Facing History: A Look at America in the Age of Genocide In a defense of the armed forces, she explained that in many instances of genocide where there is nothing at all to gain from intervention except honor, the U.S. has been decried for unilateral or “a la carte” intervention. By Sai Corson published in citilink newspaper, Chicago, IL Samantha Power, a former war correspondent, regular contributor to Atlantic Monthly and Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University, recently gave a speech about her new book “A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide” at Harold Washington Library as part of the Library’s Facing History, Facing Ourselves Educational Campaign. She opened her lecture quipping that her 10-year obsession with genocide had alienated all of her friends. Power charted the development of Western consciousness of genocide, citing that not until the 1970’s did Americans perceive the occurrence of such atrocities abroad. Several fascinating side-note anecdotes skeletoned the history of American awareness: a certain Mr. Lempke, a Holocaust survivor who lost 49 family members, immigrated to America and invented the category of “genocide” as a war crime. A Wisconsin senator gave a speech a day for 2000 odd days, with great red-faced ferocity, until the Genocide Treaty was ratified in 1988. Mentioning briefly her interest and experience in the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia--the speaker focused on the events of Rwanda, as an exceptional case of bold-faced bloodletting with absolutely no subterfuge of territorial or religious rationale. At one point in the gore, 8,000 plus bodies a day would pile up around the U.S. Embassy. Power also mentioned what came to be known as “Hate Radio,” a government-sponsored radio program that would entice decent citizens to “kill the cockroaches,” (read: the imperiled ethnic minority). For a short time the U.S. intervened with a radio-jamming device, for the healthy pittance of $8,500/hour, but had to cease that work for the sake of free speech. Finally, the U.S. withdrew because there was so little payoff for strictly humanitarian efforts. In a defense of the armed forces, she explained that in many instances of genocide where there is nothing at all to gain from intervention except honor, the U.S. has been decried for unilateral or “a la carte” (the picking and choosing of convenient causes) intervention. Other countries, resenting us for our darker deeds abroad, and leftists across the globe who “resent power for power’s sake,” frankly cry wolf with “apocalyptic nihilism.” “Never,” she pointed out, “have we been so powerful and so vulnerable.” Powers
managed to balance a realistic understanding of the failures of Bush’s American foreign policy (Kyoto, South America, Cambodia, and on and on) with a fair, if not popular, call for military intervention when necessary. Regarding Iraq, Power merely said, “if you are against the war, you should protest.” Power, rather boldly, praised Bush for his “refreshing” moral absolutism, contrasting it with the withdrawn postmodern morals of the 90’s (of course she made no mention at that point of our current economic plight or of the supposed moral stringency of the Republicans during Clinton’s lynching). She spoke out for a new series of doctrines: the doctrines of a balance between soft (principled) and hard (militaristic) power; a mea culpa doctrine of public apology for past misdeeds; and a doctrine of listening to the needs of lesser powers. Her ideas, while obvious to the general humanitarian, will probably fall kindly on the ears of a deeply entrenched conservative government, cushioned as they are with a scrupulous objectivity. In that sense, Power posits herself, along with Condoleezza Rice and the all-female triad of last years whistle-blowers, as a Machiavellian woman whose only shot at pushing the evolutionary wheel is with a fair understanding, acceptance, and arbitration of power--from the halls of Harvard, where she founded the Carr Center for Human Rights. A post-script for those attuned to the elliptical: during the question and answer session, Power, in her mid-thirties and strident, was asked about her teachers; she commented that everywhere she goes, through the “dark waters” of her many incarnations, she meets mentors. [I was pleased to note that she later won the National Book Critics' Circle Award, not to mention the Pulitzer Prize for her endeavors.]