3. Rwanda Genocide

In 1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira (both of Hutu ethnic origin) were assassinated when their plane was shot out of the sky, leading to the mass slaughter of the Tutsi people by the Hutus — wiping out about 1 million people (20% of the country’s population) over 100 days.

President Bill Clinton decided not to involve America, but he did make a number of pleas to the groups carrying out the violence — ‘stop it please’ was the general message. He also asked the UN to deal with it, but they had already stated that they didn’t have the necessary resources to save any country. Clinton and the UN went back and forth as to who should be the one helping out in Rwanda, but before any decision could be reached, the genocide was over and a million people were dead.

2. Adolf Hiter’s Holocaust

Long story short — Hitler’s Nazi Germany sought to wipe Europe clean of Jews and succeeded in killing about 70% of them — rounding them up and sending them to concentration camps where they were mercilessly gassed.

Okay, the US did eventually help out here and defeated Hitler/freed the Jews, but they took their sweet time about it. The US knew what was going on from 1942, and took a lot of convincing from Jewish groups in the US and Britain to actually make a move into Germany.  What took them so long?

1. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward

Heading into the 1960s, Mao Zedong was on a mission to transform China into an advanced communist society using the tried-and-tested methods of fear and pain. He buried people alive, set them on fire, covered them in shit and forced them to work naked in freezing cold winters.

45 million people died — FORTY FIVE MILLION- but the USA didn’t feel like kicking off another World War, what with them already the midst of the Cold War and with Vietnam War right around the corner. Sorry guys, caught us at a bad time, we’d help out otherwise.

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