That Belgium Senator...

I don't blame him that much, it was shocking for the families that the Belgians were not rescued..

to claim that dellaire was directly involved in murdering the belgians is ridiculous and his attempt at defacing dellaire with "Belgium widows" was way out of line.

i hope he wasnt just looking for his 15 minutes, but cant really be sure. Insulting dellaire like that though... unbelievable

I think the Senator did it because when ever a tragedy happens, the only thing people really want is to put the blame on someone. Also, Belgium was for the most part responsible for the mission and gave the soldiers almost no fire power or enough man power. They were basically there for show and nothing else. So naturally if something went wrong, and it did, the soldiers would be in serious trouble. So this Senator wants to distract people from seeing whose fault it really was. I'd say it was both Belgium's and the UN. If the U.N. wouldn't fund enough soldiers, Belgium should have done the rest since it was their people that were the main force. And the mess was predominately Belgium's and France too. They supported the Hutus and let them commit the murders. Thats how I see it, and it is a fact about Belgium creating the mess, and France doing its part. Basically the Rwanda Genocide is living proof of how corrupt and useless the U.N. is.

The Senator is called Alain Destexhe. He can be contacted at [email protected] and I strongly encourage you to e-mail him your thoughts and complaints. He needs to know that the world is against him.

Not only did the Belgian authorities contribute to the racial tensions by "creating" races within the country, but they also helped allow the genocide by leaving the country after 10 of their UN soldiers were killed. Then they blamed Dallaire for not protecting the 10 soldiers. While I totally understand the anger of the Belgians for having 10 of their soldiers killed, what they don't seem to realize is that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been spared if they had stayed. Or maybe they somehow realize it, but try to blame it on Dallaire not protecting the 10 Belgians in the first place, in order to avoid guilt. Agreed, maybe Dallaire should have disobeyed orders and protected the 10 soldiers. He probably should have. But please, don't try to put all the blame on him. Even if some kind of mistake is made, it all happens really fast. Does it give a nation's authorities the right to abandon their mission, therefore risking almost a million human lives? And BTW, in his supposed "failure", Dallaire still saved plenty of lives by his heroic act of staying until he simply couln't bare it anymore. The problem is that just like O. Schindler (remember that scene at the end of Schindler's list?), he thought he should have done more, and that's why he's now consumed by guilt. Less and less, hopefully.

PS: please note that I'm criticizing the Belgian authorities of 1994 on this question, not all of Belgium.