MovieChat Forums > Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire Discussion > Should he have disregarded the U.N.'s di...

Should he have disregarded the U.N.'s direction?

posted 19 years ago by Billygoat
5 replies | jump to latest

I've read General Romeo Dallaire's book "Shake Hands With The Devil - The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda". I've seen this documentary. I have the greatest of respect for General Dallaire; I know that hindsight is 20/20; and I've never been in his position.

(I have been in the Canadian Army and I did serve on a U.N. Peacekeeping mission; and being a police officer I've been in situations where decisions had to be made very quickly.)

My question is: when Dallaire received the information from the reliable informant about the arms caches around Kigali and what they were for; and when he cabled the U.N. in New York asking permission to raid the caches; and New York said "no" - was Dallaire right in obeying that order? Or should he have disobeyed it and carried out the raids?

From my perspective - and I'm approaching this as an intellectual exercise, as I was not there in his shoes - he should have carried out the raids. When it comes to deciding on a course of action that will save the lives of many, or of obeying an order - I believe that the moral imperitive is to save lives.

There's a scene in this documentary in which a Belgian senator states that the order from New York was illegal. I realise that this senator may be an as*h*le simply playing a political game for back home. But I believe that there IS a case to be made that that order WAS illegal, despite Dallaire's insistence to the contrary. In the military, one can of course refuse an illegal order. That this order would inevitably lead to the deaths of innocent civilians must make it illegal. Surely one of the main messages of the Nuremburg Trials is that "following orders" is not an excuse in all cases - and that indeed, and especially in regards to commanders, they must resist such orders.

Hence, I can't help but think that while I understand Dallaire's commitment to the U.N. and his belief in being a "good soldier" means following orders, in this situation he should have gone ahead and carried out the raids.

Having said all that, I think that it's an almost impossible situation to be in, and again, I only put this forward to explore the guts of this moral dilemma, and in no way to impugn General Dallaire's professionalism and honour.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] happydude_16 18 years ago

well i think he couldnt because then if something went wrong, he and everyoneelse could be tried in the international court of justice or whichever.

I just think its absolutely terrible when you see the effect that this entire thing h as had on dallaire. the drinking and all..i only say the small feature on "the passionate eye" and there was a part in some official setting where they started blaming dallaire. THat just pained me to watch it

[–] brunolermann 18 years ago

No matter what choice he would pick, there would always be criticism. He had his hands tied and did his best even in that condition

Ele fez da queda um passo de dança, do medo uma ponte, da procura um encontro.
Fernando Sabino

[–] umberto_scalli 16 years ago

Over 200,000 Rwandan refugees were killed in the Congo and another 3 million Congolese on top of that because the Rwanda Patriotic Front took over Rwanda. Had the West armed the Rwandan army from 1990 on and lavished this force with half the assistance that the invading Ugandan army offshoot RPF got, then lives would have been saved. Had Uganda been subject to punishment for its crimes from day one, millions of lives would have been saved. Essentially, the ghastly Ugandan Bush War of 1980-86 was encouraged to spill over into Rwanda in order to turn that country into Burundi, itself subject to periodic massacres including the 1972 campaign to destroy every last educated Hutu, over 250,000 massacred... and then this spilled over to the Congo...

Had Dallaire gone after the caches, it would have exposed Dallaire as the RPF agent that he was ordered to be... the pretense of neutrality had to be maintained. Had he in fact armed the Hutus, then the Hutus would have realised that they were no longer screwed and fear would have subsided and a decisive strike against the RPF would have calmed things down a great deal. The "inyenzi" in their midst would have ceased to be a threat and thus people would have no longer felt the need to take action against them.

People must understand that the Hutu were being screwed by the so-called International Community, ever since the Ugandan invasion. They knew full well that the plan was to turn Rwanda into Burundi; meanwhile, Tutsi-dominated Burundi featured new massacres of Hutu in 1993 and the assassination of a Hutu president.

The Western plan was to systematically weaken the Habyarimana regime in every way, to force it to get "moderates" from upstart parties to represent government interests with a view of forcing it to capitulate to the RPF, which is what happened at the so-called pece talks. The RPF was strengthened systematically so as to make it necessary to surrender to them. The main Hutu ruling party was sidelined from the talks and all was done to marginalise them. Meanwhile, both the RPF and Tutsi-dominated Burundi army were committing ghastly atrocities against Hutus, with the Feb 1993 massacre of 45,000 civilians by the RPF and the forcing of 1 million people from their homes and abandonment of the best lands of Rwanda causing that country to become dependent on food aid, which of course was used as extra leverage to force Habyarimana to surrender his powers. In Burundi, a Hutu president ws murdered and tens of thousands massacred by the Tutsi army. This was a very stark lesson for Hutus in Rwanda. Had the RPF at least been cut down to size, this would have prevented the 1993 campaign of atrocity and cut this build up of fear before it would manifest itself as it did in spring 1994. Naturally, Western powers continued their destructive policies.

Thus, had the world helped the Hutus, the mass killings of 1994 would have been avoided.

[–] 16 years ago

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