Even evil can’t trump a noble man

The name Romeo Dallaire isn’t one that shows up on many current-events quizzes. It wouldn’t have even in 1994, when Dallaire – then Major Gen. Dallaire – was the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Rwanda . It was Dallaire who, abandoned by the international community, had to stand by and watch as one group of Rwandans (extremist Hutus) murdered more than 800,000 of their neighbors (moderate Hutus and the country’s other main tribe, the Tutsis).

Dallaire, a French Canadian now retired from the Canadian army, wrote a book about his experiences titled “Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.” And now Peter Raymont has taken that book and, on the occasion of Dallaire visiting the country on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, made a film about the general and his failures. It is a powerful story, one that has been told in documentary form at least twice before. And as such, it doesn’t need any dramatic format to capture what happened – and how badly Dallaire felt, and 10 years later still feels, about it.

It would have been nice had Raymont taken a more objective viewpoint. There’s a moment in the film when, during a panel discussion about the genocide, a Belgian politician criticizes Dallaire for not doing enough to save 10 Belgian soldiers under his command, all of whom were killed. It would have been nice to hear the politician’s specific complaints, to hold him responsible for proving them and then have Dallaire respond. It never happens.

Still, the tragedy in Rwanda – every bit as murderous and tragic as that which occurred in the former Yugoslavia – deserves to be remembered. And so does Dallaire, a noble man undermined by the bureaucracy of the political entity, the U.N., that presumes to keep rule in the world.