Retrospective On The Holocaust, Waco And Srebrenica: Delay, Negotiations And Appeasement Cost Lives

The coincidence of two terrible contemporary tragedies — Serbia’s vicious conquest of one of the last Muslim outposts in Eastern Bosnia, Srebrenica, and the loss of virtually every man, woman and child who remained in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas — with the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the international remembrance of the Holocaust represents a defining moment in history. The Clinton Administration and the civilized world should learn, at long last, the dangerous folly of: trying to negotiate with twisted, ruthless tyrants; postponing forceful action in the hope of buying time for negotiations to succeed; and appeasing people who are, in the final analysis, unappeasable.

Action is Needed — Not Just Words — And Early Action, At That

In this week’s program of "The World This Week" public television series hosted by Center for Security Policy director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., three distinguished policy-makers joined Margaret Thatcher in decrying the West’s failure to recognize the lessons of the Holocaust. Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky noted that — in the face of genocidal threats — civilized nations have a moral obligation not merely to punish the perpetrators after the fact, but to act swiftly and preemptively to prevent such threats from being realized.

As Congressman Lantos aptly put it: "I would like to hope and think that, had there been equal simultaneous awareness, that six million human beings, including a million children, were systematically being killed — the world, perhaps would have reacted more strongly. I am not sure, because I think, as I look at "ethnic cleansing" — 1993 variety — it’s clear to me that the veneer of civilization is so thin and it hasn’t grown any thicker in these 50 years….Appeasement is as counterproductive in 1993 as it was in the 1930s."

Reinforcing this view, Amb. Kirkpatrick paraphrasing Thomas Hobbes, noted that "Words without swords are not necessarily very useful. And the Genocide Convention, quite frankly, has yet to demonstrate any utility of any kind in discouraging genocide or in helping to deal with it once it occurs."

Paula Dobriansky contended that: "There are several lessons to be learned from the Holocaust: The first being that the world cannot be standing on the sidelines and observing atrocities taking place and being mum….There’s a need to not only take preemptive action when there is even the slightest tinge of evidence of such atrocities, no matter what the scale is. And secondly, certainly, to punish such perpetrators."

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that to extract the proper lessons from the inevitable retrospectives on the Waco fiasco and the on-going Serbian genocide in Bosnia, analysts must not only assess blame for the actions ultimately and belatedly taken by the Clinton Administration. They must also evaluate the significance of the failure to take action early on — a failure which made the subsequent, abysmal outcomes highly probable, if not inevitable.

Regrettably, these tragic incidents are unlikely to be the last episodes in which megalomaniacs are in a position to wreak destruction on large numbers of innocent, helpless human beings. It can only be hoped, however, that these are the last times when the U.S. government will ignore the lessons of the Holocaust — and of Waco and Srebrenica — opting for the path of least resistance, passivity and talk rather than early, decisive and if necessary forceful action aimed at preventing such needless carnage.