extra credit blog1: Genocide: Worse Than War by Daniel Goldhagen

In this pbs video by Daniel Goldhagen, he researches why he believes that Genocide is worst than wars. "By the most fundamental measure -- the number of people killed -- the perpetrators of mass murder since the beginning of the twentieth century have taken the lives of more people than have died in military conflict. So genocide is worse than war," reiterates Goldhagen. "This is a little-known fact that should be a central focus of international politics, because once you know it, the world, international politics, and what we need to do all begin to look substantially different from how they are typically conceived."Genocide is the slaughter or destruction of a significant amount of people because of their ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. Sadly, since the 20th century, people have been experiencing genocide in all corners of the world. Some examples of countries that have experienced genocides are the Turks when they slaughtered over a million Armenians, the soviet union when they killed over 8 million people in death camps, the communist Chinese killing over 30 million people in their country, the Japanese when they killed millions of people across Asia, and the Germans when they killed over 6 millions Jews. Furthermore, there has been over one hundred of millions of innocent people who have been victims of genocide across the glove; more than all the combatants killed in wars during our time. While many people have payed little to no attention to this ongoing   mass murder, the author Goldhagen has dedicated this film to show the world how much worst this issue is than war between countries.

In this document, Goldhagen travels to about nine countries around the world interviewing people who lived through these terrors of genocide; including victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians and others involved. While he interviewed the perpetrators of some of these genocide, there response to their reasons of killing appeared somewhat disturbing; at least in my opinion. They were asked why they did the killing and they simply would answer because we were told to. A perpetrator said,  "it did not feel like they were humans, it was as they were dogs, it was like hunting animals." Also, victims who survived and witnesses were also questioned and asked about their experiences throughout this terror. A victim said," it was horrifying; men, women and children were all killed merciless." Meanwhile, perpetrators and victims were not the only ones that were questioned, Goldhagen also interviewed a politician to look at their point of  views on genocide. The politician was asked why doesn't the country become involve in stopping these genocides in the world. He answered that in order for a country to get involved they must have military forces from different countries on board and that it is extremely difficult to have approved the support from these other countries.

 As Goldhagen mentions, Genocide is a decision made by leaders. Goldhagen said, "The question is can we get future leaders to make a different decision, i think we can". I will also have to agree in that countries can have better leaders that will make better decisions then genocide. Overall, gaining the support from multiple countries to help out genocide around the world will be extremely difficult to accomplish. Most leaders are more involved in crimes in their own countries then they are in others. In my opinion, genocide will eventually reduce but will never truly disappear.