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If so, then you're way past dumb.

Maybe.

Are you sure the Norwegian was armed?

I did some checking, and Norway was not part of Dallaire's operation. Norway did send some field hospitals, apparently, so it may be that my Norwegian was security for that. I can't find the original article to be sure, but if he was standing guard at the perimeter of a clinic you can assume he had orders to defend the hospital and nothing more.

I just read an interview with Dallaire's #2 who agreed with Dallaire that they could have done more had they been given authority by New York to do so. Their first plan was to seize the weapons caches, arrest the leaders, and shut off the radio that was coordinating the slaughter; they had information from informants, but were denied permission.

Their second plan was to create safe zones where refugees could gather, but there it gets a little weird. There was a political problem, in that they saw themselves as "neutral", and defending Tutsis violated their sense of neutrality. It also brought them into conflict with the mobs and the Rwandan soldiers.

In the interview Colonel Marchal recounts the case of a political leader under their protection. He had assigned 4 UN soldiers to protect him. A group of 15 or 20 presidential guards came to kill him, and did so while Marchal was on the phone with him. The guards offered no resistance. The interviewer asked Marchal why he didn't give permission for the guards to open fire, and his answer was that he couldn't get them on the radio, and he couldn't get their Ghanaian commander on the radio either.

Which means, incredibly, that soldiers assigned as bodyguards needed authority to shoot? Granted, the odds weren't good, but there were other UN troops in the vicinity. I can't imagine US troops giving up their man without a fight in such a case.

The more famous case is that of a school where refugees had gathered under UN protection. The troops there decided they could create a more secure perimeter at the local airport, and decided to move. They told the refugees to go home. Asked if he didn't know they would be killed, Marchal said that he had no reason to believe harm would come to them.

Which is silly, if there were no danger, they wouldn't be huddled inside the school grounds, surrounded, and fearing for their lives. If there were no danger, there was no need to abandon the school to move to the airport. The history is, of course, that they left the people there and they were killed as the UN soldiers were leaving the compound. As another poster noted, they begged the UN soldiers to kill them to spare them what was coming next.

You are right that there weren't enough UN troops there (Dallaire had 2500, and the French eventually sent a thousand paratroopers who operated separately from the UN) to stop a massacre involving hundreds of thousands. My criticism is that they didn't even protect the people under their protection. Since the mobs in many cases were armed with knives and axes, it seems an armed, disciplined force might have saved some were they willing to fight.

But there were cases where they actually surrendered their arms rather than risk a confrontation.

So, I find it hard to be respectful of UN peacekeeping based on what I have read here, and based on the reports coming out of the Congo, in which UN efforts seem even more ineffectual. They stay inside their compounds, apparently, and come out when its safe to count the bodies. Which makes me wonder what the point is. I suppose they offer security to aid organizations trying to operate there, feeding and offering medical services, but having fed the refugees must stand by and watch while they are killed just outside their fence.

I note from your posts that you have personal knowledge and experience, which must make my comments most annoying. A friend keeps a sign in his office "Everything is easy to the guy who doesn't have to do it". My comments must seem like that to you.

You evidently witnessed, and lived, moments of risk and courage, and saw from close up how things can work, when they work, and you probably have good insight as to why they don't work when they don't.

Which is why I have followed up with this comment. How things work, and how they don't, matters because these things will happen again, of course. One of the main problems, which you alluded to, and which Dallaire has mentioned, is that they could have done so much more had the Americans helped them.

Two things come to mind from that. One, is that few countries maintain serious militaries anymore, capable of operating far from home. Dallaire believed he could have done his job with 5000 men, but was only given half that number. Countries with a stake in the region couldn't find the political will to act.

And the US couldn't be roused to take an interest either. Since there was no direct national security interest, few people here would support an intervention, and there is a great fear of getting bogged down in another country's civil war. I would take a potshot at Clinton here, but I doubt Bush Senior would have deployed troops there either.

We are seeing in Liberia and Sudan GW Bush's approach to the same story, which is that he at least is interested, but not enough to take any decisive action. His preference is to offer support to other countries to put their troops on the line. Sounds nice, but it means that the killing continues.

If I may ask, how did you get involved? Were you in the US military, and seconded to the UN? Do you mind my asking?