If there is no greater obscenity than mass murder, “Never Again” is the ugliest verbal obscenity of all.
No American head of state cares, all the crocodile tears notwithstanding. That’s the bottom line.
Actions speak louder than words. The words are as full of angst and pain and sincerity as a past or potential victim of genocide could ask for.
The actions never follow. “Never Again” never leads to the requisite action.
Here it is in summary, utterly clear, the code words notwithstanding:
Roosevelt: Holocaust.
Nixon: Cambodia.
H. W. Bush: Yugoslavia.
Clinton: Rwanda.
W. Bush: Sudan.
Obama: Syria.
There is always a reason why Nazism will “never again” be let loose, but why the imitators of Nazism are let loose.
Why? To Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the bombing of the rail lines to Auschwitz would detract from the overall war effort.
Even at the time, this was but a thin veneer for the anti-Semitism in the FDR administration, all the way to the top, all of the administration’s Jewish advisers notwithstanding.
Why? To Richard M. Nixon, it was horseblinders.
Nixon was so obsessed with prosecuting the pointless Vietnam war, then with disengaging from it, to notice what took place next door in Cambodia, let alone to acknowledge what America itself did and did not do that had the effect of aiding Pol Pot.
Why? To George H. W. Bush, the sieges of Dubrovnik and Sarajevo elicited exactly the modes of indifference that Obama articulates about Syria: Too messy. Too complicated. Impossible to disentangle. Do nothing. Do not even arm the opponents of the “Always Again” lovers and perpetrators of genocide.
Why? To Bill Clinton, the Rwandan genocide was all so quick. Impossible to “get it together” to act.
Another thin veneer, this Clintonian rationalization. In fact, Clinton’s point people on the genocide concocted reason after reason to do nothing. To stay away. To embrace the role of what Elie Wiesel called “the bystander.”
There is a bit of a mea culpa by Clinton in his autobiography. 800,000 people slaughtered on his watch, with his own people doing their best, quite successfully, to stop the United States from doing anything. Frankly, we don’t know how the man sleeps at night.
Why? To George W. Bush, Sudan required a diplomatic solution — so it did; and so, to an extent, Bush achieved one . . . while hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent people met their end as the diplomats plied their molasses diplomacy.
Why? To Barak Obama, it would be wrong to put a single American “boot on the ground” for fear of refighting the last war, as if all the complexities of George W. Bush’s war in Iraq were replicated in Syria, when, in fact, it was just the opposite. In Syria of 2011, when its civil war began: no terrorists, no ISIS, no al-Qaida, no insurgents, no Sunni-Shiite divide; just one evil ruler and one set of opponents. But Obama would not arm them, would not establish a no fly zone, would not undertake his promised surgical strikes — but would hand the field of action over to Russia, contenting himself with a snide and totally inaccurate remark that Russia would find itself in a quaqmire. Like Roosevelt, like Nixon, like H. W. Bush, like Clinton, like W. Bush — Obama took refuge in rationalizations.
“Never Again” was never anything but a slogan.
Oh yes, it was this: After the fact of the genocide, there were war crimes trials. Some of the perpetrators were caught and punished.
As if there could be punishment for genocide. As if it made a stitch of difference either to the victims of genocide or to the next aspiring perpetrator of genocide.
We do note in this lugubrious tale of total hypocrisy — swearing by “Never Again”; swearing falsely, that is — one significant exception. Bill Clinton and NATO did take force to Serbians in Kosovo and did stop the genocide there.
And guess what? The United States did not fall! No mass sacrifice of American soldiers took place.
No astounding price in either blood or treasure ensued.
No fierce, sustained opposition by the perpetrators of the genocide materialized.
Yes, it was eminently feasible to take action against genocide without all of the imagined horrors redounding to those who stood up to it.
There is only one calculus in assessing the commitment to “Never Again”: Were masses of human lives saved? In Kosovo, yes. In other places, no.
Hitler the devil was no fool. He saw clearly that because the world let the Armenian genocide proceed apace (also to the rhythm of crocodile tears), he could get away with his “Final Solution.” He could get away with killing pits like Babi Yar and crematoria like Auschwitz. Then afterward, the world said, “Never Again.”
But it’s happened again.
And again.
And again.
We can only respond with outrage to the admittedly, by now much more complicated imperative for action against the carnage in Syria that cries out for more than ritual denunciation of Russia, of Assad, of the other evil actors.
Alongside US representative to the UN Samantha Power’s taking refuge in “complexity” and Secretary of State Kerry’s taking refuge in impotence, ritual denunciation is what turns “Never Again” into the ultimate verbal obscenity.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
