no one stepped forward to say that there was one. They simply ignored it when the Rwanda ambassador told them that it was just a “civil war.” When the UN finally did admit to the fact that there was a problem, they made several promises of action. Thes...