What is truth? Does truth lie in the actual stories of people that experienced the atrocities of war? Or does it lie in the teachers and textbooks students are handed all around the world? Controversial historical occurrences, mainly wars, often have tens if not hundreds of different stories and sides to them. One country claims it was a civil war, while another states it was genocide. In the curriculum for history in the United States, our country is often idealized. Criticisms of the United States or talk of what the United States could have done are sparse or essentially non-existent. Samantha Power, the author of “A Problem from Hell” addresses the unspoken issues of the United States lack of involvement in genocides all around the world. During the time of the Bosnian war, neither the Bush administration nor the Clinton administration intervened to help prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displacements occurring in Bosnia.
Before 1991, Bosnia faced the difficult decision of staying one of Yugoslavia’s six republics or breaking away and becoming independent. Both options seemed to have negative outcomes for the most ethnically heterogeneous of the republics. By remaining a republic within Yugoslavia, Bosnia’s Serbian community would receive prestigious jobs and educational opportunities while the Muslim and Croatian people would be oppressed and physically abused under Milosevic’s rule. However, if Bosnia gained independence, Muslim citizens, who had to rely upon support from the international community, would be vulnerable. The Serbians and Croatians would be able to count on protection from Serbia and Croatia. The Bosnian presidency, consisting of seven members (two Muslims, two Serbs, two Croats, and one...
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...2). Clinton sent out Secretary Christopher to Europe to convince American allies to lift the arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims, who were at a great weaponry disadvantage to the Serbs because of the ban (Power 302). The convincing proved unsuccessful and yet another attempt to support Bosnia without physical intervention failed. The next proposal was the creation of “safe zones” in Srebrenica and Sarajevo, which also failed due to lack of troops (Power 303). The failure of multiple projects such as these only further confirms the extent to which the United State did not want to take action in Bosnia. If the United States really wanted to help prevent these mass atrocities from happening, better or more aggressive solutions would be implemented.
Works Cited
Power, Samantha. "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
Stanton, Gregory H. "Genocides and Conflicts." World Without Genocide. World Without Genocide, 7 May 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. .
The United States Involvement in Bosnia; is it positive or negative. After a lifetime of war in Bosnia, can the United States really offer positive change? To truly get a feel for the conflict in this region we must first look at the long-standing hatred between the occupying ethnic groups: Serbs, Muslims, and Croats. From 1481 to 1903 the Ottoman Empire was the ruling body over the entire Balkan region. By the early nineteen hundreds the Ottoman Empire had collapsed. In 1918, at the end of World War One, Russia annexed the Balkan region renaming it Yugoslavia. In 1919 Joseph Stalin, Communist ruler of Russia and its satellite states (i.e. Yugoslavia), appointed Tito to be the head of Yugoslavia. Tito quickly became an iron fisted and ruthless dictator. The Machiavellian characteristics exhibited by Tito have given all Serbs a reputation as being strong armed and merciless. With Tito’s death in 1991, Yugoslavia collapsed and split into 3 independent states: Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Croatia. In 1994 Slovadon Malosovitch was elected ruler of the Serbian state. Incidents of mass genocide and several other war crimes became regular occurrences under his rule. The Bosnian crisis has shown the world the worst of human nature. On behalf of the United Nations, in an effort to settle the unrest in the Balkan region, The United States became involved in 1995. The United States involvement includes: the commitment of twenty thousand troops, the troop support of legions of tanks and other vehicles, and the “full support” of the United States Government.
struggle, however, fought under the guise of ethnic hatred. Bibliography Glenny M, "The Balkans, 1804-1999", 2000. Lampe JR, Yugoslavia as History. Twice There was a Country, 1996. Kegley and Wittkopf, "World Politics", 2001.
Bosnia is one of several small countries that emerged from the break-up of Yugoslavia, a multicultural country created after World War I by the Western Allies. Yugoslavia was composed of ethnic and religious groups that had been historical rivals, even bitter enemies, including the Serbs (Orthodox Christians), Croats (Catholics) and ethnic Albanians (Muslims).
Greenfield, Daniel M. "Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters." The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 98.3 (2008): 921-24. HeinOnline. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
Bosnia is a country in Europe and its capital is a city called Sarajevo. Bosnia is bordered by Serbia and Croatia. In this genocide, between 1992 and 1995, the Serbians wanted to pursue genocide against the Muslims of Bosnia. After World War 1, a country called Yugoslavia was created in 1918. It was created out of the Austria-Hungary empire that lost the war and lost its land. Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes, and Bosnian Serbians and Muslims lived all in one country. The problem was the people didn't get along and each republic wanted to take control of the country. This went on until after WWII, when the Soviet Union took power and control over the country. Joseph Broz (Tito) was leader of Yugoslavia until the 6 republics separated. Then in 1992, Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Soon after, the Bosnian
One could begin with the issue of genocide. In 1994, between half a million and a million members of the Tutsi tribe were slaughtered by Hutu tribal militias. Even though this massacre was widely covered by the news, the United States did nothing to help stop the killing. President Clinton offered an explanation to survivors in Kilagi for this. He said that he ?did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which [the survivors] were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.? (Kelly)
Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
Print. Beecroft, Rachel H. "Armenian Genocide." World Without Genocide. William Mitchell College of Law, 6 Aug. 2013.
Springer, Jane. Genocide: A Groundwork Guide. Toronto, Ontario: Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press, 2006. (Accessed March 7, 2014).
Many times we ask why nobody did anything to stop such horrific events from happening. Actually, many people said that this would never happen again but this is not the case. Since the Holocaust we have seen several examples of how the general public sometimes refuses to acknowledge the occurrence of events and how the government often has little political will to stop mass murders until it is too late. One example of this that occurred not too long ago is the Rwandan Genocide. In 1994, between half a million to a million Rwandan Tutsi as well as thousands of moderate Hutu, were exterminated in the clearest mass murder case since the Holocaust. The world stood back and observed as the murders took place. Samantha Power, in the book she wrote, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide1,and her article The Atlantic Monthly, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen,” Power writes “The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen. But whatever their convictions about ‘never again,’ many of them did sit around, and they most certainly did allow genocide to happen.”2 Samantha Power's writing shows that the U.S. government knew enough about the genocide through early warnings but nevertheless because they lacked political will to do anything about it they passed up many opportunities to end the rain of terror.3
Russel-Brown, Sherrie. “Rape as an Act of Genocide.” Berkeley Journal of International Law. 21:2 (2003): 350-374. Google Scholar. Web. 28 April 2014.
Scheffer, David J. "Responding To Genocide And Crimes Against Humanity." U.S. Department Of State Dispatch 9.4 (1998): 20. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 Dec. 2011. .
Baldauf, S. (2009). Why the US didn't intervene in the Rwandan genocide. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2009/0407/p06s14-woaf.html [Accessed: 21 Feb 2014].
Print. The. Hymowitz, Sarah, and Amelia Parker. " Lessons - The Genocide Teaching Project - Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law." American University, Washington College of Law. American UniversityWashington College of Law Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, 2011.