I finally was able to watch the movie, Hotel Rwanda, this weekend. I have seen the documentary footage a year ago. Overall, the film was very well done. It had a great plot, plausible characters, and a strong tie to politics and freedoms. I found the movie thought provoking especially in terms of international interventionalism, liberties, and human rights. For those who don’t know the term, international interventionalism, here is a brief summary.

International interventionalism describes how countries such as the United States intervene and meddle in the affairs of other countries. For example, we intervened in Iraq due to the bogus reason of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The United States attempted to intervene in Somalia in the 1990’s. The United States spends billions of dollars intervening in other countries every year. This intervening rarely helps the victim country and typically hurts it in several ways. In typical areas of intervention there is a dispute between two groups of people. The interventionalist picks a side and helps that side smash the other via propaganda, guns, and other not so savory methods like torture. Well, now that smashed side is very angry that some foreigner came into their land and killed their people. Imagine of the UN came into the United States and started killing our protesting citizens. How many of them would get very angry, leading to their own defense via terrorism (Remember, terrorism is only terrorism from one point of view. From another, it is patriotism).

Well, in Rwanda, Belgium was the colonial leader who had selected the minority Tutsi race of people to lead the country while under Belgium rule. A colony is as interventionalist as you can get. Furthermore, they split the nation via an ethnic boundary… bad idea. Well, when Belgium left, the majority Hutu race gained control. Now… there is a majority in control that had been supressed for many years. Can anyone guess what happens? One part Hatred and one part propaganda mix to create genocide. It did in Rwanda, it did in Nazi Germany, it did in China. The general rule of thumb is that interventionalism kills people. Now back to the movie.

Now, the question is, what could the nation of Rwanda done to prevent this type of insanity. If we look to our country, there are ten things written down that were intended to prevent this type of atrocity. You may remember the Bill of Rights. Let’s closely examine the second amendment.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

If every household had several militia-caliber weapons, how would had the outcome changed?

There is a part of the movie where Don Cheagle’s character, Paul, says to the army officer, I don’t use guns. I found that profoundly foolish in a time when owning gun meant surviving. By saying I refuse to protect myself, you are saying I insist someone must do it for me. He insisted that the UN and the corrupt police protect him. Well, the UN pulled out what little efforts were there. And the corrupt police general lost interest in the money Paul was offering. It would had been easier, cheaper, and more effective to protect theirselves. Unfortunately, the Tutsi race paid a hefty price for their lack of armament.

The movie was done very well. I watched it as my young son slept in my arms and I thought about what I would do when that event transpires in the United States. What would you do?