The Bucha effect
Sometimes a war crime is so egregious, and so fully reported, that it cannot but stir the conscience of the west. The My Lai massacre in 1968, Srebrenica in 1995, the British suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the Disappeared of Argentina under the Junta in the 80s or even the dispatches about bodies piled high in Bulgarian town squares by the US war reporter Januarius MacGahan in 1876 were all moments when the defence of ignorance has to be abandoned.
