CHILD SOLDIERS: WEAPONS OF CHOICE, BUT WHOSE CHOICE?

  

A book review for Peacehawks:

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children, by Senator Romeo Dallaire, Arrow Books, London, 2010 (307 pp, 12.07 LBS)

By Jamie Arbuckle

INTRODUCTION

Canadian Senator and retired General Romeo Dallaire, the author of the best-selling Shake Hands With the Devil (Random House Canada, 2003), and the original commander of the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Rwanda in 1994, has written another book, just as timely, urgent and compelling as his first.  Peacehawks  thinks it important that we inform you of this book as quickly as we can – I finished reading it an hour ago.

My life and my career have been very short on living heroes: Robert Rogers died almost a century and a half, and T.E. Lawrence five years, before I was born; I was 22 years old when Dag Hammarskjold was killed, and 23 when JFK was assassinated; my father died when I was only 32.  I didn’t expect to have any more heroes in my direct experience of life.  But I have been rarely privileged to know, even briefly to work with, Romeo Dallaire, and he is every inch a hero for our so dusty, spiteful and divided time. I thought you needed to know my view of the author as you read this review.

DISCUSSION

Search as we may, there are no comprehensive or reliable figures for child soldiers around the world. The only reference to outside figures I have found on scores of websites is from Human Rights Watch, who estimate that there are  “hundreds of thousands” of child soldiers between the ages of 8 and 17 years old.[1]They are however ubiquitous in some of the most chaotic parts of the world, and they are in certain areas a major impediment to the peace process. They were perhaps at their worst in Sierra Leone in 2000, when a spate of pointless and random killings and kidnappings peaked with the taking of nearly 500 U.N. peacekeepers as hostages. I have written about that elsewhere in Peacehawks.[2]

Dallaire poses straight from the outset a quite arresting view of the child soldier: as a weapon system. The child soldier, he says, has several systemic advantages: he, or often she, is plentiful, inexpensive, easily disciplined, expendable and easily replaced. The child soldier is thus the obvious weapon of choice of those for whom violence and outrageous cruelty are their own ends.

WITH LAWRENCE IN VALHALLA

A book review essay for Peacehawks by Jamie Arbuckle

… the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with eyes wide open, to make it so.  This I did.

T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, by Michael Korda (Harper Collins, New York, 2010. Ilus, 762 pp. $35.00)

Other books discussed in this essay:

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by Lawrence of Arabia (Hazel Watson and Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks, 1926. Illus, 700 pp [Penguin Vers.])

Lawrence and the Arabs, by Robert Graves (Jonathan Cape, London, 1927. Illus, 454 pp)

Lawrence of Arabia, by Basil H. Liddell Hart (Da Capo Press, New York, 1937, Illus, 406 pp)

Introduction

Did we really need another bio of Lawrence? Well, the most recent of the several, Hero, by Michael Korda is, I think, the best of the bunch, and for me it has been worth the wait.

There has for nearly 100 years been heated controversy about Lawrence: was his contribution as significant as his supporters maintain, or was it merely a “side-show of a side-show”? Was he a genuine leader of the Arab-Revolt, or its betrayer – for betrayed the Arab Revolt surely was. Was he a genuine hero, or merely an early public relations trick? I think it is sufficient here to recognize these enduring controversies – it is not the purpose of a review essay such as this to resolve them. That does not mean I will not take a stand, as will soon become apparent. As Liddell Hart said¸

… I have found two sharply contrasted currents of opinion as to Lawrence’s achievement, character and qualities of  leadership.  One is overwhelmingly favourable, the other disparagingly skeptical.  Such a difference in view is to be expected about any outstanding figure: the remarkable feature of this case lies in the contrast of the composition of the two groups. For it is significant that the first includes all those who for long periods were in close contact with Lawrence  and  his work in the Arab campaign … The  second current of opinion … is composed of men who had only a fleeting contact with Lawrence or, more often, a hearsay acquaintance  with his activities.[1]

That first group, Liddell Hart might have added, included such as David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Field Marshall Allenby, Marshall of the Royal Air Force Trenchard, Gertrude Bell and, of course, Robert Graves and Liddell Hart himself.

Lawrence was considered the most famous man in the world in his lifetime (1888-1935), and the puffery of Lowell Thomas’ media circus did not quite obscure the real events and the genuine achievements of the Arab Revolt.  Thanks to the steady procession of books about Lawrence[2], his fame has pretty much endured. His reputation was updated, boosted and popularized by David Lean’s movie (starring Peter O'Toole) in 1962, which was based on Seven Pillars, and was one of the best movies of the last century.  As incredible as his story is, it was pretty clearly understood by the many in his own time, and has been fairly accurately conveyed for succeeding generations: his reputation as a hero has been shaken now and again, but has on the whole  remained intact.

REVIEW OF “RESTREPO”: WHEN A PICTURE IS NOT WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Restrepo, 2010, a film by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington.

Reviewed for Peacehawks by Jamie Arbuckle

It is a characteristic of our very advanced communications media that the medium is often not the message, and sometimes contains almost no message at all. This film is one such non-message.

The intention of the film seems to be to accompany the book, War, by Sebastian Junger. Junger is a skilled writer with a strong sense of contemporary history and is well known for his narrative skills, both of which are amply displayed in his book.  War presents the operations of Battle Company, 2^nd Parachute Infantry Battalion  of the 173rd Airborne Infantry Brigade in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan from May 2007 to July 2008. (The other companies in the Battalion are called “Chosen” and “Destined” – the irony, as in so much of the terminology used here, is certainly unintentional.) In particular, the movie tells inter alia the story of the Second Platoon of Battle Company in combat outpost Restrepo, which was named for a very popular medic, Juan Restrepo, and which was established shortly after he was killed in action in Afghanistan.