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Romeo Dallaire: A Giant After Mandela

Snapshots of Nelson Mandela continue to swell the collective, global memory as deeply personal tributes pour onto the web. In the Canadian psyche too, is the imprint of a giant. It happens to be another man who made news this month: Roméo Dallaire, the retired Lieutenant-General who witnessed genocide in Rwanda.
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Snapshots of Nelson Mandela continue to swell the collective, global memory as deeply personal tributes pour onto the web. But already, one phrase can be listed among the most memorable, that delivered by President Barack Obama in a swift statement before most had digested or even heard the news:

"I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set."

In part, it's a stunning idea because of the voice. The first black president of the United States has framed his accomplishments as part of the legacy of another giant. But it's also a brilliant way to pay tribute to radical ideas and the people behind them.

Though many of our lives are shaped by loved ones, Obama is talking beyond the relationship he shared with Mandela. He's talking about Mandela as a revelation. By his example, Mandela raised the consciousness of a generation to see that equality requires an end to race rule, by any group.

The view of Mandela as core to oneself recalls the way Christopher Hitchens once spoke about the Parthenon and its Periclean creators. Hitchens saw the revelation of democratic rule by those who built the ancient halls as a prism for his consciousness. He said, "I couldn't live without the Parthenon."

In the Canadian psyche too, is the imprint of a giant. It happens to be another man who made news this month. Roméo Dallaire, the retired Lieutenant-General who witnessed genocide in Rwanda, fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed his car on Parliament Hill. I was struck still for several moments of the radio report, before my brain detached 'crash' from 'death' and noted Dallaire was bodily unhurt.

Dallaire spoke to reporters after the incident about his sleepless nights and his inability to ignore the memory of watching the low-tech attempt by one group of Rwandans to wipe out another. As the commander of an impotent United Nations peacekeeping force in Kigali, Dallaire stood feeble and increasingly incensed on the sidelines while over 800,000 people were butchered in 100 days.

It has haunted him for nearly 20 years. Dallaire made a direct link between falling asleep at the wheel to his ongoing battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

That he still lives with PTSD is terribly unjust, because Dallaire acted as the world's conscience during the spring of 1994, incidentally, at the same time elections in South Africa swept Mandela to office. Though Dallaire was powerless to militarily intervene due to both firm UN orders of non-engagement and inadequate troops, he was not silent: Dallaire cabled early warnings to New York about weapons caches and an imminent massacre, and signaled his readiness to deter it, writing "where there's a will, there's a way"; he correctly named the killing 'genocide' before his UN masters or the Security Council; and his jeep often carried a journalist, one pair of eyes that he knew was worth millions. He was the gadfly provoking the fierce disinterest of the international community.

Dallaire never was able to intervene in the way he wanted in Rwanda, with a mandate to use force against genocide, because powerful countries decided it was not in their national interest. But he actively pushed for intervention as a responsibility that is both moral and strategic. And since his return, Dallaire has refused to see abdication of that responsibility slip by unchallenged, by testifying at a war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, and candidly speaking and writing about his experiences.

By his example, Dallaire further embedded core values of Canadian identity. He articulated that identity in a letter written to the CBC after a suicide attempt in 2000: "This nation, without any hesitation nor doubt, is capable and even expected by the less fortunate of this globe to lead the developed countries beyond self-interest, strategic advantages, and isolationism, and raise their sights to the realm of the pre-eminence of humanism and freedom."

Apathy to atrocities is not an option, and foreign policy without principles that reflect our humanity is not an option.

It is an ongoing struggle to live up to him.

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