Armenia, Indonesia, and Iraq: Massacre or Genocide?

            The United Nations defines genocide as committing acts of the following nature with the intent to exterminate, in whole or in part, a religious, racial, ethnical or national group, using methods such as: murder, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures to prevent birth, forcibly transferring children from one group to another, as well as deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life in order to bring about its destruction in whole or in part. The Holocaust is a more well-known example of genocide, where over 6 million people were starved, over-worked, subjected to disgusting living quarters, and killed. What come into question are the lesser known events that happened in Armenia, Indonesia and Iraq. It has been established that these times in history were bloody, mass killings of people, but can they be considered genocide?

            “Oil is too important to be left to the Arabs,” said Henry Kissinger. It was a famous saying that easily explained one of the biggest reasons for our Desert Storm. The other was the Iraqi invasion into Kuwait. The American people heard news of the Iraqis killing Kuwaiti babies in hospitals – thousands of them. Which of course, made no sense, seeing as that Kuwaiti is not highly populated and that it was only one hospital. But the public ate up the story and most supported the war. Our government told the country that we had set off a series of “surgical bombings”, hitting nothing but military buildings. This was another lie. We bombed indiscriminately and did our best to keep the media out of the war.  Our armies knocked out dams and water purifying facilities as well as slowed food supplies and hindered transportation. We wanted them to submit. By the end of the war, or one-sided massacre, it was estimated that about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were dead. When asked how many Iraqi casualties overall, Colin Powell was quoted as saying, “It’s not really a number I’m interested in” (Clark). However, although the war brought the systematic surrender of Iraq and perhaps even a blow to Saddam’s ego, this can only be classified as a massacre. Our intent was not to blow the Middle East off the face of the earth, or even rid the world of the Iraqis. Money was our goal. We wanted control over their oil, and by our attacks on their population, we got what we wanted. But the ordeal can not be considered genocide.