Hotel Rwanda

I finally saw this movie, of course, I was aware of the history of the genocide in Rwanda but still, this movie is an eye opener. My wife and I were not sure if we should let our daughter see it... knowing how terrible the story is, but it turned out to have been told very well... the violence is oppressing but not graphicly so... it's what really happened that is so distressing.

For one thing, it helps one remember this wasn't some war among savage people living in the jungle, this was a massacre from house to house in neighborhoods that look, in many cases, just like any American or Western neighborhood. A million people hacked by machete.

It's a great movie, I highly recommend it.

Just one more thing for those that might not know. This whole thing starts by a Western Power playing a good old Roman Empire trick...

(1) You always get a local to run the show locally

(2) Always choose the local from a minority. A ruling minority will clamp down, it's the only way for them to survive.

And that is where Hutu anger at Tutsi's came from... the pattern really goes back quite far in these things. Mind you, that should generate not one iota of sympathy for any individual who has chosen brutal inhumanity, and Rwanda's example is very brutal, very cruel indeed.