MovieChat Forums > Hotel Rwanda (2005) Discussion > Why America is to blame

Why America is to blame



Throughout the movie, and right into popular discussion, as well as during and after the actual event, the question was brought up incessantly, why isn't America helping? And ultimately, it's America's fault this was allowed to happen. If we look at America's track record for helping other nations it would magically seem like a 100% failure rate according to the same people who blame America for not stopping this genocide.

But let's imagine the US did intervene. First, for your story to make any sense, you have to admit America has a right and duty to go into foreign nations and kill their people under certain circumstances (yet without being asked by that country's government). If you can't admit that, you're a hypocrite and a liar, only out to blame America. Because nothing short of entering the nation and killing its people would have possibly done any more to stop the genocide.

Then you have to admit that American lives are worth less to you than other human lives, and that you think it's OK for some 17 year old boy from Nevada to die on the streets of Kigali 9,000 miles from home while shooting children (child soldiers) in their own country. If you can not accept this, then you are a hypocrite and a liar.

Then you must admit that in order to stop a national genocide spanning thousands of miles and millions of people, it would take hundreds of thousands of American service members. And because this genocide from start to finish lasted about 100 days, those service members would have had to leave the US immediately upon hearing of a civil war (because the facts took time to come out) and that the US should always mobilize hundreds of thousands of service members to go anywhere on Earth and kill their people the moment word gets out that a fight has started because it might be a genocide and we wouldn't know it yet. If you can't agree to this, you are a hypocrite and a liar.

Anything short of immediate full scale war on the part of the US, and it becomes America's fault. If they had merely sent in special forces as some of you morons suggest, they could only possibly take out some leaders and possibly evacuate tens of people. If they had tried to build up a proper invasion force for effectively ending the genocide, it would have taken weeks, possibly months, but that would be "stalling" and you would still hate America for what it allowed to happen.

You are children, with small minds and you have no idea of the things you truly ask for. You want magic and miracles and fairy dust. You want Americans to die immediately and without regard for their own safety to help people they've never met thousands of miles away in a country that neither invited them, nor ever liked them. Like Somalia, where people laughed and cheered as American bodies were dragged through the streets having been killed for trying to feed starving children. You all disgust me. None of you are worth the breath you waste or the energy you expend blaming America for everything it does and doesn't do.

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Could America have helped to stop or ease the Rwandan genocide, Yes. Did America have an obligation to do so, I don't think so. Rwanda was never an American colony, and America never excercised any administrative influence over Rwanda.

If anybody was to intervene, it would be the Belgians (who were there), the French, or collectively the UN (which may have included American soldiers). A few thousand boots on the ground would have quelled the bloodshed. Perhaps not completely but untold thousands could have been saved. The failure is on the UN, not the US.

The US had absolutely no obligation to solve this problem. We tried to help in Vietnam, they didn't want it. We tried to help in Somalia, they didn't want it. We've tried to help in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere and horrible things are done to our soldiers, diplomats and civilians wherever we try to help. Then a situation like this comes along and our government and people are ostracized for not helping. F@#$ it.

Our government needs to realize that lasting and positive change is only achieved when the people in these countries help themselves. If the Hutu want to slaughter the Tutsi because they can't get along, fine. Our help will not make things better in any real and lasting way. People need to sort out their own problems. When the US (or UN) stands in the way of conflict, all that happens is a continous building of bad blood which is eventually going to spill over into conflict. If they're going to fight, let them fight and hope that a peace is found on the other side.

It really pisses me off that the US government (and Americans in general) does so much and gives so much to try to make things better for people all over the world, and it does so little REAL good (temporary relief at best). Then when we don't help, people criticize us for it. F%@# the world. If it wants to tear itself apart, I say let it. Not our business and never was. The reason our own country is in the wretched shape it is, is because our government is so quick to 'give' people things. Nobody is self-reliant anymore. People (and nations) need to solve their own problems and our constant interference is not going to advance that cause.

Let people make their own way in the world, and they will achieve a much healthier respect for their own life and those around them.

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It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I don't remember "America" being blamed, but rather just the world in general.

We've tried to help in Afghanistan and Iraq


I'm not sure invading a country is considered "help"

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Big Like!

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Exactly. I don't know what these people are ranting about. I just watched it again and french, belgian, italian even canadian were all mentioned and possibly "blamed" but I don't think America were mentioned once.

Yet I keep seeing all these posts from people whinging that the movie blamed America.

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We tried to help in Vietnam, they didn't want it. We tried to help in Somalia, they didn't want it. We've tried to help in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere and horrible things are done to our soldiers, diplomats and civilians wherever we try to help. Then a situation like this comes along and our government and people are ostracized for not helping. F@#$ it.


Please! Vietnam was a proxy war between US and USSR during the cold war, the excuse was not allow communism to permeate into Vietnam and it was a war lost by the US because they failed miserably.

Afghanistan is not very much different, in fact, that country was doing very well until US intervened (again, due to the proximity it had with USSR), so the US gave weapons, training and support to those rebel factions which will later become the Talibans and would return Afghanistan back to the middle ages.

The USSR invaded them, which was worse for them, because this time they lost, and at the end of the conflict, when USSR withdrew its troops, the talibans were already in the government.

Iraq was for the oil, not because the US "wanted to help".

The USA, just as any other super power throughout history does NOT "help" other countries out of the kindness of their hearts, they "help" them because it is on their convenience and interests, so do not act all sanctimonious about the whole thing, it makes you look both naive and ignorant.

The US didn't help Rwanda for one simple reason: There was NOTHING to be gained for them there.

The GREATEST ally and BEST friend of christianity throughout history is Satan

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I would like to add, that the US never intervenes unless there is an interest in it for them.

The civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, for example, were clear-cut cases of the American government providing millions of dollars every year to the governments of both countries while they slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians and guerilla soldiers who wanted only to take charge of their own farmland so that they could eat. Instead, they were killed off by their governments for over ten years, women and children included, with nowhere to go, while the US aided the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala to slaughter and kidnap thousands of them. This, they did, under the reasoning that the rebels in those nations were looking to complete a communist takeover. Even if this was true, the U.S. could have easily intervened and, instead of providing financial support to the military and government of those nations against the rebels, they could have provided financial support to the rebels and helped them takeover and seize back their countries from the murdering fascists. Then, if the American government feared communism so much, they could have helped install democratic republics for these people once their revolutions were complete.

But the U.S. did not do this, because it would mean trouble for the US to have sophisticated nations just south of our border filled to the teeth with native Mayans running them (the demographic that was rebelling and being killed off). What would happen if the revolutions in El Salvador and Guatemala were complete and their previously fascists governments overthrown? Well, it would mean rebels in Mexico would be inspired to do the same (and there was in fact a small and semi-successful revolution in Mexico sometime in the early 90s, I believe). Then what do you think would happen if the many Aztecs in Mexico were able to seize their nations from crooked rulers? You'd have a population of Natives with sophisticated nations just south of your border, in a situation that already involves Manifest Destiny, something that makes US dominion possible in the first place (and something that already has millions of Natives in the western world ticked off at any Anglo-lead government).

Something similar happened in Nicaragua. Except, in the case of Nicaragua, it was the opposite. In the 60s and 70s, there was a revolution there and rebels formed a regime and took hold of the country. They decreased the illiteracy rate and educated folks, and reprinted books that had been out of circulation for years. The U.S. funded Contra missions for rebels to overthrow the new government because the new government did not benefit the U.S., and was inspiring revolutions in neighboring Central American countries. Something similar happened in Peru and I believe Argentina as well. And the U.S. was, once again, crookedly involved. The US relies on the impoverishment and crookedness of Central American nations. Large chunks of the Cold War were indirectly fought in Central America, just as it was done in Vietnam.


The situations in Africa, unfortunately, are far more complicated, be it Nigeria, the Congo, Rwanda, or many of the other warring nations there. Read up on the Nigerian Civil War. What happened in Rwanda has largely been happening in nations all over Africa. There are no clear-cut good guys or bad guys in these nations, as in the case of the civilians and rebels in Guatemala and El Salvador versus their genocidal fascists. Hotel Rwanda made it clear that the army and the rebels there were both willing to kill random, innocent civilians for no other reason than them being ethnically related to the rival group. And anyone willing to kill an innocent person or a child, is instantly a "bad guy." Therefore the situation in Africa is more complicated as far as good guys and bad guys is concerned.





I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way

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i completely agree with the OP. Where should America be forced to help something that's not even our problem. And how many countries are in Africa? Are you freaking telling me that NONE of these countries had enough money or troops to send to Rwanda's aid. So why didn't they? If you're own freaking neighbors don't want to help you, then in my opinion you're on your own.

"If we can only catch him, Death is dead!" -Cantebury Tales

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To those who say "Where was America?" I ask; "Where was the UK? Where was China? Russia? Where was France? Where was Australia?" We tried to intervene in Somalia and got *beep* for it; we don't intervene in Rwanda and get *beep* for. It seems if America does or doesn't its their fault. At least without intervention we don't lose American lives.

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Actually America was to blame not through inaction, but through action. Four years before the so called "100 days" current dictator of Rwanda Paul kagame, was being trained by the u.s. government in the arts of insurgency contra style ie death squad style if your to young to remember the contras and in propaganda. Prior to that he was a long time leiutenant to another long time u.s. backed dictator in Uganda Paul Museveni who also was able to successfully overthrow the government of Uganda in the 1980's in the process inventing the child soldier. Kagame and other Tutsi expatriates (they had formally ruled the place for first the Germans and then after world war 1 the belgians until independence) these former ruling elites had been waging a terror campaign against Rwanda for 20 years. In 1990 America decided to back the terrorists of the RPF the heroes of films like this one. Why? Resources, we wanted a piece of France's African sphere of influence. Far from uninvolved America provided massive assistance to the RPF. Films like these are one aspect of such support they create a completely false picture of what happened. Why is it that this is the only piece of African history Hollywood is interested other then the fall of apartheid.

For an in depth look at this film in particular go to http://allthingspass.com/uploads/html-135Hotel%20Rwanda%20Corrected%20Final%201%20Nov%2007.htm

Basically what really happened was a civil war brought on by the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi by the RPF with technical assistance and the 4 prior years of atrocities committed by the RPF. These created the background for popular violence against the tutsis. However things were much more complicated, then they are portrayed it was not just hutu vs tutsi. In fact some tutsis were even members of Hutu militias and since the RPF had been living in Uganda since 1959 they hated the Tutsis that stayed behind in Rwanda. It should be noted that the Ugandan Tutsis of the RPF killed Tutsis and Hutus and they didn't use machetes they used expensive weapons and had CIA advisers with them every step of the way. Most importantly they had the public relations muscle of the west on their side. Thus even when they slaughtered Hutus it was reported in the media that it the victims were Tutsis and of course the RPF role was never mentioned. We saw dead bodies and assumed they must be the tutsis.
So with American aid RPF won and far from stopping the genocide they actively engaged in it. After victory they mercilesslessly hunted the hutu refugees who fled to the congo where under the eyes of the u.n. and with the asssistance of u.s. special forces they slaughtered 1.2 million refugees. But because of the genocide narrative nobody seemed to care. Hutus are all evil or so we were told so the international community covered it all up. Thus what separates this from just another ugly covert war is the that RPF and the Ugandans invaded the Congo where 15 years later they are still there killing 1500 people a day. People who had nothing to do with events in Rwanda. Under the disguise of various militias most famously M-23 they set out to seize control of eastern Congo. 10 million people have died and the truth is the RPF is an American proxy army like the Syrian rebels. In other words the RPF has killed ten times more people in the congo then died in the rwandan civil war.The RPF have killed millions to insure that western mining interests people like Maurice templesman the owner of Tiffany diamond company have unrestricted access to tthe congo's riches.
Ever wonder where the uranium for the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima came from or the copper for alll those billions of rounds of ammunition fired in places like Vietnam or Iraq or the cobalt necessary for our fighter planes, or say the rare earth mineral coltan iin your smart phone it all comes from the Congo far from being on the fringes of the world Congo has long been central to the global economy, a land of untold riches but nobody in the Congo seems to benefit except of course those rich colonialists that never left and are never mentioned in our papers. You can see why violence, destabilization anarchy chaos are in u.s. and European stratetigic interest in Africa any sane government might ask why the majority of people in Congo are starving when they live atop gold and diamonds as well as such strategically useful minerals. It happened long ago a man called Patrice Lumbumba who remembers him today? in the new frontier of globalization chaos is perhaps the future (as seen in Iraq Somalia and Libya coming soon to Syria) and the problems of Africa don't arise out of tribal savagery but imperialism and greed.

If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend the work of Keith Harmon Snow. His brilliant articles can be found at alllthingspass.com and consciousbeingalliance.com Or watch one of his lectures on you tube. In the article cited above he goes into the true story of hotel Rwanda. I've just scratched the surface your mind will be blown.

And no America is hardly the only one to blame England, France, Belgium, Germany, Israel and even Canada are all involved in the plunder and masss murder of the Congo. As well as their rivals the Chinese. And of course local partners like Kagame and Museveni. And our own lack of curiosity or outrage as to why ten million people have been murdered. Investigate Africom and America's plans to vastly increase our military presence in Africa Ironically the first African American president is stepping up the recolonzation of Africa.
If you've never heard any of this before investigate it for yourself the truth is slowly beginning to emerge, check out the friends of the Congo and voice of the Congo. Ignore big NGOs they are complicit.

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Excellent. I'm glad that at least word seems to be spreading about the role the U.S. actually plays in the world. I'm convinced that if people were aware of U.S. imperialism they would wake up. Billions of dollars are spent ensuring that they are kept asleep.

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I agree that America is not to blame, However the US did fail to act, then again so did most of the world. Belgium should obviously take the largest slice of the blame from nations outside of Africa..however they did get spooked after 10 of there soldiers were killed early on.


The NSA list the following as ways U.S. government contributed to the slow U.S. and worldwide response to the genocide - (points taken from wiki)

The U.S. lobbied the U.N. for a total withdrawal of U.N. (UNAMIR) forces in Rwanda in April 1994;
Secretary of State Warren Christopher did not authorize officials to use the term "genocide" until May 21, and even then, U.S. officials waited another three weeks before using the term in public;
Bureaucratic infighting slowed the U.S. response to the genocide in general;
The U.S. refused to jam extremist radio broadcasts inciting the killing, citing costs and concern with international law;
U.S. officials knew exactly who was leading the genocide, and actually spoke with those leaders to urge an end to the violence but did not follow up with concrete action.

Also this gem from Clinton who puts the US response to the Rwandan genocide as one of the biggest failures during his presidency - "I don't think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it."

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Everyone expects to do this because America constantly promotes itself as the World Police. However, many fail to realise that americans only intervene if there's significant financial gain in the situation to do so. What about Iraq and the many american teenagers that died there? Do you think that it was for freedom and to fight terrorism like CNN told you?

America doesn't care about anyone, not even its own people yet remarkably its people still think the government gives a *beep* about them.

And yet americans continue to wonder why the whole world thinks they're fat and stupid.

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America doesn't care about anyone, not even its own people yet remarkably its people still think the government gives a *beep* about them.


The government response to Hurricane Katrina should have made that clear.

The 1982 film Missing made the point as well. When Jack Lemmon's character goes to the U.S. Consolate (in Chile) to try to get help finding his missing son, the consul tells him, We are not here to help Americans -- we are here to promote American interests.

Big difference.

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Here we go bashing the USA. They have posed both sides of the argument. First of all I do not have Y-T guilt. The USA did not start this conflict and it is not responsible to end it. The big one is Belgian is the country that really screwed that part of Africa over for MANY years. How come they didn’t send troops in? What about the other countries in the area, why didn’t they send troops in?

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The USA did not start this conflict and it is not responsible to end it.


Indeed. This is 100% true. This was in absolutely no way an American problem to clean up. It was a German colony, then a Belgian colony, then a UN mandate under Belgian administration, then an independent country that had been perpetually ****ed up by racial divisions severely aggravated by Belgian colonial policies. Tutsi had dominated Hutu long before the colonials arrived. But the Hutu were never outright abused until the Belgians came and used one to oppress the **** out of the other. Such ignorance as I've never seen.

That does not excuse the genocide. It takes a really sick and twisted individual to hack an infant to death with a machete. There is no excuse for that. That is madness. Insanity. Ignorance. Nothing more than hatred. Some very evil people coordinated that effort, and untold thousands of otherwise decent Hutus were terrified into participating in it, to avoid appearing as 'traitors' or 'uncommitted to the Hutu Power movement'. Some of the murderers who participated in the genocide truly had no choice. I'm sure many stood up to the butchery when it started, and were killed because of it. A prime example of how a handful of hateful agitators can drive an entire nation to madness through fear, terror and propaganda.

If this was anybody's mess to clean up, other than Rwandans themselves, it was the Belgians. Their colonial regime seriously messed up the people of that country. They filled the Tutsi people with a serious Napoleon complex by convincing them of their racial superiority over Hutu and Twa peoples, and outright abused the Hutus in horrific and needless ways across entire generations.

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