Post-WW2, pre-Ukraine invasion: What genocides occurred? In which should the US have intervened?

[BG-NY]

It seems the board consensus is that the Ukraine invasion is a genocide. Genocide obviously occurred in WW2 as well.

Questions for the board are:

(1) Which other genocides occurred in the span bookended by WW2 and the Ukraine invasion?
(2) Which warranted US foreign aid and/or military intervention?

[oldtimer]

Rwanda, everyone acknowledges that one.

Other genocides which America could but didn't intervene or even encouraged:

Zair 1996
Iraqi Kurds late 1980's
Cambodia late 1970's
The South American Death Camps 1970's
East Timor 1974
Cyprus 1974
Bangladesh 1971

[Meclazine for Israel]

Srebrenica (1994)
Cambodia
Rwanda
South Sudan

[LAKISYLVANIA]

And nobody mentioned Indonesia yet in which America was complicit.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

[CumbrianLefty]

Rwanda, everyone acknowledges that one.

Other genocides which America could but didn't intervene or even encouraged:

Zair 1996
Iraqi Kurds late 1980's
Cambodia late 1970's
The South American Death Camps 1970's
East Timor 1974
Cyprus 1974
Bangladesh 1971

India dealt with Bangladesh, and Vietnam with Pol Pot. Of course at the time of those events, the US was pro-Pakistan (India was too "pro-Communist", you see) and then, in one of the more absurd and shameful moments of post-war diplomacy, condemned the Vietnamese invasion and proceeded to give support to an "opposition" containing "moderate <sic> Khmer Rouge".

[Alben Barkley]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

[GoTfan]

Rwanda sticks out as the obvious example.

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

Well . . . that's debatable. A cynic-and Romeo Dallaire himself-would argue that the reason there was no large scale intervention in Rwanda was because there was nothing for the West to gain by intervening; the US and UK were apparently fighting attempts to label it a genocide because that requires the UN to act

[Silent Hunter]

Biafra is a possible genocide.

[lfromnj]

The west did intervene in Rwanda though?
Mainly France helping the genocide take place

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

The Nakba

[oldtimer]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

Bosnia and Kosovo was probably about Paula Jones and Lewinski.
If there had been a third woman, Rwanda might have been saved.

But does give an indication of how shallow american foreign policy can be.

[oldtimer]

Rwanda, everyone acknowledges that one.

Other genocides which America could but didn't intervene or even encouraged:

Zair 1996
Iraqi Kurds late 1980's
Cambodia late 1970's
The South American Death Camps 1970's
East Timor 1974
Cyprus 1974
Bangladesh 1971

India dealt with Bangladesh, and Vietnam with Pol Pot. Of course at the time of those events, the US was pro-Pakistan (India was too "pro-Communist", you see) and then, in one of the more absurd and shameful moments of post-war diplomacy, condemned the Vietnamese invasion and proceeded to give support to an "opposition" containing "moderate <sic> Khmer Rouge".

Margaret Thatcher praising Pol Pot in the House of Commons, yuck.

[CumbrianLefty]

Not just that, but she used the same "Khmer Rouge moderates" line when asked a question about Cambodia on Blue Peter (one of Britain's longest running children's TV programmes) back in the 80s. One of those - in several senses - surreal moments that simply wouldn't be believable if there wasn't actual documentary evidence of it.

[jojoju1998]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

My Grandpa ( May he RIP ), was a South Vietnamese Officer during the War. He pointed out that the My Lại Massacare was compounded by the fact, that The Vietnam War was a guereilla war. And the Việt Cộng used civilians as a shield, and in some cases, the civilians were part of the Pro North faction as well, so it was impossible to tell who was who.

[David Hume]

What happened in Eastern Germany (e.g. East Prussia) and Sudetenland right after WWII was a genocides. Ethnic Germans were driven out by war crimes by the Soviet and Czechs. Ironically, US and UK made the deal with Soviet to make this happen.

[Sol]

In addition to what's been mentioned, you also have the actions of ISIS towards Yazidis and other minorities.

There's a pretty reasonable argument that the massacres of Hutu refugees in the DRC during the Congo Wars constitute genocide, as well as Effacer le tableau.

[Oryxslayer]

What happened in Eastern Germany (e.g. East Prussia) and Sudetenland right after WWII was a genocides. Ethnic Germans were driven out by war crimes by the Soviet and Czechs. Ironically, US and UK made the deal with Soviet to make this happen.

It wasn't just the Germans. Every Country under the Soviet thumb expelled minorities that were ethnically part of their neighbors territory but citizens of their current country. It wasn't a holocaust with gas chambers, but territories got cleansed for new populations, often from those expelled from their neighbors. Stalin and his appointees had enough of the ethnic border wars and fifth-columnist linguistic nationalists. We all only really remember the Germans cause they got kicked out of the most countries (obviously the old Sudetenland and Prussias, but also smaller settlements across the east all the way to the Volga) and they came to the West where the press could actually report on their condition. But the west really couldn't do anything here besides offer assistance to those who came, cause the USSR was the sole arbiter in their puppets.

Oh, and this also applied to a lesser extent to Jewish minority groups once Israel became a state. Those that did survive the Holocaust found the new governments less than accommodating to their plight, and this was a nice option from their perspective compared to reparations.

It's a whole section in Pulitzer Prize winning Eastern Europeans Historian Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtin, admittedly one of her earlier works. These days her modern work is more focused on the Post-Soviet states, especially Ukraine.

[It’s so Joever]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

Kosovars love Clinton for it as well.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

Kosovars love Clinton for it as well.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Central Africa certainly had a ton of civilians get killed in the 1990s and the aughts between Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, and the Congo wars.

[CumbrianLefty]

We DID intervene in the Bosnian genocide and Kosovo. Clinton learned his lesson from not intervening in Rwanda.

I would also argue Vietnamese was also a genocide

My Lai massacre

Isolated war crimes do not equal genocide. At no point did the US set out to exterminate the Vietnamese people. We actually held some of the perpetrators of My Lai accountable even. More than you can say for Russia, where war crimes are all but encouraged and the extermination of an ethnic group/nationality is an explicit goal.

But by all means, keep trying to "both sides" and "whatabout" everything.

By the way OP, why did you get rid of that thread you made about whether Russia met the UN definition of genocide? I had some good posts in that thread. Guess the poll results and ownings you took in the replies were too embarrassing for you?

Kosovars love Clinton for it as well.

Quite a lot of Kosovars in their teens and early 20s called Tonibler too.

[EastAnglianLefty]

In addition to what's been mentioned, you also have the actions of ISIS towards Yazidis and other minorities.

There's a pretty reasonable argument that the massacres of Hutu refugees in the DRC during the Congo Wars constitute genocide, as well as Effacer le tableau.

Also the still-ongoing Ituri conflict. A central theme of the various conflicts mentioned in central Africa is that attempts at genocide aren't just confined to one party - when they've had the power to, people on all sides of the conflicts have engaged in widespread slaughter of civilians.

[David Hume]

What happened in Eastern Germany (e.g. East Prussia) and Sudetenland right after WWII was a genocides. Ethnic Germans were driven out by war crimes by the Soviet and Czechs. Ironically, US and UK made the deal with Soviet to make this happen.

It wasn't just the Germans. Every Country under the Soviet thumb expelled minorities that were ethnically part of their neighbors territory but citizens of their current country. It wasn't a holocaust with gas chambers, but territories got cleansed for new populations, often from those expelled from their neighbors. Stalin and his appointees had enough of the ethnic border wars and fifth-columnist linguistic nationalists. We all only really remember the Germans cause they got kicked out of the most countries (obviously the old Sudetenland and Prussias, but also smaller settlements across the east all the way to the Volga) and they came to the West where the press could actually report on their condition. But the west really couldn't do anything here besides offer assistance to those who came, cause the USSR was the sole arbiter in their puppets.

Oh, and this also applied to a lesser extent to Jewish minority groups once Israel became a state. Those that did survive the Holocaust found the new governments less than accommodating to their plight, and this was a nice option from their perspective compared to reparations.

It's a whole section in Pulitzer Prize winning Eastern Europeans Historian Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtin, admittedly one of her earlier works. These days her modern work is more focused on the Post-Soviet states, especially Ukraine.

I disagree. The major reason that the Germans in the former German territory got a wholesale cleaning, is that the UK and US agreed that the Soviet could eat Polish land, and let Polish eat German in compensation. If the west insist on the 1937 border, or any border based on ethnic self determination, the Soviet wouldn't unilaterally do that.
As for the Czechs, they did it not under the communist regime, but under the government supported by the west.

[CumbrianLefty]

They "agreed" to it because it was pretty much going to happen anyway.

Besides, the idea that Germany deserved retribution in some form was pretty widespread by the end of WW2 and far from just endorsed by Stalin and his apologists. To admittedly put it at its crudest, it just possibly wasn't a good idea to start two World Wars in 25 years?

[dead0man]

According to wiki we have:
1.Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars in the late 40s
2.Soviet deportation of Chechens and Ingush in the late 40s
3.Guatemala genocide (govt killed 40% of the remaining Mayans) (60s-90s)
4.Bangladesh genocide 1971
5.Hutu genocide in Burundi in 1972
6.Acholi and Lango genocides by Idi Amin in the mid 70s
7.East Timor genocide (almost half of them were killed by Indonesia in 1999
8.Camboida in the late 70s
9.Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe in the mid 80s
10.Anfal (Kurds) genocide by Saddam in the late 80s
11.Isaaq genocide in Somalia, late 80s
12.Bosnia early 90s
13.Rwanada 1994
14.Massacre of the Hutus in Congo late 90s
15.Massacre of pygmies by Congo early aughts
16.Darfur, ongoing
17.Yazidis by ISIS late teens
18.Uyghur genocide, ongoing
19.Rohingya genocide in Myanmar ongoing

The UN, with the West's support, should have intervened in all of them.  Unfortunately, Soviet leadership sucked and the west's leadership didn't have any balls (and was occasionally on the wrong side of these) so the UN is a worthless organization whose only purpose is to allow garbage countries to express their antisemitism together.