CEASE FIRE NOW

In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was President Clinton’s U.N. ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Albright, “We have heard that a half-million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And — and, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.” Albright would  rise to become Secretary of State under President Clinton.

At one time, people might have thought anything was worth saving the life of a child. But now, official policy in times of war seems to indicate there are no individuals worth saving, only groups of people standing in the way of military objectives. How did Albright arrive at this [im]moral calculus? 

While the United States condemns genocide, it turns a blind eye on democide. Rudolph Joseph Rummel (1932-2014) a political scientist and professor at Indiana University, Yale University, and the University of Hawai’i, coined the term and said,  Democide's necessary and sufficient meaning is that of the intentional government killing of an unarmed person or people. 

The United States has itself bombed innocent civilians in Japan, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The nation seems to see it as a useful tool during warfare, and so turns a blind eye on what is going on in Gaza. It is time for all of us to try to find peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.