Excerpt from Bill Clinton’s Remarks to the People of Rwanda, March 25, 1998
I have come today to pay the respects of my Nation to all who suffered and all who perished in the Rwandan genocide. It is my hope that through this trip, in every corner of the world today and tomorrow, their story will be told; that 4 years ago in this beautiful, green, lovely land, a clear and conscious decision was made by those then in power that the peoples of this country would not live side by side in peace.
During the 90 days that began on April 6, in 1994, Rwanda experienced the most extensive slaughter in this blood-filled century we are about to leave—families murdered in their homes, people hunted down as they fled by soldiers and militia, through farmland and woods as if they were animals.
From Kibuye in the west to Kibungo in the east, people gathered seeking refuge in churches by the thousands, in hospitals, in schools. And when they were found, the old and the sick, the women and children alike, they were killed—killed because their identity card said they were Tutsi or because they had a Tutsi parent or because someone thought they looked like a Tutsi or slain, like thousands of Hutus, because they protected Tutsis or would not countenance a policy that sought to wipe out people who just the day before, and for years before, had been their friends and neighbors.
The Government-led effort to exterminate Rwanda's Tutsi and moderate Hutus, as you know better than me, took at last a million lives. Scholars of these sorts of events say that the killers, armed mostly with machetes and clubs, nonetheless did their work 5 times as fast as the mechanized gas chambers used by the Nazis.
Use the excerpt to answer the question.
Which of the following conclusions could Americans draw from Bill Clinton’s remarks on the Rwandan genocide in 1998?
A.
The Clinton administration did not care about Rwandans.
B.
The United States military did everything it could to help Rwandans.
C.
The role of world power had severe limits when it came to keeping peace.
D.
The United States learned that the Rwandan genocide could not have been prevented.