Human Rights Speaker on October 18, in place of canceled class

On October 18, 2007 at four p.m. in the Roger Bacon Key Auditorium, key note speaker Michael Walzer spoke. His speech was on human rights. The point of his essay was not necessarily to explain to people what our human rights are. In fact, he only mentioned a few. What he did talk about mostly in his speech were things like genocide and famine. He stated in his speech that everyone has a right to life and the right not to be killed. Therefore, people also have the right to protect themselves and be protected from being killed. An example that came up in his speech was the country of Rwanda. He said that the people being killed had deserved the right for other countries to step in and protect them. He also mentioned the necessity for the UN to one day have armed forces that will be able to do this with no trouble. He then also talked about famine. The human right considered here is, people have the right to their needs and if they cannot get them, they have the right to receive help from other countries to get the proper resources.
After his speech, there were several questions asked during the open forum. A lot of these questions had to do with the United States of America and Iraq. People questioned if he believed Iraqis had the right to our aide in removing Saddam Hussein. His answer was that we are there now and there is nothing we can do about that, but we should have asked for more help from other countries. Also he stated that our first war with Iraq in the early nineties was necessary because of the mass genocide that had just occurred and the Iraqi people deserved the right to be protected. He then went on to say that at the time America went to war in 2003, even though everyone knew of past mass murder and genocide, because there was no proof of this in present times then we should not have used that as part of an excuse to go to war. He said that Darfur is in more need of protection from any country than Iraq. He also mentioned that a country should only help another as long as they themselves are also not at risk. He then again mentioned Darfur and other countries whose humanity has been jepordized. Generally, when helping a country that’s human rights are being taken away, the aiding country or countries are not usually putting there citizens, except for their soldiers, at risk.
While this speech was based on human rights, I can see where deviance might sneak in. Ignoring people’s human rights is deviance. It happens a lot and is not right. What I took away from the speech was, to ignore human rights, is to commit a crime against others. Every person alive deserves the right to not be murdered, the right to their resources, and the right to be protected from murder. There for by not protecting and supporting these rights, one can argue that deviance occurs.