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 samantha power, "a problem from hell," which is an overview of the u.s. response to genocide beginning with armenia and the nazi genocide. chapters on cambodia, rewind up. chapters on cambodia, rwanda. we have also read for tonight, romeo dallaire. his account in the peacekeeping force in the united nation's force in rwanda. for rwanda, excuse me. dallaire, 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 have studied dallaire. we have read power. we have read a number of primary sources, victims and witnesses and perpetrators 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 case of genocide since the nazi holocaust. definition, despite the quibbling of some u.s. officials and other international figures, in the midst of the genocide --

it isn't 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 frightening. but 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 in this course already. in confronting this, we've all felt the emotions of this topic. i think rwanda brings a lot of this to the fore, particularly the emotional frustration as we encounter the u.s. and the international response to all of

this. we stood helplessly by. and let this happen. maybe we could open it up. first question here -- as you have read dallaire, power, how have you experienced this frustration? what has been your experience as students with this? tiffany. >> anger. >> ok. >> dallaire -- i marked it down 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. >> ok.

other responses. yeah, eddie. >> half measures like -- they didn't make true on their promises. especially the international community. i think 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 send the men. when it came down to just logistics, that is what it came down to. it wasn't even about the lives, it was the logistics. the money and resources they could allocate to the problem. that eventually led to 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, but what was actually sent, 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 really should have been sent, probably. david? >> 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 seemed to only be basing their intervention on the symbol of international intervention.

and the principles that we are going to monitor and see what we can do. but there is no practically applied leadership to those promises. and ultimately when you have that -- it can't be just words. you cannot base anything on symbolism. the symbols mean nothing when it comes to the ground. >> how did they seem to call out for this weight or heft or force behind the rhetoric? >> it was the john -- not john, but -- >> the cameroonian? >> the u.n. political attaché, the one who was really in charge of the entire mission. >> yeah, special representative. >> and dallaire'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. >> it is so striking in dellaire how frequently people he's appealing to seem to be 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. yeah, go on. >> 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 20/20, we can look it back at 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 happening so often is particularly concerning. elizabeth? >> yes, how out of touch everyone seems to be and dallaire even acknowledges that in the beginning when he talks about the peacekeeping manual is written for a post world war ii world, not a post-cold war world. 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 quote -- 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 innocent 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, to show 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, which was mostly the hutus, 1.7 million hutus fleeing into neighboring, what was then zaire, 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 this point, but in dallaire's 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 things out of dallaire's book, the hindering fact, the fact that you only had a very small number of leaders. dallaire was the force commander. he had no political -- until later, the very useless leader who came in. before that the political commander got sick and he did not come in. there was no replacement for him. you had this very unexperienced general, who not only had to work with the political aspect of the country, but 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. demonstrating our commitment to help the country moved to a lasting peace. 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 or pencils to write with. requests for more had been denied for budgetary reasons. he says it is maddening i was forced to fight a petty internal war over office supplies. he talks about they did not have kitchens, food. they had to struggle with lodging for the soldiers. 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. right? why were the belgians given nice quarters? 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 in tents. 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. the belgians were the colonialists and that hadn't disappeared in the 1990s even though they had been gone for 35 years.

tiffany. >> 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 mentioned, almost, 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 u.n., just to help out with the rhonda -- rwanda case because they set up the political landscape that allow this genocide to occur. it was their doing that the hutus and the tutsis had their identification guards and they laughed and said, basically,

-- they left and basically said, hey 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 logistical 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, coordinating 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 writ 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 or tutsi or twa, although that was a really small segment of the population. this identification card the people had to carry was really a signal for persecution. the hutu 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 oppressor. there are strange motivations going on all over the place. right? david, do you want to respond to that? >> dallaire talks about that. how concerned he is how the belgians soldiers would react inside the country. what i was going to say is i think it's important to note that the u.n. -- 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 into it. >> yeah. when he sends it in, he says

most countries did not comment, did not have positives or negatives. any kind of comment to review. they probably didn't even read it, except, the countries he points out is belgium, canada had concerns about using their own troops. it was almost as if the u.n. were just kind of seeing -- you could almost 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 is not my duty. but 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 and the effect of the global complacency and the french's idea to remove the upper echelons of the government? i thought that was really interesting.

the french come in with operation turquoise. the local communities were so complacent. -- the global community has been so complacent up until this point. the french see that. 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. -- there is a default to the old

politics to even the earliest stages. >> right, the french are getting their old friends out. >> exactly. the french are constantly supplying the rgf and supplying the hutu government in the first place. all through the lead up to genocide and throughout genocide, they are getting supplies in. they are getting weapons in. this is part of the story that, i think, 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 official 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 -- shortly 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 anglophone heart of the african continent will now demonstrate leadership and they see it as

they need to step in and intervene. but also domestic french politics plays a role. in the french system you have a president and prime minister. you can have situations where you have divided government. at this moment, you have a divided government. you have the socialist president. you have the neo-gaullist parties with the position of prime minister. and there are internal discussions among the french socialist leadership. they say, hey, we're the party with the heart and this is an opportunity to demonstrate that they are, again, cost-cutting technocrats, and aggressive action at this moment can demonstrate that we have these moral commitments. it's interesting, too, 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 ones doing that themselves. this leads to the displaced persons camps in zaire, things like that. it continues to do stabilize the -- to destabilize the entire region. >> dallaire has something to say about this. this is in the power book where he is quoted. my mission was to save 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 a few weeks after the genocide has stopped. and these are photo ops. but there is no risk involved in any of these things. dallaire and a few others are left with the entire burden of risk through this entire story. shannon, you have had your hand up for a while. >> drawing from this idea sort of, i found myself disgruntled by dallaire's 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's 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. and still you read on page 349, dallaire says, i couldn't help but thinking, too bad the slaughter was not in 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? dallaire says, as it happened, the rwandan genocide was having a hard time knocking the south african elections -- which of course were monumental. and it is understandable why that was a big news story. but then, the south african elections and american figure skater tonya harding's criminal troubles 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. that also was on. >> in the film you 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. [laughter] >> 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. >> wow. >> even there people talked about rwanda more than in the -- even there, few people talked

about rwanda, even 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. but the american people -- >> he had mark doyle from the bbc sending out stories on his satellite phone. i think that was pretty much it. >> just the gross abandonment of not just the government or political entities on this issue is probably the most frightening. because we really gave no attention to this whatsoever. it's also interesting because our disinterest was reflected in our government. so, power 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 david said before, right? there is a recognition on the part of the very top members of the american government in terms of policy making that there will be no political cost 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 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, if you compare this to the darfur 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 in darfur 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 political pressure mobilized really in any way. now, i think one of her main points though is 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 was adequate to know what was going on was a private party. 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 is going to respond to

constituents. on page 375 of power, we have patricia shrader, a democrat of colorado, saying there are some groups terribly concerned about the gorillas. this, of course, is a reference to "the gorillas in the mist." the movie that came out in the 1980's. this was filmed partially in rwanda. this is the heartland for gorillas. there are some groups typically -- terribly concerned about the gorillas, that something will happen to them. but, 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. that was at the same time. >> one thing that stood out to me was pre-1994, 1993 when they first got reports that cia intelligence predicted the ability of a genocide happened. it drew up the constant -- concept of sending and dellaire. 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. that is the whole concept of colonialism rearing its ugly head 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 -- after the fact, he came back and tried, i guess my feeling , was the disbelief that how -- it just keeps the circulation of no desire or interest because of proximity. >> it builds upon itself. it's this vicious circle for sure. andrew? >> i was just meant to talk about constituency groups again, because -- u.s. leaders use these -- what she calls micro victories, but focusing on people like the rwandan academic who was out there and who was dead -- we spent more time trying to find her than anyone else. it is just kind of weird to see how -- >> the metaphor of the doll and its a doll, and

a kid does not have this global vision of what is going on. >> they use this to validate their inaction or semi action. >> what struck me over and over again was his isolation. his isolation from the troops, from the other troops and rwanda, the ngo's. no one wanted to listen to him. and he could not really communicate. he had one satellite phone or something? >> at one point he is cut off. he cannot get to the airport. or he cannot get through the airport. logistics in rwanda do not allow him to travel around without serious danger, and he can't really communicate with anyone inside the country except through access to his satellite

phone. isolation is a very important theme here. >> i thought it was really ironic where you have this case up where he has one satellite phone. he uses it for this bbc guide to get the story out. but you would think with all of the countries not wanting to send troops, and he loses contact -- it is like everyone is like, yeah, he is over there. they do not seem too worried about him. >> and here is his wife and children stuck in canada, desperate to find out. at times, this is one of the haunting things, i think about be dallaire book. it is not frequent, but sporadic kind of attention to the situation at home. it is never fully resolved. psychologically, this destroyed his life.

and these regrets about his family and the hell he put them through -- he writes over and over again. it just bleeds through at times into the narrative. some of the most heartbreaking stuff because it is so readily identifiable, i think. >> there was that one government letter to dallaire's wife. we are here to tell you that your husband is dead, but he is not. it is almost as if he was not alive, they would have been like, that is done. >> i fear that is all too accurate, at least the perspective he gives, and power backs him up on that. i think it's probably true. >> another frustration with this is one of the excuses that the american government gives for not being involved is they don't

want another mogadishu. it is inevitable. they lose, 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. somalia breaks out into anarchy, fighting between war worlds in the early 1990's 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. that dates me. [laughter] >> not as much as it dates me. you remember better than i do. but i remember my u.s. history teacher in high school had this political cartoon that showed 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

internagsinter 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 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 9/11. >> that message was perceived. >> that was part the plan. he knew about this via intelligence. >> to effectively call their they had the if stomach to effectively continue with the mission. the political context about somalia is also very important. november, 1992, president bush loses the election to clinton. >> we're in that that it's late -- we are in that awkward period. it is late november, around thanksgiving. 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 -- forces came ashore prepared for combat. they landed and 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 is as if they were almost under fire. there were doing things they were ordered to do in the circumstances. but 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 -- supported u.n. effort we will , be called to pick up the tab. 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 -- a peripheral role, we will not sign unless they meet our criteria.

so the hurdle to get over becomes extremely high as we move through the events in spring of 1994. yeah, elizabeth. >> just a couple of points. i think the under funding of the u.n.'s relief to rwanda is outlined in the beginning of dallaire when he talks about going to the offices in new york and how unicef and the u.n. -- are sexier but they than the peacekeeping effort. the dpko. i think, and this is my interpretation, but the unicef reaches out to children. that's something people are familiar with. and children are seen as less threatening. when you have these peacekeeping efforts that go into rwanda, we what to do with the people, but the children, unicef that comes in later, we

know what to do with them. 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 -- where we did the berlin air lift and we're not participating -- anticipating the motivations that these people have in somalia for hijacking the food and selling it on the black market, rather than dispersing it to the people who needed it. i think that that refers back to my point about them being out of touch 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. or the postwar world. >> they do not even know what is happening for dallaire. he was down to just having a glass of water a day to wash himself. he did not have soap. he says, there was an odor our men had picked up.

theys very distinct and remembered it forever, basically. they had rations of water and food, but most of his rations went bad. he did not even have food. he would try to get more resources and then be denied. or they did 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. that is what is expected. 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. [laughter] >> 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 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 -- inability to fund 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. jason. >> this is a complete failure of multiple actions of the international community, but i think we have this idea that we can blame the u.n., and dallaire 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 -- i mean, 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. they had the calculation that if -- this was the calculation the entire time, that if they killed a few belgians, the belgian government would immediately withdraw troops and the whole mission would collapse, right? as power points out, and this is one of the most damning pieces for the international community

here. she points out that belgium didn't want to pull out and be the sole bad guys. so 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 -- of 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 really 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 organization, as elizabeth points out, that there's this bureaucratic tape that just gets in the way. there is this byzantine structure, with rules and bylaws. they just get in the way. bureaucracy is the enemy to all progress. leon trotsky, and i think he is in this situation. even more, i think jason's point is valid 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 international community perpetrated vis-à-vis rwanda. >> it's so striking. we know the belgium prime minister early on appeals to -- the belgian foreign minister early, 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 rwandans 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. or certainly any pressure for broader intervention by the first world powers. and it is interesting, there is a couple weeks where dallaire is still getting signals that the belgians are thinking of taking a more aggressive role. nothing comes of it. 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 , was the complacency of canada. its inaction because it volunteered dallaire to be part 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 just don't -- i mean, 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 peacekeeping missions his men has been to. for him he sees it as a step forward with his career. at the beginning. and then going into it, 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, the acronym was una, the united nation's aid mission for rwanda, but unamfer does not really work as an acronym, so he takes the mi in mission and takes out the f. but yeah, 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. you had a comment. >> a kind of goes back to what you are talking about. how they all agreed about how this was not about getting -- was not worth getting

involved. he had the phone call from a staffer, and he does not even know who they are or what they do. >> which page are you on? >> 499. he goes he told me his estimates , said it would take the death of 400,000 soldiers. does it take that many human lives to determine if we will get involved in another country? that is what it is. 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. his own experience, 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 calculations, risk assessment that for every soldier we lose, that is the equivalent of losing 85,000 rwandans. what does that indicate about attitude, about bureaucracy, about this whole process that we are studying tonight? elizabeth. you had a pretty passionate response to that. >> sorry. i mean, it goes back to -- what struck me the most, the colonialist attitude, the superior attitude the west has to africa. because it is a developing nation. and we did not see any economic gain from being in rwanda. even the people were not considered to be economically worthwhile to invest in. i just think -- it so plays on the western ethnocentrism that

has permeated for centuries. and it just reinforces it out of the blue. he gets the phone call and ok, this is what we have decided. so, we're are not sending anybody -- >> we have spreadsheets and graphs here. we need things to go well on powerpoint -- this is before powerpoint probably. eddie? >> it shows that bureaucracy loses the value of life. through logistics, they are just looking at numbers now. we talked about it with genocide. they really look at the numbers of death instead of looking at what is actually occurring on the ground. so there is a disconnect. they are just looking at the numbers. oh, one life here. it is all numbers to them. >> from a comfortable office. >> in a bubble. >> staring at it on a computer screen. yeah, yeah.

>> and he gets to go home at the end of the day and live in safety. and they are on the ground confused, barely able to survive. >> david? >> the character of dallaire, how i regard him is he is unbelievably unfortunate because 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 said, it supports the assessment of dallaire. power and dallaire had a 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. in a way, dallaire comes kind of the symbol for the destruction of all the life around him. his own life is shattered by this. i wonder if perhaps we, as the 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. spheres 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 triumvirate of the u.n. that did not allow him to lead. i disagree.

it was just he was not allowed to lead by the u.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 us, 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. i think this is an important 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. >> this is a very good point. 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 as a phenomenon certainly plays a role in all of this.

>> when the belgian soldiers arrive, 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. >> that one is tricky given that 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. but at the same time, this is 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. belgians are the other white u.n. peacekeepers that had this attitude of racism, but it was also displayed on the hutu side as well. 18 of the peacekeepers died because the hutus had racism and prejudice against the white people coming back into their 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. but people start to notice this, ok.

the u.n. 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, ok. i think you raise a good point about racism and the evidence on that side. >> i think the mission's initial 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 incredible 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 which offices when the new courts are enforced and put in place.

they seem not to understand ? that. i was struck by the point made 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 have touched on in this course, the fact that genocide is unbelievable. at the beginning of the semester talking about him confronting another and he gives him details about what is going on in europe with the nazis and jews. he says i cannot believe this. he says i'm not 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. even on the 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? there is this quote from the book "machete season," which we have read. this is a survivor of this talking about the hate

broadcasts on the rtlm propaganda channel. she says 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. to us, the tutsis, the witty 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 horrible 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 forward 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. after he has repeatedly said you 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 think of genocide as a modern 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

at it in too 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 implements. screwdrivers in some cases. i cannot even fathom what that would have been like.

at the same time, this is where the 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. what strikes me is both the 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, high 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. jean 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 ? se 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. one of his men is shown one of 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 weapons caches, 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. this was vetted information on the ground. >> not only do 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 weird position because all the acronyms were infiltrated by rgf. they had already infiltrated and then forced him to betray them. they were part of the hutu power 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 knew my office was leaky as a sieve, but it was frightening to see the evidence of that placed 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 meeting with the options where 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 way. 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. he put the clause in about 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 undoubtedly take these actions which i know are going to happen or do i follow the orders of my superiors? 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. he 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? the juxtaposition of what could have been done, the hindsight we now have saying if only dallaire had 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 most basic mandates. maybe we should turn our conversation in that direction. >> dallaire 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 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. >> what struck me in the last two chapters is how he kept referencing if he had the 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 united states 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.

he says on 497, 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. i flew back 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. it seems a key piece of that is his argument the recognition early on 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 suggests we could have led the way if we had given

troops. that would have at least shown 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. to juxtapose the persian gulf

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 protect. if you hurt the price of oil, we will get involved. i remember when the united states got involved, norman schwarzkopf would stand up there in his pentagon briefings and talk 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. i think dallaire 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. it is extraordinary. i think samantha power quotes the national security advisor at 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 rwanda 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 of urgency emerged in late june 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. >> i 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. >> this is one of those cases where tragically 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 far freedom of speech should go? i defy you to find a moral ground where you can justify that. but that was used as an excuse 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. under the first amendment, it 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. there is this period when he is clearly thinking about the negotiations among the main players and how 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. power points out we have a college president used to making apologies. he was i guess 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 was to try to protect the people as opposed to support the government slaughtering 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. >> allowing this to happen. >> the holy family church. >> what is the catholic, the vatican response? do 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 snippety r n 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 this overwhelming responsibility to

get out all expatriates. they go to the furthest reaches of the country into these 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. you have these priests and nuns 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? you see these rwandan nuns separating from their european counterparts. all the europeans get on the

buses, head to the airport, and leave. that is almost unbelievable that given the kind of vocation 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? >> the effort to get expatriates out, multiple countries did this, france, belgium.

even the u.s. had 300 marines on the ground. dallaire 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 almost 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. here he is 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 radios, so they did not even have any way to communicate between themselves. he brings up multiple times that 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 rwandans 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 the radio and given instructions that in this house on this street, you will find some tutsis hiding out and need to kill them. he cannot communicate with anybody. >> you touch on the point that eddy made. i think it is significant. you have belgian, french, italian troops on the ground. you have 300 troops in burundi. 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 ground insufficient ways to cow 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 be 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 extractions signal to the 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 simplistic way about with the gangs and machetes. but it is highly sophisticated they are using 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. after rwanda, what happened with the political will to intervene? we had situations in libya. the 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 the future, if our interest, the 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? the option is to double the 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 asks late in the game. and darfur as well. 2005, the united nations world

summit effectively ratifies this notion there is a responsibility 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 that preventive action has to be 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. i think the 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. if this escalates, i don't know if we have the will. shannon, comment? especially if you can say a 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 them.

i wonder what that must have felt like for the tutsis watching these people being taken away. it almost 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 is genocide undoes -- to borrow 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. it cuts people off from ties that are really important. that is one of the great tragic ironies. >> for 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. disappear, lay low, or even 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. >> going along with that, it is human 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. until that is gone, you're going to see genocide still. you can motivate people. the only way you can truly motivate them is to directly affect them, 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, 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 butan, 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 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. to quote dallaire is a final point, it is crucial we develop an international pool of ? multidisciplinary, multi-skilled humanist leaders. hopefully, this class has helped you develop the kind of perspective that can lead you to

that. i believe some of you, all of you perhaps, can make a difference. hopefully this gives you the will to do that.

things that make up what your historical society may or may not have -- i just have to make this one comment. is everyone reminded of forbes field, the people sitting in the i go off intooll? a tangent. we grew up in the left-field bleachers and sometimes i would