I have read all four books written by Roméo Dallaire, retired Canadian Lieutenant-General and Senator, (Shake Hands with the Devil; They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children; Waiting for First Light; and his newest, The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey. I find him to be the ultimate humanist and a great humanitarian.
Dallaire was the commander of the United Nations forces in Rwanda, the ones who were supposed to keep the peace there. Despite his warnings of a genocide, one occurred, one which no nation in the world would commit to helping stop. Left with PTSD from the horrors he saw, Dallaire has struggled with psychiatric issues yet continued to fight to keep the Rwandan genocide from fading into the woodwork. I applaud his not only his growth as a human being and his unwavering efforts to bring genocide and child soldiers to the forefront, but his frankness in sharing his struggles with the world.
The definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Dallaire posits that the world needs a new way of dealing with conflict in this post-Cold War era. I quite agree. The end of the two great World Wars and the Cold War has not brought the predicted peace. Instead, we have had a century of genocides and, because of the increased level violence, more than 90 million people are displaced within their countries or refugees outside their countries.
In this most recent book, Dallaire seems to have reevaluated his life and overcome many of his PTSD symptoms and has begun fighting for a new way of maintaining world peace (“… the warrior in me realized that the true attainment of peace is not ‘victory,’ but the prevention of violence in the first place.”) and human security. (“Human security was about so much more than freedom from conflict. It was also freedom from want and freedom from fear … [and] included access to clean water, housing, food and medical care … religious and cultural liberty … and protection from political instability and environmental disaster.” Only when humanity has achieved these lofty goals can we truly realize our potential as human beings.
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The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey (Random House Canada, April 2, 2024) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of Dallaire’s other books here:
They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children
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