Although that characterization would have accurately described France's role in Central Africa, France chose instead to qualify the relevant budget items with terms like "foreign assistance" and "aid to developing countries".

How could these descriptions and the reality differ so greatly?

Perhaps what the French consider open-mindedness, and what others call moral amateurism, offers an insight.

The defenders of French policies argue, "Why should we have withdrawn our military and diplomatic support just because the government of Rwanda promoted racist hatred and suspicion? Can we impose our norms on foreign peoples? Do they not deserve to establish their own standards of right and wrong in the new multi-polar world?

"Besides, does not the banal, 100-word summary of Rwandan history judge the Tutsis collectively guilty for certain historical injustices? Who are we to stop a majority people from correcting past wrongs? And in any case, how could anyone misconstrue foreign aid to Rwanda as actually pernicious to the Rwandan people? Is not aid to a state's government and aid to a state's people the same thing?"

I answer that morality does not change as one crosses international boundries. The Greatest Happiness Principle offers a quick and effective test of morality: to the extent that an action increases the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, it is moral. To the extent that it augments suffering, it is immoral. Also, an action that promotes intellectual happiness merits more esteem than one that advances base forms of pleasure.

In other words, morality is universal. Backing for Rwandan génocidaires brings as much disgrace upon France as would state support for organized mass murderers in the streets of Paris.

While we may accept the truth of this observation, the emotive responses to these two scenarios remain greatly divergent. The slaughter of Parisians would evoke as much anger as the molestation of one's own niece or nephew. The massacre of a million Rwandans created as much outrage as a murder in a local prison or insane asylum.

What is the explanation? Is it that those of us who lack the curiosity to investigate the world imagine that Rwanda is stuck in some sort of cultural hole?

Of course this idea would constitute a base fallacy, but it raises several questions.

If French culture is indeed superior, why did the French sponsor genocide in Central Africa? Why were Rwandans capable of lifting their country out of the ashes these past years, against all the odds, while France stagnated in a socialist quagmire? Most importantly, why is it that Rwanda enjoyed social harmony until Europeans arrived and put into practice their racist ideas?

And is the value of a person's life dependent upon a judgement of his culture?

Given the warm and enticing glow of the culture of Rwanda, we must seek another explanation for the contrasting emotive responses mentioned above.

Is it that, for some of us, it is easier to imagine a blood-link with a white-faced victim?

Or is it rather a question of cultural arrogance? Perhaps we can condescend to sympathize with a victim of any colour, as long as he has rubbed elbows with us for long enough to have adopted our habits and ideas.

In any case, Rwanda is not the only victim of the French idea of open-mindedness, even if the 1994 genocide provides the clearest example of its nefarious sequels.

Consider, for example, the Palestinians. France, and Europe in general, undermined their chances for a better future by recognizing an anti-Semitic killer as their rightful leader (or dictator). Knowing well Yassar Arafat's leading role among terrorists, the European Union gave him ten million euros every month. European apologists for jihad denied the meaning of "terrorism", the murder of civilians to advance a political objective through intimidation, suggesting that the murder of Jewish civilians merely constituted "struggle", wheras a murderer of Europeans remained a terrorist. Thus, they insulted the Arab world by suggesting that anti-Semitism constituted a legitimate element of Arab culture.

Contemplate also the examples of Sudan and Ethiopia, where the agents of national governments pillage, rape, burn out, and frequently exterminate those that they see as "black" Africans, or "bantus". How many billions of dollars have these governments received as hand-outs from the coffers of European governments? How long will Europe resist imposing sanctions on them? In the case of Sudan, France has led the fight to minimize and downgrade talk of the genocide of "bantus". (This Web site does not use racial terms without quotation marks, which reflect the observation that race has no genetic foundation.) Only the United States has had the good moral sense to challenge these governments and use the word "genocide", even if it lacks the political will to take effective action against them.

In seeking understanding of the incomprehensible, perhaps one should begin with this question: How many commercial contracts has France won in exchange for its diplomatic prostitution? (In the case of support for Sudan, this means contracts in Arab dictatorships, who have no scruples about the murder of Christian or Muslim "bantus".)