The crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, has many layers. Since the late 19th century, Congo’s vast natural resources have continually attracted violent intervention from abroad and stoked internal conflicts. Congo’s government has never effectively represented or protected its people, and has all too often simply served as a source of unchecked power and personal enrichment for individuals. The ongoing crisis in eastern Congo is rooted both in this history of predation and corruption, and the continuing aftermath of the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. Today, Congo continues to struggle with an explosive combination of conflicts at the local, regional and national levels.It's not a situation that commando derring-do can resolve, though you can't help thinking that even the worst blood-diamond bandit would be a step up from Kony.
Colonel Chivington knew these Indians to be peaceful before the massacre . Smith witnessed, as did helpless Indian mothers and fathers, young children having their sex organs cut away. U.S. soldiers mutilated Native American women, cutting away their breasts and removing all other sex organs. After the Massacre, soldiers displayed the women's severed body parts on their hats and stretched them over their saddle-bows while riding in the ranks. The sex organs of every male were removed in the most grotesque manner. One soldier boasted that he would make a tobacco pouch with the removed privates of White Antelope, a respected elder. Conner witnessed a soldier displaying the body parts of a woman on a stick. The fingers of Indians were cut off to get at the rings on them. Connor remembered a baby only a few months old who had been hidden in the feed box of a wagon for protection. When the soldiers discovered the baby some time later, the baby was thrown onto the frozen ground to die. In going over the site the next day, it was noted that every corpse was mutilated in some way, and scalped.-- from Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity; holding the important position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the verist savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their position of fancied security, he took advantage of their in-apprehension and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man.-- Report of the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
Whatever influence this may have had upon Colonel Chivington, the truth is that he surprised and murdered, in cold blood, the unsuspecting men, women, and children on Sand creek, who had every reason to believe they were under the protection of the United States authorities, and then returned to Denver and boasted of the brave deed he and the men under his command had performed.
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posted by IvoShandor at 4:48 PM on February 6, 2009 [1 favorite]