Syria Genocide or not?

By definition the conflict in Syria is not a genocide because the killings are political not ethnic, or religious. However, personally I feel that killing people for their polictal beliefs should be added to the definition of genocide because it exactly the same thing as killing people for their ethnicity, or religion. So in my opinion what is happening in Syria should be considered a genocide. 

Placing Blame: Rwandan Genocide

Personally I believe that humanity is responsible for the Rwandan Genocide. It would be easy to blame the Hutu for killing  the Tutsi, the Belgium for creating the racial tension between the Hutu and the Tutsi, the international community for not doing more to prevent it, or even the Tutsi for not wanting international help. Honestly though it took all of those groups for the situation in Rwanda to reach the point it did. Genocide is never cause just by the perpetrators of the murders, it is caused by many things, and lots of people. However, it is easy to blame a few for what happened then realizing that we has humans are all partially responsible for the deaths of thousands by just sitting back and doing nothing.

Assessing Blame

The proper response of the Pope during the Holocaust would have been to make a public statement against the Nazis and to have encouraged people to stand up against the Nazi regime. The proper response of the U.S. during the Holocaust would have been to publicize what was happening more, and actually tried to step in and stop it. Today it’s also the international community job to try to do everything they can to stop genocides that are accruing because if we see something happening, and do nothing about it then we’re just as responsible as the people who are actually carrying out the genocide.   

Defiance Post 3

If I were the director of Defiance I would choose to portray the scene where the partisans are beating the scout spying on their location as A the group kills the scout and gets on with their lives afterwards. I would choose to portray it this way because I feel like that is what would most likely happen. The partisans are angry for what has happened to them and in the heat of the moment it is extremely hard to control angry groups of people. Plus in a way the Nazi have probably lost some of their humanity in the eyes of the partisans for what they have done to the Jewish people so afterwards  I can’t really see them regretting what they did. This choice connects to my personal sense of ethics not because I believe that that is right is some way, but because if I were the director I would want to use this scene has a way to send a message to the audience. I personally don’t think that option is ethically right,  in fact I think it makes the partisans just as bad as the Nazis, but also think that option A raises a lot of good questions on morality, so that’s really way I choose it. Not because I think it is ethically correct, but because I think it causes you to examine the ethics of the whole situation.