text: Obama Recalls Past Genocides - Washington Wire - WSJ
  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/03/28/obama-recalls-past-genocides/
  Obama Recalls Past Genocides
  Mar 28, 2011 8:49 pm ET
  President Barack Obama's speech Monday night echoed earlier genocides around the globe that the U.S. either ignored or was slow to respond.
  The president referred repeatedly to the prospect of "a massacre" that would have "stained the conscience of the world" if the U.S. had failed to intervene while forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi butchered Libyan civilians.
  As he made the moral case for the country's limited military involvement, Mr. Obama referred specifically to the year of foot-dragging that prevented a NATO-led coalition from intervening in Bosnia for more than a year while civilians were killed in an ethnic civil war. His speech also echoed other genocides, such as those in Rwanda and Sudan, in which the U.S. did not get involved while innocent civilians were killed by the thousands.
  The president even compared the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to Charlotte, N.C., the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention, to make the violence in Libya more real for Americans who, a new Pew poll showed, are more focused on other stories in the media than what is playing out in North Africa.
  "We were faced with a probability of violence on a horrific scale," he said of Libya. "As president, I refuse to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves to take action."