MYTH OF SAINT ROMEO
UPDATE! September 2007, *****Dallaire is silent on Rwandan genocidal Hutus attacking Congo Tutsis
UPDATE! Sep 10, 2007, ****New movie about Dallaire screened for President Kagame
UPDATE! Jan 13, 2007, ***Dallaire is being honoured as a national hero by having a Beethoven opera written in his honour
UPDATE! May 31, 2006, **Dallaire is now having a movie made about him based on his book "Shake Hands With The Devil"
UPDATE! May 9, 2006, *Dallaire has been appointed to yet another prestigious, high level position, this time as a UN Advisor to Genocide
As we approach the 12th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide on April 7th, 2006, I've been re-reading some of the articles in my Rwanda file. Below is one that sums up the role of the general from Canada who was head of the United Nations force in Rwanda at the time. He has been portrayed to the world as a hero and has subsequently been made a Senator which is a major PIG AT THE TROUGH job wherein he will make hundreds of thousands of tax-funded dollars for doing absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, some of CANADA'S TRAUMATIZED SOLDIERS have faced repercussions for their grief. ~ Jackie Jura
The myth of Saint Romeo, Dallaire's failure as a commander,
by Ron Coleman, Colonel, (retired),
letter-to-editor, National Post, Apr 14, 2005
Upon reading Romeo Dallaire's book Shake Hands With The Devil, any military strategist would immediately conclude that he failed miserably as a commander. First he accepted a third-level bureaucrat's instruction to terminate his plan to seize weapons caches and thereby expose an informer to certain death.
Second, he complained repeatedly about the sole radio station in Kigali fomenting hatred. He could have sent out a squad to destroy it, at any time, but did not. He was a general with no UN experience, and should not have been put in charge by the Canadian government. Moreover, when it was clear that he was mentally depressed he should have been removed.
Gen. Dallaire alone must accept responsibiliy for his failures, rather than accepting the accolades of a government and media that seem intent on inventing Canadian heroes rather than celebrating real ones. Now that the government has posted Gen. Dallaire to the Senate, he rightly joins other political has-beens and failures.
RWANDA-DALLAIRE AFFAIR (reader Doug says General Dallaire was a bureaucrat and not a real soldier)
***BEETHOVEN'S RWANDA DALLAIRE
11. THE INFORMER & TEN BELGIANS (eleventh chapter of Rwanda visit)
INFORMING ON INFORMER'S INFORMERS
Dallaire named university Senior Fellow (will speak to students & public about knowledge combating genocide). Concordia Journal, Sep 25, 2006
**Shake Hands With Devil begins shooting (about UN's hero Romeo Dallaire) & Dupuis plays Dallaire in Shake (for people who like to cry instead of think). CBC/Cinema, May 31, 2006
*Dallaire to Advise UN On Genocide, NewTimes, May 9, 2006
The United Nations has announced it has appointed an advisory committee on genocide prevention. The Committee will be made up of several high-profile diplomats, including one with links to Rwanda. Roméo Dallaire, the former Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, (UNAMIR), will sit on the committee, whose mandate is to provide support and guidance to the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan E. Méndez. Méndez advises Secretary General Kofi Annan. Dallaire, who is now a Canadian Senator, was in charge of the UN mission in Rwanda when the 1994 genocide occurred. He joins six other committee members, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa...
Dallaire Senator? ("They didn't die as soldiers, they were murdered"). Novopress.info
...At one point, according to the committee, Maj. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commanding the U.N. force, drove within 20 yards of where the paratroopers were being held and saw blue-helmeted Belgian soldiers on the ground. Yet he did not stop. He did not radio or telephone his headquarters. The committee also is asking why the United Nations and the governments of Belgium, France and the United States did not act on warnings passed along by Dallaire that Hutus were planning massacres and might try to provoke or even kill Belgian peacekeepers.
University honours General Dallaire ("foe of genocide, complacency"). Georgetown University News, Mar 22, 2006
The Honourable General Romeo Dallaire, PhD (awarded Doctorate by Trent University). Sep 16, 2005
Dallaire, now a Senator in Ottawa, was the Canadian General in charge of the ill-fated 1993 United Nations Peace Keeping mission to Rwanda. He was the first Canadian to lead a UN mission, and unfortunately, the mission bears the distinction of being the worst humanitarian disaster since World War 2, mostly because of indifference by Western leaders.
Letter-to-the-editor, Ron, Captain (ret'd). National Post, Apr 14, 2005
Warrant Officer Roy Shaver suggests that one of the reasons Gen Dallaire was selected to lead the Rwandan mission may have been that he was perfectly bilingual. I would suggest that was the ONLY reason. I was in an Armed Forces conference room in 1975 when a policy was announced that would see francophones promoted over personnel above them on merit lists, in order to fill government-designated quotas. These quotas have since been surpassed. One wonders at the opportuniities denied by the unfair and immoral linguistic largesse that tilted the playing field and, if anything, has since mushroomed to unexplored heights of idiocy.
Dallaire's frenzied quest for land. Globe & Mail, Mar 25, 2005
It was a hurried purchase but a significant one because without that land Mr. Dallaire, one of the country's military heroes, could not have accepted Prime Minister Paul Martin's offer to sit in the Senate...
Dallaire among new senators. CTV, Mar 24, 2005
Prime Minister Paul Martin announced nine new senators Thursday, including retired general Romeo Dallaire..."The choices for the Senate reflect the choice of outstanding Canadians with a record of accomplishments," Martin said Thursday, referring to his first appointments since he became prime minister."These are people who will certainly serve their country very well. I'm very proud of these appointments."
Mixed perceptions of "Heroe's Day" (February 1 will be public holiday). NewTimes, Feb 2, 2006
"...The dead people and the living gallant soldiers contributed a lot to Rwanda's liberation from the past political turmoils the country experienced. Heroism should not be a reserve of the dead only; even the living ones need recognition and praise." But to Maria Mukankomeje, 45, a resident of Gikondo,the only person she regards as a hero is H.E Paul Kagame, because he rescued them from the Interahamwe and helped create peace and stability in the country.
"Hotel Rwanda" Rusesabagina no hero. All Africa, New Times Kigali, Mar 1, 2006
..."Rusesabagina came in as a businessman who threw out whoever failed to pay for the room. He sacrificed nothing. He was just managing a hotel in a way that did not reflect the presence of a crisis..."
Reader is surprised how I depict Kagame because he has come across different information in Dallaire's book and elsewhere
Reader says giving Paul Kagame a Nobel Peace Prize would honour those who offered their lives in order to stop genocide
ABANDONING RWANDA & MAKING MOVIES
GULLIVER DESCRIBES PROSTITUTE WRITERS (they falsify history)
The following newspaper article describes Paul Kagame's thoughts about General Dallaire's and the United Nations' failure to stop the Rwandan genocide:
UN's inaction almost led Tutsis to capture Dallaire's weapons
Rwanda's leader says he wanted to overpower Canadian-led force
By Stephanie Nolen, Globe & Mail, Apr 5, 2004
KIGALI -- Rwandan President Paul Kagame says he was so frustrated by the UN's failure to intervene in the 1994 genocide in his country that he contemplated overpowering the United Nations peacekeeping force, led by Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, and seizing its arms to stop the massacres.
"Dallaire had soldiers, weapons and armoured personnel carriers, and I confess for the first time that I contemplated taking those arms from him by force," Mr. Kagame told an audience at an International Conference on Genocide Prevention in Kigali, Rwanda's capital.
He said he had never spoken publicly about this before and that he wanted to talk to Gen. Dallaire about it. The general, who is in Rwanda as the country marks the 10th anniversary of the genocide, was slated to be among the guests of honour yesterday at the conference, but he was not in the audience.
A spokesman later said Gen. Dallaire had not heard the President's comments.
"I used to ask [Gen. Dallaire] what he as a general and his forces were doing to stop the genocide," said Mr. Kagame, who in 1994 was the head of the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front.
"The answer to me was that he did not have the mandate. And I asked him, what mandate did he then have? I thought the generals, the forces they led, the weapons they had, had been sent here to show that the peace process [between the Hutu-led government and the RPF] was implemented. And in so doing they would protect Rwandese.
"Then I asked him, what about the arms? What about the soldiers you have? . . . The answer was, 'No mandate.' Then I would ask, 'What are you doing here? You have no mandate, you are not going to protect people, so what are you doing here?' In fact, at one point I asked him, 'Why don't you give me those arms and stay back, and I will use those arms to protect people?' " That remark prompted a round of applause from the Rwandan-dominated audience.
Ten years ago this week, a frenzy of killing began in Rwanda. When it ended 100 days later, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been killed by Hutu extremists. Gen. Dallaire, who has since retired, was unable to persuade the UN to increase the size of its minuscule force, and no country sent troops or arms to staunch the massacres until it was too late.
Mr. Kagame said he polled his colleagues "in the bush" about overpowering the small UN force and seizing their arms. "But of course we knew that would open another front for us to fight when we still had another complicated situation to deal with. So after second thought I abandoned that idea."
Mr. Kagame said Gen. Dallaire did not respond to his questions, and added, "He is a very good man who was caught up in a mess."
Many in the audience saw Mr. Kagame's remarks as a direct response to the allegations Gen. Dallaire makes in his book, Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, accusing the then-rebel leader of sacrificing Tutsi lives he could have saved, for military and political expediency.
In his address, Mr. Kagame also accused the international community of racism and "blatant indifference" to genocide in Africa. "How could a million lives of Rwandan people be regarded as so insignificant to anyone in terms of strategic or national interest? Do the powerful nations have a hidden agenda? I would hate to believe that this agenda is dictated by racist considerations or the colour of the skin."
He questioned whether the response of the international community would be substantially different today.
"If confronted by similar humanitarian atrocity, how ready are we to deal with it? Would the international community today be better prepared to face it, or would they simply be happy to say that they are only guilty of sins of omission?"
He added that "the most powerful people responsible for it" have never been held accountable for their inaction.
Mr. Kagame also urged the international community to establish "effective instruments" to respond to the systemic human-rights abuses that always, he said, precede genocide.
"It should take strong and immediate action, including military action, if need be."
Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~<
email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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