all the more difficult. >> each week, american history tv sits in on a lecture with one of the nation's college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday evening at 8 p.m. and midnight eastern. next, a class on the united nations response to the rwandan genocide. the professors look at how the wanton genocide has influenced 21st century foreign policy for many countries. this is about two hours. >> so, i mean as a kind of overview just to refresh everyone's memory here, we started with an overview of the history of it. rwanda. talked about how the genocide was an outgrowth of her wanton

history. there were tensions been -- between various ethnicities and want the. exacerbated by the germans and the belgians defining people by ethnicity. and this tension was precipitated by the withdrawal of the colonial powers in the 1950s and 1960s such that there was tension for the next 20 and 30 years erupting into violence. becoming pretty severe starting in 1990 with the invasion of -- from uganda of the ruewanda -- rwanda wanda patriotic front. this violence escalated through the early 1990s. there were reprise old killings in rwanda. that brings us to our topic of

genocide and the u.s. and international response to the genocide. ok, so we are going to talk tonight about the kind of narrative of the genocide itself. what happened between late 1993 and the middle of 1994. of course, the genocide itself taking place over 100 days between april 6, 1994 and mid-july, early to mid july of 1994. we do this through a number of books that our students have been exposed to. maybe we should talk about them. so we have sam ana powers, a -- samantha powers, "a problem " which is an overview of the u.s. response to genocide beginning with armenia and nazi genocide. we've also read for tonight

-- de laris.s his account in the peacekeeping force in the united nation's force in rwanda. a canadian general, never saw combat from before this time. accepted this command in late 1993. found himself in a maelstrom of epic proportions in 1994 and a unique witness to this whole thing. we've read power and de laris and writings from sources. victims and perpetrators the -- of the genocide. that's where we're left tonight. we've also encountered on on an aesthetic level through film and other things. i think this leaves us very well prepared to talk about from an intellectual and emotional standpoint, the u.s. response

and the international response to this whole thing. >> one thing i would just add to that is obviously during the course of the semester we've confronted you with quite a few different texts, ideas, themes, issues and challenges. obviously some of them have been quite difficult and quite wrenching, but really, i think, we've seen the course progressing to the time where we would spend, you know, two solid weeks on the rwandan genocide because of its implications for policy in the 21st century because so many of the issues we've confronted through the semester crystallize here. there's obviously no sense in weighing one genocide as more significant than the other. but the growing role of the united states as a world power, and the way the genocide in rwanda unfolds have put us in a position where many of the issues we've grappled with during the semester are really

in front of us at this point. it seemed appropriate to synthesize some of these ideas. >> in a way, the rwanda genocide is the climax of this course. this is the most obvious nazi of genocide since the holocaust. it's an obvious case. it fits the definition. people were singled out, targeted. there was an attempted extermination. if they had not been successful in their military endeavors to retake the country in 1994, this might have led ultimately to full extermination. in a way it's the most complete of all of the genocides. the pace of genocide is frighten -- frightening. that in 100 days, 800,000 is kind of the official toll or the toll that is accepted. maybe more than a million. it's uncertain exactly how many

people were killed, but a frightening number of people were killed. this genocide also produces some serious emotional resonance, as we've seen also already. we've all felt the emotions of this topic. i think rwanda brings a lot of e, particularly u.s. and theer the international response to all of this. we stood helplessly by. as you've read de lare and these authors. as you read power. how have you experienced this frustration? what has been your experience as students with this? tiffany. >> de leare, every time he says we could have done this but we

didn't do this. every time he mentioned i tried to get this through. i told them this was going to happen, and nobody reacted. or the reaction was we're not going to worry about it. we won't have the resources. we can't let you do that. we won't let you do this. it's so frustrating. and angering to read that. they had so many opportunities, one after another, to intervene, and they never did. >> okay. other responses. yeah, eddie. >> half measures like -- they didn't make true on their promises. especially the international thinkity would win -- i it was mid-may when he called for reinforcements around 5000 men. the u.n. agreed on it, but none of the countries sent men. they all argued who should sent the men. when it came down to just logistics. it wasn't even about the lives, it was the logistics. the money and resources they koe -- could allocate to the problem.

them -- toly led them not really responding at all. >> i think that's an excellent point. we're talking about resources that -- given the collective resources that could be martialed by the united states, by france, by really any european country that might have had a stake in this. of course belgium sent some people. what was actually sent, what was actually provided by a pittance. -- what was actually provided was a pittance. and that is exaggerating it, really. they sent damaged vehicles that showed up not in working order with manuals in the wrong languages without parts needed , to repair the vehicles needed to be repaired. of course, the number of people sent was paltry compared to what could have been sent and what should have been sent, probably. david?

>> [indiscernible] for me the most difficult aspect of everything. as you mentioned there were so many logistical and technical problem that's weren't addressed by anyone at all until they were notified -- until they realized there was a problem. the most difficult thing for me was the empty leadership that came from the supposed leaders. they seem to only be made -- basic their intervention on the symbol of inner natural intervention. but there is no practically applied leadership to those promises. and ultimately when you have that -- it can't be just words. you can't ace anything ought -- basic anything on symbolism. when itols mean nothing comes to the ground. to call outhey seem for this weight or heft or force

behind the rhetoric? >> it was the john -- not john , but -- >> the cameroonian? >> the one who was really in charge of the entire mission. >> de lare's contacts in new york. their response was always whenever he would give them a report from the field and typically with political leadership is you want to trust the people in the field giving feedback because they are the ones that are actually in the physical situation but they didn't regard anything he had to say. their response was no, you're straying from the bounds of your mission. i think ultimately that was -- to me, it was the most concerning. llaireis so striking in de how frequently people he's appealing to are playing defense. they seem to be looking for ways to actively avoid what he's

calling for or what seems to be compelling based on the circumstances. >> often this is out of self-interest. one has to of course analyze motives and take a lot of things into account here but it seems that at times people who should be perhaps, and hindsight is it back atn look this and say, people should have acted differently, but the blatant self interest that comes across so many times, the careerism that seems to be occurring is particularly concerning. elizabeth? out of touch everyone seems to be and dallaire even acknowledges that in the beginning when he talks about the peace keeping manual is written for a post world war ii manual. i think that it is reinforced when you see the inaction but completely out of touch with

what's going on on the ground. we saw that in bosnia. we see that here. even in cambodia, there was the disbelief because that's was not what the modern world was supposed to be. >> right. so what they do -- david raised this point and you raised it again. they do this kind of symbolic show of aid, right? never is this more striking than, i think, madeleine albright's statement after the pull-out where they reduce the size of u.n. troops on the ground somewhere from 4,000 to somewhere around 270 people in the country of rwanda which is the size of maryland with a population of 10 million people or something like that. 270 peacekeepers.

and she says, and this is a they are to have a small skeletal operation to "show the will of the international community." we're not going to tolerate the killing of civilians so we are going to leave people in the country to show that we have a will, right? it comes across as completely empty rhetoric. andrew. >> speaking on leadership, what really bugged me was the fact that they always said that even any real force would take time like with the bombing. we had to find the plane and then we had to find the clearance, but when france decided to send in operation turquoise they were there like that, you know? so that was very frustrating, that they had the

capability and there was this bureaucratic paper work to go through. >> or even more frustrating, once the united states decided to get involved to aid the refugee crisis, 1.7 million hutus fleeing into neighboring, what was then site air, what is now the democratic republic of congo. at that point, you know, all sorts of aid was martialed. i guess this was a band-aid on an open wound of the aorta. we're going to do something at 'sis point, but in dallaire words, what is the title of that last chapter? >> too much too late. >> too much and far too late. it really rings very hollow. >> one of the most interesting book, out of dallaire'd

the hindering fact, the fact that you only had a very small number of leaders. was the force commander. before that the political commander got sick and he did not come in. you had this very unexperienced , who was also supposed to do this preparedness and security grunt work, but at the same time, -- one of the quotes was -- >> what page are you on? >> 106. ?> of power or dallaire >> dallaire. this writing i think goes with the conversation we're having where he says i also thought that planting the flag would serve the same symbolic purpose was my flag rising. he says we were still having endless administration and

resource problems. later he says the colonel radioed back to say they did not have paper to write with. they had been denied for budgetary reasons. he says it is maddening i was internal fight a petty war over office supplies. it was a struggle to get soldiers in the first place. the fact that they get there and they do not have the resources they need to maintain a decent living style. these are some of the most basic failures. >> except for the belgians, of course. how did they get nice quarters and end up in the situation that they were in? >> it was written in their contract. >> yes. their contact with the united nations that they had to be housed in brick and mortar buildings. they were not to be intense. this was not for the comfort or anything like that of the

soldiers. it was to put on a good show in front of africans who were inferior peoples in their eyes. it was a blatant relic of colonialism. thebelgians were colonialists and that hadn't disappeared in the 1990s even though they had been gone for 35 years. >> i think what was really frustrating about this is the denying of resources. all they had to do is sign off on them. when it comes down to where dallaire is going to be housed he wants him to be in this nice mansion because he is the force commander and has to keep up appearances. it's ridiculous that he's willing to spend those resources to keep up appearances but not on the resources that they need to be effective in rwanda. >> yeah, yeah.

matt? when we are talking about belgium. i struggled on how they wanted to partake with the un just to help out rwanda because they said up the political landscape that allow this genocide to occur. it was bare doing that the hutus and the tutus had their identification guards and they laughed and said, basically, fend for yourself. and now they have decided they want to come back. as i'm reading the book they want to have their own houses spread throughout the town which is a logicalal nightmare. wouldn't you rather have all of your soldiers in one place defending each other? i do not understand what they were doing back in rwanda. they didn't seem like they had a moral reason to be here. they just wanted to come and cause a ruckus. it did not help really. i think it is also striking,

the different national groups within the force, the belgians with respect to their attitude toward the locals, the sense of superiority they had and if not a blank check, a broad writs to resort to violence. and they effectively complicated beyond measure his ability to sort of negotiate in this delicate moment and again, right, the legacy of all of this just weighs so heavily on the circumstances. >> matt raises a very important point here. the legacy that the belgians have makes this very puzzling. the belgians were the ones that instituted the system of identity cards. which shockingly, once the belgians left and rwanda became

an -- independent, they kept in place. rwandans had to register as hutu troi,see or -- tuti although that was a really small group. this identification card the people had to carry was really a signal for persecution. the government placed quotas on certain professions, teachers, government ministers, physicians and people in other professions could not be -- only a certain percentage of them could be tutsi. they kept in place this relic , but at the same time, when people find out the belgians are coming in, they are concerned because this is the entrance of their old oprah sir. there are strange motivations going on all over the place. >> dallaire talks about that. how concerned he is they would react inside the country. what i was going to say is i

think it's important to note when we say. -- this was a u.n. kind of mission, that almost sounds like the whole weight of u.n. member states was behind it, but that's obviously not the case. he writes here when he sent -- there are more obstructionists than there are those aiding. when he sends it in he says most not comment, did not have positives or negatives. they probably didn't even read it, except, the countries he points out is belgium, canada had concerns. it was almost as if the u.n. were just kind of seeing -- you could imagine them saying, ok, we're going to rwanda and that is going to happen, whoever is in charge of that, they can handle it, that it has the u.n.

name on it. a total failure and void of leadership. >> elizabeth, sorry. we passed over you. >> that actually brought me to another question. how convinced are dallaire and power in the global complacency and the french's idea to remove the upper echelons of the government. i thought that was really interesting. the french conmen with operation turquoise. the local communities were so complacent. they saw this as a green flag. we can go in. we have this contract. we need to appear superior. i just thought it was really disturbing how the colonial legacy has maintained in africa through global complacency that has been there for generations, years, hundreds of years, and

how it's not looked at as such in a modern era because we see ourselves as a modern people. and so, these legacies of colonialism and slavery and all of that are persisting in the modern time, and how reluctant we are to face that. >> but this is the fault of the politics. are gettinge french their old friends out. >> the french are constantly supplying the rgf and supplying -- supplying that government in the first place. they are getting supplies in. they are getting weapons in. this is part of the story that, is not well-known. the french are quite complicit in this. >> absolutely. that's created tension between rwanda and france since.

as they move toward english as the national language and move away from the francophone dialects entirely. >> it's interesting. in the context of french politics at the time the decision to intervene takes off. you know, there's a couple of key events. one is when nelson mandela sortly after being elected as president of south africa begins to urge that there needs to be action and intervention. we know that internal french government sources are anxious at that point that the that part -- the anglophone heart of the african continent will now demonstrate leadership and they see it as they need to step in and intervene. but french politics plays a role. in the french system you have a president and prime minister. at this moment, you have a divided government. socialisthe presidents. you have the neo-gaullist the position of

prime minister. you have this leadership that says hey, we're the party with , the heart and this is an opportunity to demonstrate that they are, again, cost calculating, and at this moment can demonstrate that we have these moral commitments. it's interesting too. when the -- some of this taps into comments that professor young made and david and andrew refers to. when the scope of the genocide becomes increasingly clear by early june that is when you start to get a constituency in the developed world for intervention. one of the real tragic dimensions of this ends up being that significant beneficiaries of this constituency into being the -- themselves. this leads to the displaced persons camps in zaire, things like that.

>> as he says about this and this is in the power book where he is quoted. my mission was to save rewounda. -- rwanda. their mission -- he is speaking about the international mission. their mission was to put on a show at no risk. right? unfortunately, i fear this is actual too often the case with international aid in general. >> uh-huh. >> but particularly in this case, right? these are photo opportunities for so many people in the international community that we are doing something about the tragedies that are occurring in africa. let's send diplomats and political figures. president clinton makes it there if you weeks after the genocide has stopped. and these are photo ops. but there is no risk involved in any of these things. others ared a few left with the entire burden of risk through this entire story.

>> drawing from this idea sort of, i found myself by his colleagues constantly bring up the fact that there are so many other issues going on in terms of the global community trying to face former yugoslavia fell conflict in particular. i guess it is easy to see it in retrospect, but it was so hard to read that and think what were they doing in the former yugoslavia and bosnia amounted to nothing. it was virtually nothing at all. 349,till you read on page says, i couldn't help maybe if this was -- yugoslavia maybe somebody outside of rwanda would have

cared. there's almost this sense that it came to nothing. rwanda got so little attention from the global community and meanwhile the global community and people from the u.n. are saying, yeah, but we're doing all of this great stuff in the former yugoslavia and we know, of course, that wasn't the case. >> if you go on in that passage, i mean this comes directly to the united states. i certainly remember 1994 exactly what i was doing at this time. it was a pivotal moment in my life. i personally was preparing to go to africa at that point. i was a freshman in college. i was exactly where some of you are, you know? happened,ays, as it the ones in -- the wand and -- havingndan genocide was a hard time knocking the south african elections and american figure skater tonya harding's criminal charges off the front pages. it struck me that this is the 20th anniversary year and there have been multiple specials on

tonya harding and nancy kerrigan this year, too. i don't watch a whole lot of television, but when i turn on the bbc, i see stuff with rwanda. when i turn on american television, i don't see anything. this is terribly concerning, i think, that 20 years on even something as big and fundamental to international identity as this still takes a backseat to the whole tonya harding, nancy kerrigan soap opera that happened 20 years ago. >> another story that received attention was kurt cobain's death. in the film he may have caught that reference. and june, i think it was june 12 is the murder of nicole brown

simpson so the o.j. , simpson saga. >> well, nothing will displace that. >> internationally, too, i was in africa during the trial of o.j. simpson. it was all over the news in south africa the entire time it was going on. even there people talked about rwanda more than in the u.s. >> it was our oscar pistorius. >> yeah, i guess so. >> i think power encapsulates that really well. dallaire mentioned that one of his main missions was to get media feedback on the crisis. >> he had marked oil from the doyle from the bbc sending out stories on his

satellite feed, and that was pretty much it. >> we really gave no attention to this whatsoever. it's also interesting because our interest was reflected in our government so powers mentioned if we would have put up more of a fight about going over to rwanda our government would have followed what we wanted. >> at this point i was really struck in power, in her analysis of this. it ties into something that -- there's a recognition on the very top members of the american terms of policy making that there will be no costs for failure to take action. one of the things that becomes so central to american policy and the way it develops and unfolds and fails to intervene in any meaningful way at all is the calculations that are ultimately made and the way the policy process unfolds.

the policy process gets dominated primarily in the white house. it gets -- they don't defer to the pentagon. they give the pentagon's voice on the danger of any intervention. a great deal of weight some of , that is a legacy of soem -- somalia or back to vietnam. >> the way that process unfolds, you know, in essence, the sort of silence of the american people and american interest groups looms so large. it's interesting, it to compare rfur example a decade later, even though it is not getting massive amounts of attention across the news, where it is getting attention is among certain key political constituencies in congress, in the african-american community

-- in the evangelical community that begin to exert pressure on , the state department and white house and just as critically in congress. there you end up with pressure effectively on the government to take a more forthright posture. i don't know if aggressive is the right word. so there we get the united states government in september of 2004, identifying the events as genocide, calling it unequivocally, in fact even before the united nations does so. i this it goes to the lack of political will that there is no -- there is no political pressure mobilized really in any way. now, i think one of her main points leadership could have mobilized. that presidents don't have responsibility simply to be buffered in the wind by sentiment on the ground.

>> i think it was dallaire mentioned or power that the only rwanda historian in the united states who actually was able to know what was going on was a private party person. that was the only reference, the only real major authority we had on rwanda at this point. >> there is a quote from power on this. just to show that they there was no will on the part -- of course congress will respond to constituents. on page 375 of power, we have patricia shrader, a democrat of colorado, saying there are some groups terribly concerned about gorillas.llas -- the this, of course, is a reference to the gorillas in the mist. the movie that came out in the 80s.

this was filmed partially in rwanda. this is the heartland for guerrillas -- gorillas. there are some groups typically worried about gorillas that something will happen to them. it sounds terrible, she says but people just don't know what can be done about the people. right? so, i mean, it's just horribly brutally, tragically ironic that we have these interest groups in the united states in 1994 who were calling their congressmen and saying, please protect the the silver back gorillas but 800,000 people are killed by machete. >> one thing that stood out to me was 1994 when they first got reports that cia intelligence predicted the ability of a genocide happened. it talks about how they didn't encourage him to study rwanda and how it mentions --

>> they couldn't find information. >> how his knowledge of rwanda was merely his assistant finding a small book that she picked up and gave to him the night before he left. the whole concept bf of colonialism. said, where they did not take the time to slightly understand what they were going into. by the time he got there it was like, oh, crap, this is a lot more serious than everyone else is. even off the fact he came back b -- and tried, i guess my feeling , was the disbelief that how -- the circulation of no desire or interest because of proximity. >> it builds upon itself. it's this vicious circle for sure. andrew? interest because of proximity. >> it builds upon itself. it's this vicious circle for sure. >> i was going to talk about constituency groups. what i got from powers was that

the u.s. leaders use what she calls micro victories by focusing on people like the rue and youa academic. it was kind of weird to see how -- >> metaphor of a doll that a child protects its doll. it doesn't have this global vision of everything that is going on around. >> it was frustrating to use these micro victories to validate their semi inaction in there. >> the physical isolation of the country, the un and isolation of his troops in the field and other groups within there.

i thought it might have contributed to the lack of will. nobody wanted to listen to him. he couldn't communicate. >> at one point he couldn't get through the airports. lonl i logistics do not allow him to travel around without serious danger. he cannot contribute to anyone without access to a phone. isolation a very important theme here. >> i think it is ironic. he is sitting here with one satellite phone. he gives it to the bbc guy, get the story out. you would think with all of the foreign countries not wanting to send troops in there in fear of something happening to them, you would think the outside countries are trying to get to him and make contact but it's like people are saying, yeah, he's over there.

they don't seem too worried about him. >> here is his wife and children stuck in canada in québec city desperate to find out. this is one of the haunting things about the de lair book is this -- it's not frequent but sporadic attention to his situation at home. it's never fully resolved. i mean, psychologically this destroyed de lair. these regretted about his family and about the hell he put them through, right, over and over again here just bleeds through at times into the narrative in a way, some of the most hart breaking stuff because it's so readily identifiable, i think. >> there was that one government figure that went to de lair's wife just the way he started the senten sentence. it was almost as if he died

nobody would have noticed almost. it was like oh, that problem is done. >> i fear that's all too accurate. at least that's the per spespec. power backs him up. i think it's probably true. >> another frustration with this is one of the excuses that the american government gives for not being involved but they don't want another mogadishu. they lost what, 14 men? >> 18 marines. >> they lose 18 marines in mogadishu but in rwanda they lose 14 men. >> is this the same phenomenon repeated in rwanda really? of course there's the intervention.

this is a chapter 7 intervention in somalia. they break out into anarchy fighting between war worlds in the early 1990s and interventional aid marshals itself to try to diffuse the crisis to get aid to the people who need it. we have almost street to street or neighborhood fighting in mogadishu between war lords. the international community rallies. the united states gets involved. i think i was a senior at the time when this was happening. >> it was december of 1992. >> that's exactly what i would have been. it date me. >> not as much as it dates me. >> i remember better than i do. i remember my u.s. history teacher in high school had this

political cartoon that showed sapt a santa claus on a sled with his elves having machine guns. that's kind of the international perspective on somalia that this place is worth -- if santa claus is going to pay attention to this, right, than we should, too. there was actually a will there until the tragic events of which -- >> october of 1993 in an effort to relief another part of the fint vengs forces f the pakistanis who were there.

u.s. forces get into a fight with forces in mogadishu. 18 get killed ultimately. this had repercussions unfortunately that they stripped these bodies and desecrated them. mutilated them. dragged them behind vehicles through the streets of modadishu with the cameras of the internainte international community rolling. this became a paradigm of course, for what happens or a lesson for what happens when the international community tries to intervene in the developing world or more specifically in africa, right? this becomes a caricature of

africa. of course the chapter seven intervention is going on in the former yugoslavia as well. as we talked about this this class is a different situation. >> just about to finish the point how this is related to 9/11. people like osama bin laden were watching the events unfold in mogodishu and the perspective was the western world does not have the will to fight. when they are punched in the mouth, they will turn around and walk away. so the idea was if they punch them in the mouth they will not retaliate. the punch in the mouth ultimately was 9:0011. >> that message was perceived. >> that was part the plan. he knew about this via

intelligen intelligence. >> the political context about somalia is also very important. november, 1992, president bush loses the intersection to if clinton. >> we're in that that it's late november. there are images and the story is coming back that the food aid is simply sitting on the dock in mogodishu are being exploited by criminal gangs and using it for political purposes. what i also vividly member about that and the somalia situation is that u.s. sources came ready for combat. they crawled along the beach. at that point there was no combat but they were filmed up close and personal by cnn cameras. i remember there was this odd moment of cnn showing cameras

and people in the faces of u.s. soldiers coming ashore. it gives it this way strange feeling. i think it becomes -- the perception of the american people is we will be there. we will sort this out. the good guys from the bad guys, deliver the food and this will be easy. of course during the summer of 1993, it becomes increasingly complicated. from a policy making perspective, i think we do ourselves a disservice if we underestimate how many somalia looms in people's minds because what starts to develop within the white house and the policy making process is the notion if there is an insufficiently un effort we will be called to pick up the tabment so that's why you get things like presidential decision directed 25 authored by

richard clark that outlines minimum criteria before the united nations will agree to participate in anything whatsoever. clark says these are the strict guidelines for u.s. participation but in fact until we prove a mission led and funded by others where the united states plays a per peripheral roll, so the hurdle to get over becomes extremely high as we move through the events and string of 1994. yeah, elizabeth. >> just a couple of points. -- outlined in the beginning of when he talks about going to the offices in new york they are sexier than the

peacekeeping effort. the dpko. this is my perception. the unicef reaches out to children. that's something people are familiar with. and children are less threatening. when you have these peacekeeping efforts to go into rwanda we , know children can be taken and educated in the way we want them to be educated. and then the second point was we were very much, in somalia and mogadishu, the aid there was reflecting a cold war aid mentality where we did the derl berlin air lift and we're not participating the motivations that these people have. for hijacking the food and selling it on the black markets rather than dispersing it to the people who needed it. i think that that refers back to my point about them being out of

and just completely unaware of what is actually happening in developing nations because they have only developed with what's going on in the developed world. o'er the postwar world. >> they do not even know what is happening for dallaire. he was down to having a glass of water a day to wash himself. he says there was an odor he had picked up. it was very distinct and they would remember it forever, basically. most of his rations went bad. he did not even have food. he would try to get more resources and then be denied. not have the resources to go get it in general. and then when they come in to be all proper and stuff and have this front for it. i don't know, they are not allocating enough resources in general to him just to actually survive. not even to help out but for them to actually survive in there.

>> and the madness, right, where he says we're at the end of our water supply and he says you need to get three competitive bids to fill those bids. >> in that situation. >> i just need 20,000 liters of water that can be brought in easily. >> i am not a huge proponent of the yuan in general. -- of the u.n. in general. i don't think they are an extremely effective body but i think that is seen in the inability and give them resources because you need competitive bids. are you kidding me? these people these people don't have clean drinking water and they have to go through bureaucratic red tape to survive. >> there are no firms on the ground anyway. >> it's bizarre. >> this is just the disconnect that happens over and over again throughout the dallaire narrative where the people in new york do not understand or make any effort to understand what's going on in rwanda.

there is complete ignorance here, which is perhaps one of the most shocking elements of the whole story. >> this is a complete failure of multiple actions of the community, but i think we have this idea that we and dallaire u.n., says this is a failure of the member states, not the u.n. itself. this is uncommitted as dave was saying earlier to an ideal but only going halfway. >> it gets in the way as a result of that. it gets in the way of things that might have been done without -- it will always be trouble given the circumstances on the ground. the u.n. backs or becomes an enabler for the pullout, given that the belgians, after they

lose their soldiers decide to pull out. that if the calculation built-ins, a few they would pullout. it would be the collapse of the whole mission. most damningf the pieces for the international community here. she pointed out that belgium didn't want to pull out and be the sole bad guys. what did they do? >> they asked everybody else to leave with them. >> yeah. let's call up the united states and tell them we don't want to be the only ones pulling out the here and turning chicken so to speak, right? so, let's put pressure on the entire u.n.. this whole operation is botched and going nowhere and dangerous and so, now, let's pull out -- let's pull everybody out. the u.s. buys this.

i mean, this is our ally. they don't have a invested interest in rwanda. they begin to put pressure on the u.n. to pull everybody out. they are instrumental on the decision to leave. it is clearly u.s. pressure that causes that. that point is extremely well taken. this is one example how it is the constituent members of the the u.n. perhaps -- the elizabethon, as points out that there's this , bureaucratic tape that just gets in the way. bureaucracy is the enemy to all progress. leon trotsky, and i think he is right in this situation. even more, i think jason's point is valid that it's the individual member states. perhaps we need to point the finger most strongly at the united states here and say they are the ones that precipitated

the shameful acts that the --ernational milk international community perpetrated vis-à-vis rwanda. >> it's so striking. we know the belgium prime minister early on appeals to secretary of state christopher and says exactly what you are saying and a couple of other people noted, we can't be the ones who are seen as leaving ns to some miserable fate, and secretary christopher jumps right on board with that. we will support that to pare down the force and veto any effort to expand it and have any more prominent effect. it is a couple of weeks where de is still getting

signals that the belgians are thinking of taking a more aggressive role. he is completely unaware -- in a series of private conversations and a closed door april 15th meeting, the united states is making it clear that there will be no expansion of the international role. again, it seems in part to reflect the experience of somalia, but i think it has more issues than that. >> i think that's probably the most troubling thing with that is that the international community and the response to everything, they can't agree on aid and supporting it but the only thing they can agree is abandoning the country. that's the only thing that gets their full commitment. >> which is the easiest and most problematic thing to do in the first place. tiffany. >> i did want to talk about what surprised me and stood out to me too was the complacency of canada. its inaction because it to be part dallaire

of this mission. >> doesn't send out of their own troops. >> wouldn't provide any other troop besides him. they would not even let him pick from his own troops. they forced him to pick through a list of people who had no experience in french or rwanda. >> what does this say? this always struck me. i'm not a military person. i don't perhaps understand the mentality, but what does that say about dallaire, either commendable or critical? what can we say about him given the circumstances that he places himself in here? what is going on with dallaire and his own motivations? do you want to comment on that, tiffany? >> well, at the beginning he's hoping this will be really good for his career. it will be the first time he will be on the ground. up to some point his men have been involved in peace keeping but he hasn't exactly been to the different peace keeping missions his men has been to.

for him he sees it as a step forward with his career. after he is actually involved in this, he decides, he realizes when he is going through the refugee camps, i have to do this for the rwandan people, not just myself. it is a mission for rwanda. >> right. which was the acronym if you recall, it was una, the united nation's aid mission for rwanda unamfer does not really work as an acronym, so he takes the mi in mission and takes out the f. he's really committed to that word for. dallaire is a complex individual. i think having this very full

and very long account is helpful in kind of -- he charted very well the complexities of this thing on the ground and in his own personal motivations enter into this. i think that is very helpful in envisioning this thing from a holistic perspective. he says he got a call from a staffer and he does not know what they'd do. page 499. he told me his estimates said it would take the death of rwanda 400,000 soldiers. does it take human lives to determine if we will get involved in another country? it puts them on a pedestal higher. that's not the idea behind human rights.

that's what the united nations is for. >> this is a very important point. what else is going on there? what really is going on there that this american bureaucrat calls up dallaire with no idea of what he has faced on the ground. he calls up and says we're just running some numbers here. we need your opinion or your assessment of things. dallaire is confused by this and says why. well, we're just running some , risk assessment that for every soldier we lose, that is the equivalent of losing 85,000 rwandans. what does that indicate about bureaucracy,ut about this whole process that we are studying tonight? elizabeth. you had a pretty passionate response to that. sorry.

it goes back -- what struck me most is the colonialistic attitude and that superior attitude that the west has to africa because ait is a developing nation and we didn't see any economic gain from being in rwanda. even the people, we didn't see them as economically worth while to invest in. i think it so plays up on the western ethno sent rix that has permeated for centuries and reinforces that you will get this phone call and say here is what we decided.

there is a disconnect. they are just looking at numbers from a comfortable office in their bubble. >> on a computer screen. >> you get to go home from the office and live in safety while dallaire is on the ground confused. he is barely able to survive himself. he has barely any supplies for his men. ,> the character of dallaire how i regard him is he is becauseably unfortunate he is not ethnocentric or eurocentric. he tells the moment when it clicked he was going to do

everything he could to protect rwanda. but at the same time, he got involved for his career at first. then he noticed there was a human element he cared about. at that point, he was determined. he was idealistic. at the same time, he did not have the resources. in my opinion, he was not the leader to lead this effort. he did not have extensive knowledge about the efforts going on in rwanda. everything coming to him, he could not anticipate problems. he was reacting to them like any military man would. >> i think given what you have supports the assessment of dallaire. had aand dallaire professional relationship involving friendship after this. she writes the introduction to his book.

she invited him to be a fellow at the kennedy center, the kennedy school of government at harvard. she was there before she became part of the obama administration. i think she has a deep respect for him. maybe the reading materials do not shed light on perhaps the other interpretations of dallaire, but what she says is the genocide in rwanda cost romeo dallaire a great deal. it is paradoxical and natural -- and we can parse those words out and think about that and i advise you to do that -- paradoxical and natural that the man who probably did most to save rwandans feels the worst. by august 1994, dallaire had a death wish. she quotes him that at the end of his command, he drove around with no escort practically looking for ambushes looking to get released from the guilt. much of the burden the

international community blithely fails to take upon itself, either because of ignorance or lack of will was placed on the shoulders of this one man who is psychologically, emotionally destroyed at the end of this. it is the destruction of another human life out of this. comes kind ofaire the symbol for the destruction of all the life around him. his own life is shattered by this. we, as the perhaps international community, should share in that. if we should weep along with him and think about this. this has been keeping me up nights personally. hopefully, that is in an effort to atone for the sins of all of

humanity, the failure of humanity is the subtitle of this. >> i was going to say i think dallaire is very good at taking in everything happening on the ground. just like you said, he had all these plans. it was really the trial brent -- triumvirate of the u.n. that did not allow him to lead. i disagree. he was not the leader to take over this. it was just he was not allowed to lead by the human -- the .n. >> that is a good point. >> was going to say the one life or 85,000 exemplifies the attitude towards africa. there is this attitude they are just africans, that they don't matter, that white people are more important. even the media response, there is an overall attitude of it does not matter. it is over there.

we can push it as far as we need to. perhaps because africans do not look like that rid their behaviors are bizarre in the eyes of westerners. there is still this outmoded notion of tribalism and primitive picture of africa. i lived with americans who said they expected animals running through villages and expected protect themselves from wild animals. this was the expectation, that this was wild africa. that is a fundamental disconnect from the realities of humanity in africa. importantis is an point. we have reached halfway through the class. we have reached the one-hour

mark. perhaps we should ponder this as we take a short break and come back and talk about this. i know we have more comments. we can get to those after the break. what other issues stood out to you as you read these books? tiffany? >> racism. dallaire himself is casually racist the way he refers to the white west when that pretty much is not true anymore, if it ever was true. the fact that people think of themselves as the white west versus black africa is inherently racist and probably

had a severe effect on the way they reacted to what was happening. good point. very how does racism as a phenomenon enter into this? we have ethnic tensions. it is not racial tension. but it is ethnic tension. but racism is a phenomenon certainly plays a role in all of this. >> when the belgian soldiers arrive, they were started making -- they started making racist comments to the people. dallaire right away had a meeting stating he did not have any tolerance for racism and everybody had to stop the ethnocentrism basically. i had to look at the people as people instead of through racial lenses. >> for sure>>. ok. >> the international community comes up with this idea that to

solve the problems, the africans should solve their own problems. i feel it that is inherently racist, like they can solve their problems better. thatat one is tricky given this is a debate within africa itself and has been for some time now really going all the way back to independence. but particularly over the last 20 or 30 years. there is a will inside of africa certainly for the international community to get out. we don't need aid. aid does more harm than good. say some people on the ground in africa and some political figures. it just gets exploited. this ishe same time, also a kind of attitude of the west. there is this dialectic, this interaction between the rhetoric coming out of africa and the rhetoric that makes it into the international parlance. >> i was going to talk about the

concepts of racism post-colonialism because it does play on both sides. whitens are the other u.n. peacekeepers that had this attitude of racism, but it was also displayed on the who to side as well. 18 of the peacekeepers died because the hutus had racism and prejudice against the white people coming back into their convent. >-- continent. >> it goes both way. prominently in the west, we are all christian. they are christian in rwanda, but they do not look like us. other countries and the united states could have done something but did not. >> there's this comment from dallaire that even after a lot

of the information about what is happening on the ground starts to leak to the west, news footage and things like this is making it to the west. it does not compete with tonya harding and o.j. simpson. ,ut people start to notice this ok. gives him a directive to try to cut costs. you are spending too much money, which is untrue. he is operating on a shoestring budget. he says this is absurd. do you remember what they were spending in the form of yugoslavia? he says millions of dollars a day, a day. and he had a $50 million budget for the entire year in a situation that was just as complex in its own way is what was going on in bosnia, o

k. i think you raise a good point about racism and the evidence on that side. initial the mission's misunderstanding or ability to comprehend have deep the divide went throws them to where they could not anticipate the genocide that would occur. when we asked the question if this could have been prevented, it could have been prevented if it had been in their mind that this was a possibility of happening because then they would not have gone in with such a lack of resources and personnel. if they had known this was a possibility, they would not have gone in at all or they would have gone in with the proper personnel to be able to mitigate this. >> it is striking how often dallaire and others are stunned by the depolarization and

propagandarelic hate -- vitriolic hate propaganda and how that catches them off guard from a policy perspective. so frequently it seems their perspective is we are dealing with a fairly traditional state and a fairly traditional rebellious army. it is effectively a question of negotiating the distribution of offices, which people from the hutu and which tutsis will be in when the new courts are enforced and put in place. they seem not to understand that. point madek by the on a number of occasions that there is a failure of imagination to perceive and appreciate in a deep way the capacity for evil not just in individual human beings but within specific contexts.

>> this touches on a theme we in this course, the fact that genocide is unbelievable. semesterginning of the confrontingt him another and he gives him details about what is going on in europe with the not seize and jews. nazis and jews. he says i cannot believe this. saying you are lying, i just cannot believe this. i cannot wrap my head around this. as a result of that, i cannot act. this is not just a failure of imagination on the part of the international community. ground being

deported from hungary, even the european jews in 1944 do not know what is going on with their people elsewhere in europe. how can you not know what happens to jews in 1944, right? is this quote from the book "machete season," which we have read. a survivor of this talking about the hate broadcasts on the rtlm propaganda channel. what they said was so cleverly put and repeated so often, meaning the hate broadcast propaganda, that we tutsis as well found them funny to listen to. that is a tragic irony, right? they were clamoring for the massacre of all the cockroaches,

the rwanda word the hutu used for the tutsis. s, the wikitutsi words were hilarious. the songs urging them to wipe out the tutsis, we laughed out loud at the jokes. the same thing about the 10 commandments that vowed to do a sin. we did not listen to the .orrible threats the failure of imagination extended to the people that would become the victims of this, right? it is unbelievable. genocide as a phenomenon is unbelievable. the amount of bodies, the staggering numbers. the staggering amount of brutality that goes into this in all of the cases we have looked at. it is unbelievable people could do this to people.

unbelievable. that leads to the failure of imagination. another samantha power's ,orward to the dallaire book she follows it up saying dallaire was distrusted for his emotion. he was told repeatedly he was looking at the situation in a simplistic fashion, which i think highlights what you were saying. >> they are not going to kill, it is simple. >> they have all this talk, but we are there now so it is not that big of a deal and you are thinking it is going to be way worse than it actually is. your he has repeatedly said have no idea what is happening here. andrew and i were talking about it during the break. out of touch, yes, but also

willful ignorance, like the u.s. government and the u.n. are turning blind eyes because, like you are saying, they just can't believe it because it is modern. i know i keep returning to that. the thing that gets me is we as a modernocide phenomenon, but here it is not. it is very hands on, very rudimentary genocide where people are being killed with clubs and machetes and things like that. i thought that was ironic they were telling him he was looking simplistic a fashion when this was happening in a simplistic way, so he was looking at it exactly the way it needed to be seen. it was the people he was reporting to not looking at it in the fashion and needed to be. >> on that point, the international response insists

by turns that either your view of this is too simplistic or too complex. on both counts, they are wrong, right? you are right about it being very primitive and brutal, the fact that these people killed mostly with machetes or clubs or rudimentary and laments -- implements. screwdrivers in some cases. i cannot even fathom what that would have been like. at the same time, this is where the international committee fails to appreciate -- in international community fails to appreciate the locals. they have this understanding of policy. they know if they do something similar to mogadishu, the will of the international community will chicken out. they will not have sufficient

backbone to stick it out. the strikes me is both simplicity and complexity of this, and the failure of the international community to appreciate both of those things. >> he knew by january 10. he got the information from the member i gave him the information. >> so we recall, an informer he had, i placed among the leadership of the hutus who knows what is going on with the militias organized to kill. he gets really good information from him. go ahead. really good information. he says he and others like him are ordered to have those under his command make list of the tutsis. pierre suspected these

lists were being made so when the time came, the tutsis or cockroaches could easily be rounded up and exterminated. like this was common knowledge. also along with that, he finds out there are weapon caches that will be distributed locally within the next couple of weeks. this is four months before the genocide, so he already has this wealth of knowledge, already knows what is going on. he sends the cable to new york city. he sends all this information. shown one ofn is the weapons caches underneath one of the buildings that he went to earlier that day. this is all happening. he sends the information and is thinking he will go read these , not asking for information because it is part of his mandate.

it is in the chapter he has about trying to protect them. he does that and is denied. this was months in advance. as was fêted information he has the lesson was fêted information on the ground. they deny the action. they tell him essentially to rat out his informants. tell him he has an informer among his ranks giving a clue about the planning of the genocide. that i have a hard time understanding the motivations there. do you want to follow that up? >> on top of that, he was in a all thesition because acronyms were infiltrated by rgf . and had already infiltrated then forced him to betray them.

powerere part of the hutu movement, the extremists. >> there are times when dallaire gets confronted by the politicians who seem to know about the actions taken by his office almost before he does, discussions taking place among bureaucrats. he said i my office was wiki as sieve but itas a was frightening to see the evidence of that waste before me. >> he is further compromised by the fact that at that time, rwanda has a seat on the security council. the representative of the interim government, the hutu extremists, were in the most delicate conversations among security council members about what was happening. he presumably gave the april 15 whereg with the options they say there will be no american support for expansion of the mission for fear the

mission is inherently vulnerable and cannot be retrieved. he is getting all that information. that goes back to the point before that dallaire is often sitting in this isolated weight. he certainly does not have a mastery of the information on the ground. >> the terrible ironies of the situation are almost breathtaking in their scale. >> what is shocking is they approved his mandate. in aboute clause crimes continuing. he was obligated by that mandate to do it. but because they ordered him not to, he was torn between, do i go with the mandate i said i would do undoubtably take these actions which i know are going to happen or do i follow the orders of my superiors question mark --? i think he is partially

responsible for the fact he goes along with his superiors instead of staying with his mandate even though he does not have the resources. .e just backs off >> david, do you want to follow that up? >> i had a comment but it was lost in the -- >> a lot of this conversation has turned on the question of prevention, right? what could have been done to prevent this. juxtaposition of what could heinz siteone, the we have now saying if only the national hindsight -- the hindsight we now have saying had -- if only dallaire been given enough weapons and ammunition sufficient for their needs, that juxtaposed

with the inability of them on the ground to carry out even the , maybe we mandates should turn our conversation in that direction. what he says in his conclusion on page 516, this comment is also referring to it a general global trend but can also be applied to the specific mission. he says as a global community, it it is crucial we develop senior leaders to fill these force commander bills. for this to have been a success, he needed every resource available. he needed all the contacts available. i think someone as knowledgeable as yourself in african affairs could have been useful to him more than just the people he was given who did not seem to care

for the job. the point he makes about humanists, that is the most important thing. he talks about logistical failures, failures of bureaucrats. but ultimately the failure was the ability of not enough human beings able to care about the dying rwandans enough to where they were willing to make risks. >> in particular at the senior level, to go back to the point you opened with. the key failure is at the highest levels of leadership. >> i think that goes into the legacy we have in terms of the rwandan genocide. 513, i think it is important dallaire points out to properly mourn the dead and respect the potential of the living, we need accountability and not blame. that spoke volumes to me because it is saying it is nice to talk about prevention and not letting these things happen again.

but if no one in the international community is stepping up and saying, i was part of the reason these people died, i was part of the reason this genocide was perpetrated, nothing is going to get done. as he points out, prior to that everyone is pointing fingers at one another. it is not amounting to anything unfortunate -- it is not amounting to anything. unfortunate. >> what struck me in the last two chapters is how he kept therencing if he had support of the united states, he could have done so much. the problem i had with it was i don't know why he thought the was going to solve the problem because we clearly had no interest. we had failed multiple times in other attempts of going into a country. this is when it was coming to an end and more countries are starting to get

involved, he says i cannot believe the outside world was finally coming into the rwandan catastrophe and screwing it up so totally for the same reasons that prevented them from reacting properly to the genocide in the first place. knowing without support for the homeward bound plan [indiscernible] other countries are coming in. they have not been there so they don't know what is going on. they don't know what needs to be done. he does but has no control over it. i kept coming back to how he thinks the united states was going to solve it. everything was leading to the exact opposite. even if we cared enough to get involved, we don't know what they need and we don't care. it seems like he wants to keep coming back to this point. as you rightly pointed out, 514, he comes back again and says i truly believe the missing piece of the puzzle was political will from france and the united

states. there is no doubt these two countries possessed the solution to the rwandan crisis. a key piece of that is his argument the recognition early on of the united states was not going to deliver or commit in an appreciable way. that becomes a significant piece of the story. >> why does dallaire think the u.s. was key to this >? >> we were the superpower at the time. the paper suggest we could have led the way if we had given troops. that would have at least show this superpower is willing and

have gotten more of the western powers involved. i think it was just that recognition for the rest of the world to say if they are going, we are going kind of deal. >> right. look at what happened three or four years before this with the persian gulf war. the united states came to the aid of kuwait. the version golf and published the persian gulf to juxtapose that and rwanda is even more stark. saddam hussein had shown he was capable of committing genocide on a large scale. there is another chapter in power we have not looked at yet that covers this.

in the case of kuwait, there was political will. there were resources people wanted to attack. the less wanted to protect. -- there were resources people wanted to protect. if you hurt the price of oil, we will get involved. i remember when the united states got involved, nor were schwarzkopf would stand up there in his pentagon briefings and ,alk about the syrians are here they involved all of these middle eastern and european countries. there was this broad coalition of people involved in this. it was legitimized. president bush is saying this is a new world order led by the united states. is coming at it

from that perspective and saying this could have been done in rwanda, and none of this would have happened. one million people would still be alive, enjoying their families, and probably be on the road to democracy as a political system. >> the failure to act goes back to the stumbling and bumbling ignorance of circumstances on the ground. its extraordinary. i think of samantha power" the national security visor the time who says there was never a high-level discussion at all in the white house about the rwanda crisis. in his memoirs, he tells the story about when he met with clinton in may of 1994. clinton passed over wanda almost without comment and was more concerned about advocating the case that the united states supported candidate to chair unicef. it just never emerged as a

policy priority until this sense junegency emerged in late that there needs to be a reaction, there needs to be something we do. the action undertaken is essentially indifferent to the circumstances on the ground. there is clearly emerging a human rights catastrophe. dallaire's point is it would have been a more prudent, viable long-term solution moving those people back into rwanda as quickly as possible. think he wanted the united states to lead as well because of the capability when it comes to the radio stations. they're calling out the names of the moderates. there are three capabilities. it comes down to the united states. they have the technology to jam the radio station or destroy it. they showed in the gulf war they

can have precision attacks. they don't have to destroy everything and anything. >> cruise missiles. >> surgical precision. they can do this technology. it costs something like $8,000 an hour. >> $8,500 an hour, and that is too costly. we have to worry about the plane being up in the air. they could shoot it down. $8,500 an hour, we cannot stomach that cost. >> as a result, all those people died. even he was called out, like kill dallaire. all his men started being called out. they would not do it because it was too costly. they were spending millions of dollars in the gulf. >> is is one of those cases were misplaced values are trotted out. freedom of speech, right? these people have freedom of speech. the question is, does freedom of

speech extend to identifying the locations of individual so you can kill them? is that how for freedom of speech should go? i defy you to find a moral ground where you can justify that. as an excuseused not to do something fairly simple and cost-effective to prevent the loss of humanlike. >> in policy terms, you hit on the right word. it becomes a kind of excuse. amendment, itt seems clearly you could make the case that what was going on in that context, that speech constitutes what would be permitted to be restricted under the context of clear and present danger. it demonstrates exactly what we are talking about. this would be a set of circumstances where you're perfectly within your rights to intervene and prevent that. it is also staggering how badly

state reads the genocide convention in late april and may were they are arguing. we cannot reach the standard of intent. that is a crazy claim. also, the policy recommendations, the convention requires us to act and intervene effectively militarily. one thing that is so striking is how everyone quickly comes to the conclusion that doing anything requires u.s. intervention with a large military force. the genocide convention does not obligate you legally to take military action. but i also think it is important to bear in mind, we go back to the failure of imagination, how frequently impoverished the policy discussions are about what can be done and the analysis of what is happening on the ground. even dallaire portrays this a little bit.

when he isis period clearly thinking about the negotiations among the main we preserve the accords when it seems what is emerging in front of him is an inferno of slaughter and murder. our nearly trillion dollar budget has a lot to do with that. if you look at the rhetoric from the american political leaders, it is almost as if we are implying the world look at us this way. the founding principles of the country are not just life and liberty for americans but people have a right to this. the political rhetoric of the american spectrum is we are supposed to be these moral and conscious world leaders. the policies and practices of the country have not always translated to that, but we still

talk that way. it comes down to the fact that the rest of the world is looking at a saying, do you really mean this? if you mean this, this is an opportunity for you to demonstrate. i think the book has this point that there is a moment where this switch is thrown where there is a steep sense of american guilt at the failure to do anything. he makes the point in the post-genocide rhetoric, the americans appeared to be those most often at pains to express their sense of guilt as though we failed to live up to the principles and play the role. he apologized a number of times for his own behavior. have aoints out we college president used to making apologies.

he was a guest the right man for the job, again ironically. susan? >> i wanted to bring up the involvement, the religious aspects of this. rwanda is a roman catholic country, heavily catholic. >> both hutu and tutsis. they had a shared religion and language. that is one thing that mystified people about them and led them to believe there could be a solution that was fairly painless. these people actually share a lot. shortly before this is happening in rwanda, in el salvador, there is essentially a genocide there. the response of the local catholic churches to try to protect the people as opposed to support the government slaughtering all sub adorns by the thousands at the time -- the

el salvadorans by the thousands at the time. what was the roman catholic response to what was going on in rwanda? we have seen people murdered by priests. >> at least the priests were turning them in. >> the longest -- allowing this to happen. >> the holy family church. what is the catholic, the vatican response? ?o they do anything at all are there any repercussions for the priests the get involved in this? >> this has been one of the themes of the tribunals held locally, internally, and internationally. there has been a focus on these priests and nuns, other church

figures who were involved in this. andrew, go ahead. >> he gets a special communication from the u.n. where the pope has asked you to specifically find this group of polish nuns to go do that. that is the only thing i read about the catholic church. >> that is another staggering element of this. they are tasked with his overwhelming response ability to get out all expatriates. they go to the furthest reaches these country into catholic schools, monasteries in some cases and pull these people out. you have seen the movie, "hotel rwanda." there is this heartbreaking scene were all these people show up at the doorstep of the hotel

where he was saving, hiding people. nunsave these priests and and other religious figures coming in with orphans, bringing the men in their arms, and then they are told you need to give these kids up and leave, right? nunsee these rwandan separating from their european counterparts. all the europeans get on the buses, head to the airport, and leave. unbelievable that vocation ofnd of someone in that position, that this could happen. i don't know if it is the pressure of the moment, a misunderstanding of what is really going on, some of the political pressures brought to bear on them, the fact that soldiers with guns are telling them to get on the bus, leave

these people. but i have never been able to quite understand that whole sequence of events. that is certainly haunting. eddy? get expatriates out, multiple countries did this, france, belgium. even the u.s. had 300 marines on the ground. things while they are doing this, i have enough men right now, if we combine forces now, we can stop this. we have 5500 troops combined. the belgian soldiers were not allowed to land. he had enough forces. the communication in general was not there. they could not get all the forces together. most people do not speak the same language. a lot of the troops were made up from multiple countries like

bangladesh. >> you have bangladeshis who don't speak french, english, or rwandan. he has uruguayans. it is a most comical where he says i communicated with these people in french and these people in english. they had to in turn communicate with these people in a different language. the failure of communication on multiple levels with diplomatic efforts he is trying to make, he cuts to the chase given his bilingual. he has to translate. this general overseeing operations on the ground and he gets involved in the most basic clerical functions, which is part of the problem, right? matt? >> about the lack of communication, it even be on the fact they could not sit and have a good conversation, they did not have any method of communicating over distances anyway. dallaire was talking about how

he got a shipment of military trucks, and they were left on the tarmac overnight. they came and took anything they could from the jeeps on top of the radius, so they did not even have any way to communicate between themselves. times thatp multiple the radio station was -- they had no way of disseminating their side of the story to the population. i wish i could get the majority of rwanda's to see this coming who do not want to see this happen, but it is like i have a bullhorn and everyone else is on their phones and can talk right next to each other. >> the fact that a you enforce cannot communicate as well as the [indiscernible] given they are just listening to and given instructions that in this house on this street, you will find some tutsi s hiding out and need to kill them. he cannot command gives anybody

-- he cannot communicate to anybody. >> you touch on the point that he made -- eddy made. i think it is significant. you have belgian, french, italian troops on the ground. you have 300 troops in berlin the -- barundi. you go back to the mogadishu situation and the relationship the great powers take typically with the u.n., that they will not subordinate their soldiers under the command of an officer from another nation, so there's a sense where these troops are sitting there with his capacity to create the safe areas dallaire is proposing or at least demonstrate force on the cownd insufficient ways to the hardliners who now think they have effectively a blank check.

one thing we know that happens from april 6 until april 13 is the leaders of the radical government, once the president has been killed, are deliberately testing international reaction. they are trying to see how much latitude they will begin in by the international community -- being given by the international community and what they can get away with. they recognize no one will stomach a larger commitment and people will let these events unfold. the only real threat to us is the rpf. >> they do this in africa once in a while. 8000 people die. some brief comments. andrew, david, shannon. we have a few minutes left. we probably need to wrap up with some ideas. >> not only did the patriot to theions signal

intercom only leaders that nothing was going to happen, but they used these points when expatriates get pulled out and the rwandans are there under the assumption that the u.n. is there to help them as well. they come in and round of the rwandans waiting. i think that touches on the about with the gangs and machetes. but it is highly sophisticated they are using the win response as a means to gather people in one area -- the u.n. response as a means to gather people in one area. >> i did not really have a comment. i was sitting here wondering. with rwanda, what happened the political will to intervene? we had situations in libya. excuse for the war in iraq was to save people from saddam hussein.

i'm just wondering, with all the different problems we have discussed that are certainly capable of happening again in , theuture, if our interest senior leadership interest seems to be in symbolism and promoting principle only for the purpose of appearing to not be indifferent to it, that is meaningless. if it is meaningless, it is not going to last as a viable political option. is the future that we don't get involved question mark -- that we don't get involved? double theis to budget of men like dallaire. the current path is just going to result in more failure if we are not interested in having these broad strategies that take into account political, historical, and pens and papers. >> partly the political response

operates on two levels. one level was clearly greater rhetoric. it was invoked in kosovo and timor. in both cases, you could make the case that intervention came late in the game. and darfur as well. 2005, the united nations world summit effectively ratifies this responsibility a to protect the international community, the international community has a responsibility to protect people and we are not going to give blanket protection to the old idea of sovereignty. this is invoked again in the case of libya. on the other level, i think the more political response among people who are not simply responding to events but thinking in terms of what effective intervention could look like, the emphasis more has turned to looking for predictors, the claim being we

can identify the circumstances on the ground that are right for genocide. therefore, you need to be able to see those coming and intervene in ways, perhaps not in the form of military force. but maybe just greater support for the peace process unfolding and in greater sensitivity and understanding to the circumstances on the ground. i think the idea has become for obvious humanitarian resistance but also for political reasons bet preventive action has to where the emphasis goes because once all hell breaks loose, i think there is this view that most democracies right now, their attitude is going to be that we are not going to get involved unless there is some clear national interest that makes it essential for us to intervene. legacy of the united

states and the two most recent wars have sobered the american public opinion. >> they have sapped the will. there was greater will a decade ago for this. that may have been the height of this interventionist streak that happened after rwanda. my great fear now is things are happening rapidly in places like syria and ukraine. , i don't knowtes if we have the will. shannon, comment? say aally if you can holistic view of things. go ahead. >> going back to the removal of the expatriates, we spent a lot of time on the message that conveyed to the intrahomily. i wonder what that must have felt like for the tutsis

watching these people being taken away. no most encapsulates on the points we touched on earlier that speak to the fact the western world was saying it does not matter. you don't matter. we are going to take out the people that do. >> even if these are the people that have raised you as orphans from early in life. we are going to separate. one of the things we have said in earlier classes this semester --to borrowundoes the title of his most famous book -- things fall apart with genocide. the ties that bind people together, genocide is fundamentally about breaking apart things like family structures and communities. yet the failure of humanity in rwanda demonstrates a lack of international will to stop genocide and a misplaced focus

on things like withdrawing expatriates does the same thing in and of itself. it separates the orphans from the church figures who have raised them. from tiesople off that are really important. that is one of the great tragic ironies. bystanders and in reference to what dallaire refers to as the hutu moderates, the initiative is entirely with the extremists, the murderers. any calculation made by people on the ground who might be moderates or bystanders were voices of reason now just think they are killing those people. there is no umbrella of any kind of support. or evenr, lay low, start singing from the sheet of

music of the most radical elements. >> we have like two minutes. maybe three. concluding comments? what do we take away from rwanda and where do we go from here, so to speak? >> on page 517 in the very middle. >> i am already there. >> i think dallaire sums up the future of the world's will very simply. the concept of human rights assumes all human rights are of equal value. i think that is exactly how it is going to go. we will keep promoting human rights but we are worth more than those people so we will not risk our own people to try and change things. >> very good point. that, it isng with

u.n. nature -- it is huiman nature. i talked about our inability to reconcile differences. genocide seems like it is a symptom of human nature. people cannot get over differences and cooperate. the international community working together is a debacle. everybody has their own reasons for doing something. were not doing something. there is always this alter your motive. gone, you're going to see genocide still. you can motivate people. the only way you can truly motivate them is to directly , to directly touch them at home in their front yard. that is the only time you will get people to act. they are in the bubble here and something is happening over there.

i remember with the boston marathon. the chechens bombed that. people are calling to bomb czechoslovakia. ignorance is a problem and people not acting because they are not directly affected by something. they think something in the international community does not affect them, but it does. >> david, west point -- last point? >> last year, there was an event, a refugee week? refugee awareness. there was an event. did anybody go? i did not see you at this specific event. but they brought in several refugees from around the world. there was somebody there from b utan, cambodia, there was a gentleman from rwanda.

he talked about how happy he was when he got to the united states because he had a plane ticket to come to new york and there were people there with banners welcoming him, how happy he was to go to the united states and he felt he had been uplifted i by that. he said he was really proud the united states would make that effort. i asked him. i said i'm glad to hear that. but from my point of view, i wondered what more the united states could have done so you did not have to flee your country. what more could we have done? his response was so perfect. the words were so eloquent. he said, the united states is a great country and a great country can do both. my question was, are we that great country? >> do you have anything concluding to say here? >> i think david sums it up well. a final dallaire is

point, it is crucial we develop an international pool of multidisciplinary, multi-skilled humanist leaders. this class has helped hopefully this class can help you develop the perspective to lead you to that. hopefully this gives you the will to come back to the point that we've made repeatedly onight, the will to do that. thanks. >> thank you >> join us each saturday evening at 8:00 p.m. and midnight eastern for classroom lectures from across the country on different topics and eras of american history. lectures in history are also available as podcasts. visit our website at c-span.org/history/podcasts or download them from i-tunes.