A Curious Coincidence

Correlation does not imply causation.  However, it is a curious fact that during the last century there were several mass murders that approached the accepted definition of Genocide and there was a common element to all of them:

Armenian Genocide: The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. ... The total number of resulting Armenian deaths is generally held to have been between one and one and a half million.

The Holocaust: The Holocaust, also known as The Shoah, was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany.  The genocide of these six million people was a genocide of two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust. [1938?-1945]

Rwandan Genocide: The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people. Over the course of approximately 100 days from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana on April 6 through mid-July, at least 800,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate. 

Srebrenica massacre: The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys, as well as the ethnic cleansing of another 25,000–30,000 refugees, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić during the Bosnian War.

Here is the curious coincidence: Every one of these atrocities took place while a Democrat was the President of the United States.  Woodrow Wilson, the first Progressive Democratic President, entered office on March 4, 1913  and was President until March 4, 1921.  Granting the benefit of the doubt, communications were much less robust and the possibility of impacting the Turkish decision to destroy the Armenian community would have been minimal.  Yet Wilson was the first of the moral relativists and a believer in the international community and the international community failed the Armenians miserably.

It becomes a little more problematic with FDR, the Patron Saint for Progressives.  He could not have averted the Holocaust, but he did nothing to impede the Holocaust even after he knew it was happening. The excuse for FDR's inaction has always been that he felt the best we could do for Europe's Jews was to win the war and attacking the death industry would have impeded that effort.  Churchill, however, disagreed with FDR, and I have never been comfortable with knowing what FDR did not do.

Finally, Rwanda and Srebrenica occurred under Bill Clinton's watch.  There is no doubt that a minimal show of resolution from the Civilized world (if that is not a misnomer) would have saved many lives, especially in Rwanda.  Did Clinton's disinclination to the use of military power and his moral relativism and internationalism play a part in his decision not to intervene?  There is no way to know but it is indisputable that we could have prevented much of the carnage and refrained.

I want to be clear that I am not attributing any malice or complicity to the Democrats for the genocides that took place under their watch.  However, I also do not think it is entirely coincidental that when America has been led by Progressives, believers in Multiculturalism, Moral Relativism, and Internationalism, the worst impulses of the worst people on the planet find their pathway to expression more available.

Our current Progressive President, a firm believer in the Progressive fantasies of the International Community and Moral Relativism, has done a great deal to empower some of the world's worst actors.  His stated desire to exit Afghanistan/Iraq as quickly as possible makes future horrors more likely in the Levant.  His diffidence in confronting Iran and its allies, and his tendency to place the onus for the multiple impasses in the Middle East upon Israel alone, do not bode well for Peace and stability. 

When the Untied States shrinks from its investment and involvement with the world, out of a misguided belief that American power is harmful or worse, the result has traditionally not been pretty.