Kissinger on Somalia

Charles Krauthammer’s statement (“Why Somalia and Not Bosnia?” Column Right, Dec. 13) that “Genocide is the end not just of life but of history, memory, posterity” should not be allowed to go unchallenged.

If it were true, then the link he makes between genocide and military intervention becomes immediately questionable, because there is then no purpose for the intervention beyond revenge. The crime has been committed; intervention has not stopped it.

And what kind of revenge is then sanctioned if not on the same barbaric scale as the crime that provoked it?

But the experience of the Jewish and Armenian holocausts in the 20th Century prove that the statement is not true. In each case, history, memory and posterity have outlived genocide. It is this phenomenon that primarily keeps our attention to the barbarity of genocide.

BARRY H. STEINER

Professor of Political Science

Cal State Long Beach