Romeo_Dallaire's_book_on_Rwanda

I bought Romeo Dallaire's book today 'Shake Hands With the Devil – the
Failure of Humanity in Rwanda'. As most may know, Dallaire was the Canadian
general in charge of the U.N. troops in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide in
which 800,000 Rwandans were butchered. A tragic failure for us all and also
for Dallaire. The world turned away, would not commit troops to stop the
slaughter. I heard Dallaire exclaiming angrily on the radio a while ago that
much the same has been happening recently in the Sudan, which has been
described as 'Rwanda in slow motion'.

Here is a quote from Dallaire's book:

The global village is deteriorating at a rapid pace, and in the children of
the world the result is rage. It is the rage I saw in the eyes of the
teenage Interahamwe militiamen in Rwanda, it is the rage I sensed in the
hearts of the children of Sierra Leone, it is the rage I felt in crowds of
ordinary civilians in Rwanda, and it is the rage that resulted in September
11. Human beings who have no rights, no security, no future, no hope and no
means to survive are a desperate group who will do desperate things to take
what they believe they need and deserve.

If September 11 taught us that we have to fight and win the "war on
terrorism," it should also have taught us that if we do not immediately
address the underlying (even if misguided) causes of those young terrorists'
rage, we will not win the war. For every al-Qaeda bomber that we kill there
will be a thousand more volunteers from all over the earth to take his
place. In the next decade, terrorists will acquire weapons of mass
destruction. It is only a matter of time until a brilliant young chemist or
smuggler obtains a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon and uses it to
satisfy his very personal rage against us.

Where does this rage come from? This book has demonstrated some of the
causes. A heightened tribalism, the absence of human rights, economic
collapses, brutal and corrupt military dictatorships, the AIDS pandemic, the
effect of debt on nations, environmental degradation, overpopulation,
poverty, hunger: the list goes on and on. Each of these and so many other
reasons can lead directly to a people having no hope for the future and
being forced in their poverty and despair to resort to violence just to
survive. This lack of hope in the future is the root cause of rage. If we
cannot provide hope for the untold masses of the world, then the future will
be nothing but a repeat of Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Congo, and September
11.

Several times in this book I have asked the question, "Are we all human, or
are some more human than others?" Certainly we in the developed world act in
a way that suggest we believe that our lives are worth more than the lives
of other citizens of the planet. An American officer felt no shame as he
informed me that the lives of 800,000 Rwandans were only worth risking the
lives of ten American troops; the Belgians, after losing ten soldiers,
insisted that the lives of Rwandans were not worth risking another single
Belgian soldier. The only conclusion I can reach is that we are in desperate
need of a transfusion of humanity. If we believe that all humans are human,
then how are we going to prove it? It can only be proven through our
actions. Through the dollars we are prepared to expend to improve conditions
in the Third World, through the time and energy we devote to solving
devastating problems like AIDS, through the lives of our soldiers, which we
are prepared to sacrifice for the sake of humanity.

As soldiers we have been used to moving mountains to protect our own
sovereignty or risks to our way of life. In the future we must be prepared
to move beyond national self interest to spend our resources and spill blood
for humanity. We have lived through centuries of enlightenment, reason,
revolution, industrialization, and globalization. No matter how idealistic
the aim sounds, this new century must become the Cnetury of Humanity, when
we as human beings rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national
self interest and put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe.
For the sake of the children and of our future. Peux ce que veux. Allons-y.