Genocide as defined in international law is the intentional and systematic destruction, wholly or in part, by a government of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. When some people think of genocide they automatically think about World War II and the annihilation of the Jews by the Nazi's. Although genocide was committed, World War II is not the only example of it. In the mid 90's the people of the African nation of Rwanda were experiencing the same thing the Jews did in the 1940's. The Hutu government of Rwanda succeeded in murdering 800,000 Tutsi in the course of a hundred days (Powers 84). In Samantha Powers article "Bystanders to Genocide" she argues that if the United States interfered with the conflict earlier then so many Tutsi lives would not have been lost. It wasn't that cut and dry for the Unites States government they had to think about their own national interest, and they had to think about what would be the best for its people, and so many other factors.
             Samantha Powers argues that the United States inherently stayed out of the Rwanda Hutu Tutsi conflict. She claims that the U.S government vowed never to let genocide occur again after World War II, and the development of the Genocide Convention, yet stayed out of Rwanda where obvious genocide was occurring. She feels that the U.S tried to avoid naming the conflict as Genocide and just recognizing the destruction of the Tutsi's as deaths from the ongoing civil war. Power's claims the "Rwanda violence was not spontaneous but was directed by the government, with lists of victims prepared well in advance." She states that the " United States officials who worked the issue day to day and the declassification documents indicate that plenty was known about the killers' intentions" (94), however still the U.S "resisted intervention of any kind" (98). Powers feels that after the wo...