Apologies mean nothing until someone acts

As Rwandan workers began the task of exhuming the bodies of 200,000 genocide victims from mass graves last week, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt apologized for the carnage. "I am convinced that we could have done more, and we could have done better," he said on Fri., Apr. 7 in a public acknowledgment of his country's failure to halt the brutal ethnic slaughters in Rwanda during 1994.

Verhofstadt's apology is the latest in a trend of public repentance for the debacle in Rwanda. Led by prominent figures including Bill Clinton, LAW '73, and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, this recent spate of big-time apologies should be sharpening our awareness of the problems plaguing the "sorry 'bout that" mentality: 20-20 hindsight is easy—too easy. Though perhaps conventional wisdom is right in asserting that it is better to be sorry than not, an apology is in no way tantamount to hitting the rewind button.

Despite our skepticism, which allows us to realize that a belated Band-Aid can hardly cover a gaping wound, we are often mollified by our leaders' generic promises to "do better in the future," almost enough to overlook the sinister side of official contrition. However, if we inspect the record of international affairs over the past several years, we must realize that Belgian, American, and UN apologies to Rwanda are tainted by hypocrisy. The rhetoric of repentance, while supposedly benevolent, in fact masks these countries' inappropriate policies of only selectively intervening in potentially genocidal situations.

In 1994, for example, threats of genocide in Rwanda were imminent. Belgian troops comprised the majority of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), a task force set up to keep the peace. When 10 Belgian soldiers were killed by Hutu extremists, however, the entire Belgian coalition pulled out of UNAMIR. American citizens were airlifted out of the country. One week later, despite continued evidence of mass killings, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to withdraw most of the remaining forces, reducing UNAMIR's presence from 2,500 troops to 270.

Compare this isolationist stance with the active one assumed by the same countries in the midst of the Kosovo crisis. In January of last year, Serbian troops mounted a campaign of murder and persecution against Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. By the end of March, the active members of NATO, including Belgium and the United States, had begun air operations over the former Yugoslavia. In June, the UN authorized deployment of NATO and Russian forces to restore peace in Kosovo.

Other examples of selective interventionism abound. Countries' decisions on whether or not to pursue intervention have never been wholly consistent: the world thwarted Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for fear of losing access to oil reserves; and some speculate that the intervention in the Balkans was, on one level, a scramble to fill the post-Cold War power vacuum there. In any case, it is evident that at least one thing has remained fairly constant: human lives are never the intervening countries' number one priority. Otherwise, is the life of a Kosovar or Kuwaiti worth more than the life of a Rwandan?

Official apologies for inaction in Rwanda will lose their cast of hypocrisy only when the regretful leaders keep their implied promises: to intervene wherever and whenever intervention is needed, attending circumstances or selfish motives notwithstanding. Any breach of this promise renders even the most repentant of words worthless. Apologies are only genuine when accompanied by unconditional resolve.

Elizabeth Svoboda is a freshman in Ezra Stiles.

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