(no subject)

[syredronning]

I started reading Shake Hands with the Devil. The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by the Canadian general Romeo Dallaire who had been the commanding officer of the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the genocide. I'm on page 33 of 522 and already totally impressed and intrigued by his backstory. And I'd like to cite something he writes, because it's so interesting in regard to e.g. considering a (young) Kirk.

[from page 25, paragraph 2 (about an almost-war situation in Quebec 1970)]
As a young lieutenant, I had 41 soldiers under my command. If I gave the order to shoot, I could not let my men sense the slightest shiver of doubt in my belief in the rightness of that order. Any uncertainty on my part would communicate itself to my men; any hesitation on their part would result in chaos and innocent casualties. In a nanosecond I had to be able to set aside deep personal loyalties and put the mission first. I spent many hours wrestling with this issue before I could put aside my loyalty to my roots and wholeheartedly embrace my loyalty to my nation. I had to connect to a deeper commitment, past friendship, kinship or ethnicity, to absolutely believe in the rightness and justness of my path.

Comments

[ex_mrs260625]

When you mentioned watching Hotel Rwanda I was going to recommend this book to you. He's an amazing man; that mission almost destroyed him, and in a lot of ways it did, but he fights now to make people see and face how we failed, and prevent such a thing from happening again.

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

I found the article about him at wikipedia so intriguing that I had to buy the book. I hope I manage to finish it; it's rather thick and my reading persistence is unsteady at the moment...