{"id":226821,"date":"2023-01-09T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=226821"},"modified":"2023-01-08T06:09:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-08T06:09:25","slug":"if-you-wouldnt-ask-hannibal-lecter-to-stop-mass-atrocities-dont-ask-the-international-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/01\/if-you-wouldnt-ask-hannibal-lecter-to-stop-mass-atrocities-dont-ask-the-international-community\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Wouldn\u2019t Ask Hannibal Lecter to Stop Mass Atrocities, Don\u2019t Ask \u201cThe International Community\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

4 Jan 2023 – The hope\u00a0that the U.S. will intervene anywhere in the world for humanitarian reasons is misguided in the extreme. Claims of concern are always a ruse hiding\u00a0ulterior motives. Imperialist actions are antithetical to human needs.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As someone who spends a lot of time studying African conflict, I often witness and find myself drawn into discussion with groups\u00a0 demanding that \u201cthe international community\u201d do something to stop genocide and mass atrocities in their country. Of course I sympathize with any community under attack because of their racial, ethnic, clan, national, class, or political identity, but why would anyone in Africa or elsewhere in the Global South expect \u201cthe international community\u201d\u2014meaning the US-dominated West\u2014to stop genocide and mass atrocities? The US dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan even though the Allies had already won WWII in the Pacific, turned Korea and Vietnam into human barbecue pits during the 50s and 60s, and overthrew or attempted to overthrow 47 governments <\/a> between 1949 and 2014. According to Brown University\u2019s Costs of War project, its post 9\/11 War on Terror has killed over 900,000 people, cost eight trillion dollars <\/a>, and created 38 million refugees and internally displaced persons <\/a>.<\/p>\n

During a 2009 presidential presidential debate, even as the War on Terror\u2019s toll continued to mount, NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw created a particularly violent upchuck moment <\/a> by asking Barack Obama whether the US should intervene for humanitarian purpose \u201ceven when our national security interests were not at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama rose to the imperial task, making way for the \u201cstopping genocide and mass atrocities\u201d foreign policy that then superseded the War on Terror as the principal excuse for committing genocide and mass atrocities during his presidency:<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, we may not always have national security issues at stake, but we have moral issues at stake.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we could have intervened effectively in the Holocaust, who among us would say that we had a moral obligation not to go in?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we could’ve stopped Rwanda, surely, if we had the ability, that would be something that we would have to strongly consider and act.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSo when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(For the real US role in the Rwandan Genocide, see \u201cRwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, from Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction <\/a>,\u201d \u201cHow Paul Kagame Deliberately Sacrificed the Tutsis <\/a>,\u201d \u201cIn Praise of Blood: Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front <\/a>,\u201d \u201cEnduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later <\/a>,\u201d \u201cPost-Genocide Rwandan Refugees: Why They Refuse to Return \u2018Home\u2019: Myths and Realities <\/a>,\u201d and \u201cDying to Live: A Rwandan Family’s Five-Year Flight Across the Congo <\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

In 2010, shortly after taking office, Obama fulfilled his Orwellian promise by creating the Atrocities Prevention Board <\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the US and its allies destroyed Libya, the most prosperous nation on the African continent, in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then started stealing its oil <\/a>. In 2014, the US and its allies began bombing Syria and supporting jihadists in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then started stealing its oil <\/a>.<\/p>\n

Africa has plenty of untapped oil and every other resource the industrial world needs, so it presents abundant opportunities for bombing, sanctioning, debt strangling, and otherwise bludgeoning sovereign nations into submission, all in the name of stopping genocide and mass atrocities, then stealing whatever they have.<\/p>\n

Or for undermining any nation or nations that dare raise an independent head, as Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia did in 2018, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, and then Somali President Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed, aka Farmaajo, signed an agreement to cooperate on trade, security and cultural issues, the Tripartite Alliance more formally known as the Joint Declaration on Comprehensive Cooperation Between Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea <\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more than two years, the US and its allies and press have been crying \u201cTigray Genocide!\u201d to justify their support of the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front, in hopes of toppling the elected government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, driving a wedge between Ethiopia and Eritrea<\/a>, and busting up the Tripartite Alliance.<\/p>\n

On July 10, 2021, the Globe and Mail, a Canadian security state outlet, accused Somali soldiers of committing atrocities in Tigray and complained about the Tripartite Alliance weakening Western influence at the same time <\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cAccounts of atrocities by Somali soldiers in Ethiopia\u2019s Tigray war are casting a spotlight on an emerging military alliance that has reshaped the Horn of Africa, weakening Western influence in a strategically important region.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Globe and Mail has obtained eyewitness reports of massacres by Somali troops embedded with Eritrean forces in Tigray in the early months of the war. The new evidence raises disturbing questions about a covert military alliance between Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia that has inflicted death and destruction on the rebellious Tigray region in northern Ethiopia.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With the help of Ilhan Omar <\/a>, the US managed to have Farmaajo removed from power, at least for now, replacing him with the obedient President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed, who approved the reintroduction of US troops into Somalia <\/a>, US-based Coastline Exploration <\/a> operations off the Somali Coast, the continuation of EU N <\/a>AVFOR, a European Union naval deployment, also off the Somali Coast, and the extension of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) <\/a>, a US commanded peacekeeping force, previously known as AMISOM <\/a>, which hasn\u2019t been able to establish peace in Somalia since its creation in 2007.<\/p>\n

The US and its allies have no honest interest in stopping genocide and mass atrocities in Africa, and their fundamental, paternalistic premise\u2014that the West has to stop African savages from slaughtering one another\u2014is racist to the core.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hannibal Lecter<\/p><\/div>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at @AnnGarrison<\/em>, ann@kpfa.org,<\/em><\/a> ann@anngarrison.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 blackagendareport.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Jan 2023 – The hope\u00a0that the U.S. will intervene anywhere in the world for humanitarian reasons is misguided in the extreme. Claims of concern are always a ruse hiding\u00a0ulterior motives. Imperialist actions are antithetical to human needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":227016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[237,867,417,1126,2456,1050,112,2200,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-226821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-africa","tag-anglo-america","tag-bullying","tag-hegemony","tag-humanitarian-intervention","tag-imperialism","tag-pentagon","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}