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Across the crowd I catch the eye of one of our drivers. We both know that the moment the plane takes off, he's a target: I'm amazed he's come to the airport. We're fighting about money and banana trees and crying for ourselves and our rag dolls while he serves our mission to its sordid end.

Over and over I replay in my head the implications of what we've just done. We told the Haitians that we couldn't physically stop their government from torturing and killing, but that if they told us in detail who was doing it and how, we'd bear witness and seek justice. Eventually the world would …

I've been seeing a Swiss girl who works for the Red Cross. It's their job to collect the bodies those big Malaysian guns cut down when we returned fire. The next day she comes stomping into the mess hall looking for me, wild-eyed, dripping with sweat, seething, 'You killed twenty Somalis just to op…

He has a funny look on his face; he wants to tell me something. 'Hey, Ken, you know why your boss was so insistent to open the courts and have judges paid salaries, right?' His eyes are twinkling like the sun off the Indian Ocean on the other side of this hard-scrabble court.

I'm trying to think…

Ashamed, I find myself envying the Iraqis and the Israelis. There seems nothing false about war. Loyalties are strong. The enemy is known. There are none of the subtleties and nuances of ordinary life; you're at the core of every feeling. Nothing else matters but to stay alive. And that's how I wan…