Genocide Must Be Prevented

The use of the U.S. Air Force deserves support. Help for the pursuit is now necessary, independent of whether the United States still pursues other interests.

The United States is bombing Iraq again. Inevitably, memories come up of the last war under President George W. Bush, who justified his engagement with untruthful allegations about dictator Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. The mission indeed ended the career of this bloody ruler, but it also led the country to a civil war and to the destabilization of a country and a region. Mimicry is not recommended.

The U. S. Air Force is neither the Salvation Army nor the International Committee of the Red Cross. It flies and fights for the interests of the last superpower. Nevertheless, its mission in Iraq deserves our support. Ultimately, its goal is to protect tens of thousands of people from the grasp of Islamic terrorists and to safeguard these refugees from starvation.

Saving these people not only includes combat missions, but also the delivery of food for these oppressed people. President Obama does not say that he can end the war – like George W. Bush did – or find political solutions to the conflict. That is only possible for the local leaders to do.

Twenty years ago, hundreds of thousands of people died in the genocide in Rwanda. They also died because the international community sat back, did nothing and let the genocide occur without intervention.

The danger of a similar development is too great to be dependent on the pure doctrine of U.N. Security Council’s decisions or to wait for an international rapid reaction force. Help is necessary now, not in three weeks. It may be that the United States is proceeding with completely different, dishonest motives, but that does not make intervention any less necessary.

Whether this military intervention will get out of control, like in many cases before, is an entirely different question. Today we don’t know what consequences will follow. If it goes badly, the United States will become entangled in another war that it can’t win, and the hate and murder between the religious and ethnic groups in Iraq will be spurred on further still. But this risk must be taken into account, if for nothing less than to prevent the genocide of the Yazidis.