DON’T FORGET ALBRIGHT’S PAST FAILURES
Indiana Daily Student
9/24/2008
In one of my classes last semester, we watched "Hotel Rwanda," a
movie about Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who housed more than
1,000 refugees at the height of the Rwandan genocide.
While few details remain etched in my mind, I recall the inability
of the United Nations to intervene in the genocide. As someone who
spent much of that class defending international organizations,
this inaction was troubling.
As it turned out, U.N. ineffectiveness could be credited to the United
States and one individual in particular – Madeleine Albright. In
1994, acting as the United States ambassador to the U.N., Albright
blocked military intervention in Rwanda, largely because we were
still recovering from a disastrous mission in Somalia the year
before. Nevertheless, her role in Rwanda and silence over the mass
murder of Tutsis was singled out by an independent panel convened by
the Organization of African Unity.
You can imagine my surprise, then, at the breathtaking coverage that
Albright received in anticipation of her lecture at IU. Many of my
otherwise conscientious friends were in attendance at Friday’s event,
oblivious to her past. One even pointed out that her actions were
not indicative of any pattern of bad behavior.
Except, they were.
Just two years after the Rwandan genocide, Albright was interviewed
by Lesley Stahl for a "60 Minutes" segment on U.S. sanctions against
Iraq. Stahl asked about the half million Iraqi children who had died
as a result of these sanctions and whether the price was worth it.
Albright responded, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the
price – we think the price is worth it." She later apologized in her
autobiography for this callous statement, but the notion that the
lives of Muslims are less valuable than American lives continues to
form the basis for American foreign policy.
Even as recently as 2007, Albright attempted to block Congressional
legislation regarding the recognition of the Armenian genocide,
citing concerns over the timing of the bill. In a strange turn of
events, Albright is currently leading the Genocide Prevention Task
Force. Not surprisingly, her hypocritical actions received little
coverage from media outlets.
Considering her background and Obama’s promise of a new set of foreign
policy principles, it pains me that his campaign would actively recruit
such surrogates. Indeed, it seems absurd to campaign on the theme of
change and hope only to court the old and ineffective foreign policy
establishment, an establishment characterized by Albright.
I don’t doubt that Albright is an incredibly smart woman, perhaps
even a role model for young women like me. But I don’t appreciate
the short-sightedness we reserve for leaders like her. Whether we
believe it or not, public officials are expected to carry out their
lives in accordance with certain professed values, and when these
very officials violate such values, we must not look the other way.
It seems particularly strange that we would look to Albright as a
foreign policy expert when she seems to have been such a failure at it.