I finally got around to watching "Hotel Rwanda" last night. It's definitely a movie I want for my library. On the one hand it shows how helpless super-powers can be. But there was a scene that gave me an idea of how power might be projected even in difficult situations like that.
In one scene the protagonist is able to cow those who would do the hotels occupants harm by invoking the image of spies documenting the holocaust with satellite communications. It was a bluff of course, but what if it wasn't? The frustrating thing about the Rwandan situation then, the Darfur situation now, and other troubled spots around the globe is that without a risky presence on the ground by strong international forces, the perpetrators feel like they have no accountability for their actions. They can and do get away with anything. If we could beef up our surveillance capabilities as well as our unmanned combat capabilities we could stand a better chance of keeping gross atrocities from happening. If the bad guys know that someone is watching and that there will one day be a reckoning they will be much less likely to carry out wide ranging genocides. And governments with means will not be reduced to simply wringing their hands.
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