Taylor’s Reviews > An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century > Status Update

And genocide is not war, itself another human choice—ostensibly a choice with agreed-upon rules. In genocide there are no rules, save, of course, to be thorough, to finish the job. That’s what genocide is: an effort to finish the job of completely erasing the other, his actuality and his possibility. And once started, it is usually efficient

“Humanitarianism is about more than medical efficacy or technical competence. In its first moment, in its sacred present, humanitarianism seeks to relieve the immediacy of suffering, and most especially of suffering alone”