Capt Mbaye Diagne - "A Good Man"

Capt. Mbaye Diagne and his wife, Yacine
  
The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide
would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow,
and for all the fine sentiments
inspired by the memory of Auschwitz,
the problem remains that denouncing evil
is a far cry from doing good
--We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow
We Will Be Killed With Our Families,
Andrew, Gourevitch
  
You see the truth, it needs no proof
Either it is or it isn't
('Cause he is the truth) 
--The Truth, India Aria
____________________

  “…the war about the genocide was truly a postmodern war: a battle between those who believed that because the realities we inhabit are constructs of our imaginations, they are all equally true or false, valid or invalid, just or unjust, and those who believed that constructs of reality can—in fact, must—be judged as right or wrong, good or bad."
"While academic debates about the possibility of objective truth and falsehood are often rarified to the point of absurdity, Rwanda demonstrated that the question is a matter of life and death.”
--We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families 

___________________

This week marks the 20th anniversary Rwandan Genocide, 100 days of slaughter over which 500,000-1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, constituting as much as 20% of the country's total population and 70% of the Tutsi then living in Rwanda. It was both a civil war and a genocide.

Most of the world stood by while the mutilated bodies floated down the rivers. Writer Andrew Gourevitch wrote the definitive book on the events with his, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.

Please do yourself a favor and read this story (or listen to the broadcast) by BBC's Mark Doyle, "A Good Man in Rwanda" an homage to Capt. Mbaye Diagne, a United Nations peacekeeper in Rwanda -- "The bravest man I have ever met."

“He had a sense of humanity that went well beyond orders, well beyond any mandate" said General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian United Nations Commander now a senator in the Canadian Parliament. Capt. Diagne was killed nine days before he was to have returned to his home in Senegal, ironically by a Tutsi mortar round -- the very people whom he was trying to protect.

Nothing good comes of war, and certainly putting poorly equipped, unarmed UN forces in the midst of such a situation is madness in the midst madness.

Words matter: You are not "keeping peace" when you are in the midst of hostilities of all against all.