(courtesy of NealeNews)
A couple of days ago I expressed my desire for Major-General Lewis MacKenzie (retired
0 to have a larger role in Canadian politics. If he wasn't so scarred by his Rwanda experience I would suggest General Roméo Dallaire (retired) for a larger role as well. That being said, when Gen. Dallaire speaks we still listen, but if he continues saying things like this it won't be for much longer (via Toronto Star)
...Dallaire said there was no excuse for the failure by Canada's leaders to lead an international effort to assist in the Darfur region of Sudan, where close to 100,000 people have been killed. The United Nations considers it one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with around 2 million people in need of aid.
"I applaud the enormous work that we're doing and we must do with the catastrophe that is going on in Asia. But I am guilty and distraught by our ability to totally abandon a whole other group of humans," Dallaire said.
"As we pour ourselves into the great sense of commitment to humanity in Asia ... we must also have that same courage and determination, and demand of our politicians the same commitment to areas where the crisis is not by natural catastrophe but by human catastrophe," Dallaire said.
"And the absence of Canada in the forefront of Darfur, in Sudan is a travesty."
..."We must ... respond even at the risk of having to spill blood to help.
"That is where a courage and a determination and a focus and a vision of a nation comes from. And right now, we don't have that," Dallaire said.
While Liberals flex their "soft power" the African Sudanese countinue to die.
Update: The Editorial board at the National Post applauds Romeo Dallaire as well.
...Intervening in a bloody massacre is a far more daunting task than sending cash and a disaster relief team to a natural disaster zone. But nations genuinely committed to humanitarianism cannot fight only the easy battles. It is challenges such as those posed in Sudan that truly test a country’s mettle. This week, a peace deal to end the civil war in Sudan’s south — a war that has raged since 1983 and cost more than two million lives — has raised hopes that a similar solution might be possible in Darfur. But such a resolution is unlikely without consistent international pressure. And in the interim, peacekeeping efforts must be broadened beyond the relatively small corps of African peacekeepers who have so far been sent.
Given its military capacity, or lack thereof, Canada is not going to solve the Sudanese crisis alone. But what it can do is pressure the UN to take decisive action. And if that fails, the Canadian government should do everything in its power to orchestrate a joint peacemaking effort — independent of the UN — with the United States, Britain and any other country that is willing to play a proactive role. Rwanda taught us that the international community cannot afford to pick and choose which atrocities it will tolerate. Gen. Dallaire, at least, understands that lesson. Do the rest of us?
