 Raphael
Lemkin wrote in his 1944 book entitled: Axis Rule in Occupied
Europe, that “new conceptions require new terms”. The “new
conceptions” Lemkin were suggesting became The Office on
Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect United
Nations General Assembly Resolution 96.
https://www.un.org/.../Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the...
Genocide is an extremely strong word to describe America’s
tragic loss of life due to COVID-19. However, because the
Republicans actually won seats in the House of Representatives
and may ultimately win back control of the Senate, it is
critical that we scrutinize how and why America’s President,
Donald Trump, has gotten away with murder. Trump has:
• refused to use sufficient federal resources to stop the spread
of COVID-19
• dissolved the White House’s National Security Council
Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense,
established by Barack Obama to protect America from an
anticipated epidemic such as COVID-19.
• endangered the lives of Americans by disparaging the wearing
of masks, encouraging large indoor gatherings of people, and
hobbling the ability of hospitals across the nation to save the
lives of seriously ill citizens by refusing to provide personal
protective equipment (PPE).
• used his authority as President of the United States to inform
Americans that the COVID-19 epidemic is not a serious threat to
their lives, and that it is merely a new case of the annual flu
that will burn itself out.
• benefited from the Republican Party’s refusal to pass critical
legislation to provide financial and humanitarian assistance to
Americans who have lost their jobs, their homes, and their means
of survival.
The question before us is what to call this breathtaking series
of actions taken by the President of the United States and by
the Republican controlled Senate. Winston Churchill told the
world in 1941: “We are in the presence of a crime without a
name.” I believe that Donald Trump and the Republican controlled
Senate have deliberately placed America in the presence of that
same crime.
Current estimates are that 511,373 (469,578 to 578,347) lives
could be lost to COVID-19 across the United States by February
28, 2021.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9
That
is more than the total of combined military and civilian deaths
of Americans in WWII.
What shall we call this crime perpetrated on American civilians?
Will it continue to be thought of as merely a tragic loss of
life, even though it could have been prevented had Trump and his
administration chosen to act? Will the expected deaths of
500,000 Americans be blamed on China, even though it was Donald
Trump who denied access to life-saving personal protective
equipment for medical personnel and care givers? Will we choose
to ignore the fact that Americans have suffered more deaths than
any other nation in the world, even though it had the technology
and resources to limit the devastation?
One might be inclined to categorize this disaster under the
rubric of the famously inept stable genius: Donald Trump. The
results of the 2020 elections imply that the Republican Party is
forgiven for its conspiracy with Donald Trump to permit this
epidemic to spread unchecked throughout the nation. But viewed
on a scale from criminal negligence on one end and genocide on
the other, where should we place this American tragedy? It is
long past the time when Americans tolerate the handling of this
epidemic as merely a political game of chess leading up to the
2020 election. It is time to bring this “crime without a name”
into sharp focus. We must call it for what it is: a form of
genocide, conducted for entirely political purposes, to preserve
Republican positions of power. Trump and his party knowingly and
actively lied about the existential nature of this virus. And by
denying federal protection to those stricken by the virus and to
those entrusted with their care, they willfully took the lives
of as many as half a million of their fellow Americans.
There are many examples of genocide in history – the most tragic
and notorious, of course, being the Holocaust, conducted by Nazi
Germany between 1941-1945. In that genocide, 6,000,000 people
were slaughtered, including 2/3 of the entire Jewish population
of Europe. Our own mass slaying of Native Americans from
1846-1874, is now considered a genocide, with an estimated death
rate approaching 120,000. During that time, the efforts of our
government reduced the total population of Native Americans in
California by 80%. In 1994, during the Clinton Administration,
the Rwandan Civil War was declared a genocide with estimates of
500,000 to 600,000 Tutsi deaths.
So, what will history call the COVID-19 epidemic in America on
February of 2021 when the death toll reaches 500,000 human
beings? And, it appears that the worst hit are seniors, the
infirmed, and minorities - not the “makers” …but the “takers” in
the vernacular of the Republican Party. In the
passive-aggressive style of this administration and the
Republican Party in general, specifically targeting a group for
extermination was not stated publicly; it was simply the obvious
end result that they knew would ensue if they obstructed all
efforts to remediate the threat.
Americans gave Trump a pass on his bizarre, post-Ebola move to
eliminate the White House’s National Security Council
Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense.
Beth Cameron, former senior director for global health security
and biodefense on the White House National Security Council,
wrote in March of 2020:
“Shortly before Trump took office, we were watching many health
security threats, including a rising number of cases in China of
H7N9 influenza, a deadly strain with high mortality but low
transmissibility between people. Earlier, we had been tracking a
large outbreak of yellow fever in Angola that threatened to sap
the limited global supply of that vaccine, affecting the local
population, international travelers, deployed citizens and
troops. We were focused on naturally occurring diseases and
potential bioterrorism — any and every biological threat that
could cause a major global health and security emergency.” She
goes on to say:
“In 2014, even before the first cases of Ebola came to light in
Guinea, the Obama administration launched the Global Health
Security Agenda, which now includes more than 60 countries, to
accelerate epidemic preparedness. That effort, bolstered by $1
billion from the U.S. government in an emergency spending bill
to fight Ebola, led to major gains in global capability to
combat the Ebola outbreak and prepare for the next pandemic,
which turned out to be COVID-19. “
One must ask, “Why would Donald Trump eliminate this crucial
agency, and why would the Republican Party not object?
Trump’s explanation was that he was cutting bureaucratic bloat
by “combining” directorates under one agency at the NSC. But
according to Ron Klain, Barack Obama’s “Ebola Czar”, “…
biodefense and pandemic prevention require different skill sets
and expertise. He said the move was “akin to terminating the
fire department chief and putting the firefighters in the police
department. The next time you have a fire, they will send a
police car with a couple of firefighters in the back.”
We have given Donald Trump a pass on his child separation
regime, calling it merely a cruel and inept effort to curb
illegal immigration from Central America. We have given Donald
Trump a pass when he called white supremacists and neo-Nazis
“good people” after they invaded a march in Charlottesville,
chanting, “Jews will not replace us”, and causing the death of
Heather Heyer. We stood by as Donald Trump sought to alienate
our allies and embolden our enemies by threatening to withdraw
from NATO and lifting UN sanctions on Russia for its invasion of
Crimea. And now, we have given the Republican Party a pass as it
has refused to provide sufficient relief to a country being
crushed by a lethal epidemic - a virus easily transmissible to
senior citizens and those with comorbidities.
We can speculate as to Donald Trump’s motive for orchestrating
this massive extermination of American citizens, but in the end,
history will first remember what happened, and only later
speculate as to why it happened. What is happening is the “crime
with no name”. It is deliberate, and it is entirely politically
inspired.
The Republican Party has certainly dealt enough rope to hang
itself. There is no plausible Republican ideological argument
between Democrats and Republicans anymore. There is no coherent
Republican economic platform to be debated. There is no coherent
Republican foreign policy worthy of negotiation. There is no
moral authority within the Republican Party now that it has
strangled American citizens to death by knotting America’s purse
strings.
What is currently happening is, indeed, a crime with a name,
produced and directed for purely political reasons. It is
incomprehensible that no one has called it by its formal title.
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