Rating: 
Summary: Stark
Review: Samantha Powers' "A Problem From Hell" provides a detailed, very readable and very frightening account of genocides in the twentieth century. Ms. Powers provides more than a blow by blow account of horror. She recounts and analyzes the responses made to genocide by individuals and governments, primarily the US government. Ms. Powers presents us with two horrendous facts: the fact of the genocides themselves and the fact of those who stand idly by while genocide is commited. She condemns both. Put starkly, she shows a United States willing to fight to defend things outside its border but not people outside its border. We good and decent "realists" perceive our personal well-being to be dependent on things all over the world. We do not perceive our well-being to be dependent on the well-being of people all over the world. We did not perceive genocides of the Jews in Europe, of the Rwandans in Africa, the Armenians, Bosnians or Kurds in Europe and the Middle East or the Cambodians in Asia to threaten our well-being, unless and until that genocide threatened, as a kind of collateral damage, the things we believed we needed. There are a few heroes: Raphael Lemkin, the people of Human Rights Watch and its predecessor organizations, the people of Amnesty International, Canadian Major General Romeo Dallaire, and a few State Department employees. These stories alone make the book worth reading. But there are no President heroes. Wilson ignored the Armenian genocide, Franklin Roosevelt turned away Jews fleeing the Nazis, Carter, Reagan and Bush I ignored the Kurdish, Bosnian and Cambodian genocides, and Clinton somehow missed the Rwandan genocide until he learned to "feel their pain." Indeed, indifference did not mark the limits of US policy. The US government supported Turkey, Iraq and the Pol Pot regime while they committed genocide. Reagan and Bush I did not bother to bother Saddam Hussein about his gassing of the Kurds when it happened, but now, for Bush II, it's a convenient ploy in his call for war against him. Genocide simply has not been a central concern of the US government. When the US has acted, as it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, it has been forced to act, or acted out of embarassment. Samantha Powers provides a clue as to why. The clue is in the language. When America's friend, ally and fellow freedom fighter, Saddam Hussein, was gassing his own citizens, Peter Galbraith, a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, traveled to Iraq and saw what Hussein was doing to the Kurds. Despite his efforts, and the efforts of some Senators and Congress people, the US government went plodding along in its support of Saddam. Galbraith's boss reported that there was a "backlash" against him. "They would pooh-pooh him as 'emotional.'" (Page 228) Powers also reports, re: Bosnia, that, "Most of the senior officials in the Bush (Bush I) administration, including ... Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, ... and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, were traditional foreign policy "realists." The United States did not have the most powerful military in the history of the world in order to undertake squishy, humanitarian "social work."" (Page 261, my emphasis) Those who worked to stop the genocides, Powers writes, " were usually branded "emotional," "irrational," "soft," or "naive."" (Page 516) "Emotional." "Irrational." "Squishy." "Soft." "Humanitarian." "Social work." Women's work. Four hundred years B.C.E., Sophocles wrote "Antigone." In that play, Creon, the king, forbids the burying of his enemy, Polynices, on pain of death. But Polynices was Antigone's brother, and she buries him. Before sentencing her to her death, Creon screams, "Go down below and love, if love you must - love the dead! While I'm alive, no woman is going to lord it over me!" Burying the dead and protecting the living has been decreed by king and president to be "women's work." Antigone replied, "Your wisdon appealed to one world - mine, another." (Robert Fagles, "Sophocles: The Three Theban Plays" Penguin Classics 1982) Who's work is it then that governments do, that the dead who need burying grow and grow? What is left of a king or President or Secretary of State after he or she has sloughed off the emotional, the irrational, the squishy, the soft, the merely social? Samantha Powers shows us some answers. Her book is riddled with such cardboard characters. The fragment of a human being that remains is - and I choose the words intending full irony - as helpless as a woman when confronted by these greatest of evils.
Rating:
Summary: Will anything change?
Review: Samantha Power would perfectly understand why, after reading her book, it's quite likely that we will come away with a pessimistic and somewhat fatalistic view. The thrust of her book's argument is that our government and leaders, through ignorance, denial, policy vacuum, or a lack of political will, have stood idly by and allowed crimes against humanity to take place. As we read the descriptions of the massacres she uses to make her point, we may believe that as citizens we are in a better position to express moral outrage. Power cuts right through this view and disabuses us of any right to stand on the moral high ground. In her recent interview about the book in "The Atlantic" she said "isolationism is not just ideological in this country, it is the way people live their lives. [We] live lives isolated from people abroad." There are some exceptions of course and her book chronicles the stories of some of these advocates for the people or "screamers" as she calls them. Official inaction and paralysis spans the decades. The book goes back as far as 1915 when the Turks butchered about 1 million Armenians. The Holocaust comes next and then the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia, followed by Iraq's massacre of the Kurds, Rwanda, and Bosnia. There is a wealth of research involved based on recently declassified materials and numerous interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors. She is relentless with her facts and as decades passed and genocides continued and administration after administration protested that they didn't know, Power's steady spotlight on evidence to the contrary makes a lie out of so much of what we've been told publicly. There are many reasons; from the purely political "national interests" arguments, to the more subtle explanations that affected individual policy makers. For instance, when do you enter a conflict if it's your view that it's A PROBLEM FROM HELL? Warren Christopher supposedly made this comment about Bosnia. If you apply even the most basic management principles for resolving an issue - that of first "owning" the problem - it seems that many of our policy makers failed the grade. Power makes it clear that a huge amount of denial exists. Power offers prescriptions for policy change and recommendations for preventing genocides and they don't all involve military action. She is also very much aware of how September 11th has changed US foreign policy priorities. Nevertheless we have both the moral authority and the neccessary resources to prevent genocides and Power says that "the one lesson from the last half century is that if it's not the U.S.'s problem, it's nobody's problem." This book is a compelling argument for the truth of that statement but it's less than optimistic tone still leaves us wondering, will anything change?
Rating:
Summary: The Book of the Year
Review: True, it's only March, but this book will not be surpassed by anything published this year. 'A Problem from Hell' is one of those rare works which will bulldoze the walls protecting policy-makers and their advisers. Closely researched and beautifully written, Ms. Power's book combines scholarship and investigative flair. Her discussion of genocide is intelligent and moving; the way she spreads her net around the globe is quite simply breathtaking. Reading with this book left me with a sense of clarity about an area of foreign policy which has been neglected for too long. It also left me angry. 'A Problem from Hell' is an 'Eichmann in Jerusalem' for our era. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reading for the American Conscience
Review: The current issue of NYRB contains an essay by Samantha Power distilled from the book. The book is mentioned about half-way through the text and based on the quality of the essay I was convinced to buy the book. Now, half-way through the book, which is excellent, I am on the hunt for more information about the hero of the Problem from Hell, Raphael Lemkin. His story is the conscience of the little we have done as a nation to sustain international human rights and prevent the state from destroying its own or those of another state. This part of the book that describes Lemkin and his relentless effort is one of the most moving and uplifting statements I have ever read. It sets an unparalled example of committment to an idea that is the best part of human nature. The commentary on the United States failure to accept the idea and make it an integral part of foreign policy applies to all of us: citizens and leaders alike. I have reason to doubt my own moral fortitude, but not that of the author who has laid before us a legal brief that documents a deliberate policy of inaction by our country. The arguement of political reality or political expediency is a dark cloak spread to cover greed, indifference and lack of political will. Hopefully, we can correct this course and not be a future accomplice to genocide.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling synthesis
Review: I'll keep it short--this book is fantastic. Power's writing brings together disparate stories into a cohesive tale of the most murderous century in human history, and the politics that allowed it to continue thusly.
Rating: 
Summary: Egregious omission...
Review: Ms Power's book is truly remarkable in its treatement of the moral failings, the hypocrisy and oportunistic nature of the United States' reactions to genocidal activities in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, as a Super power --today the Hyper power-- the United States has the capacity, unprecendented since the period of Pax Romana, to influence and control, as we are now witnessing, events anywhere on the panet. It is unfortunate, however, that Samantha has, it seems, lacked the moral fortitude to include, in her outstanding treatment of this important issue, the indifference of the United States concerning the case of the Palestinian people. Indeed, their tragic treatment since the creation of Israel, in 1948 --including deliberate disposession, displacement, dehumanization, deculturation, humiliation, eliminations, with as objective the Judaization of their land --fits perfectly the definition of Genocide as contained in the Genocide Convention, of 9 December 1948, and its interpretation by Raphael Lemkin, its distinguished progenitor.
If Ms. Power's omission is due to the political sensitivity of the issue is she not deserving of the same criticism as that she has rightfully laid at the feet of the United States establishment? Her book would have indeed been deserving of more praise had she had the courage to confront the unconscionable human tragedy in Palestine.
Rating:
Summary: Important point well put
Review: In this exhaustively researched book, Power examines the United States of America's reaction to the notion of genocide in the twentieth century, examining some of the greatest tragedies of the era, and the individuals who tried, either positively or negatively, to shape the American reaction to them. This is not a one-sided, leftist rant against a great power - rather it is a considered look at the fact that the US uses the genocide convention to suit itself, both the feel-good-look-good factor of agreeing with its worth and the political expediency of denying its implementation. This is not to say that the US is always at fault when it comes to preventing or stopping genocidal actions - and Power notes this, especially in reaction to the obvious genocide in Africa - but as the largest power in the 20th century, the US was often the nation that was in a position to decide if action was to be carried out or not. This is not so much a study in human misery (though there is plenty in this book) or the brave individuals attempting to discourage it (though there are many of those in this book too- the most outstanding being Major General Romeo Dallaire, commander of UN peacekeeping troops in Rwanda when the great troubles broke out) but a study in the politics of genocide and intervention. Well written and well sourced, don't be put off by the page count - you can easily divide this book into manageable sections. But it should be read by all people who are interested in world affairs, even if only to compare America's previous inaction when it suited them to their ability to intervene in another country when they believe it is in their interest.
Rating:
Summary: An Angry Account Of American Absence
Review: A Problem from Hell is a history of genocide in the twentieth century and the United States' continued lack of response. Power's focus is on debunking the standard denials always made by US officials that "we didn't know until it was too late" by providing evidence of massive publicity of each genocide at the time it was taking place, and of the continuing determination of the US and other powers to do little or nothing about it. Power also explains this lack of response as a necessary but cynical part of realpolitik in the twentieth century. This is particularly effective in her chapters on Saddam Hussein's genocide of the Kurds in 1987-88 and of the Hutu massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.
There are a number of heroes in Power's book, particularly Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide and campaigned ceaselessly for an international treaty outlawing it. Also worthy of praise are Henry Morgenthau, one of the few Americans who spoke up for the Armenians in 1915, William Proxmire, who was the only Senator to speak in favor of US ratification of the anti-genocide treaty for years, and Peter Galbraith,a State Department diplomat who risked his life and his career to report on what was happening to the Kurds.
A Problem from Hell uplifts even as it depresses by illuminating the complicated dynamics behind the US and the West's lack of response to twentieth century genocide and the steadfastness with which the few who spoke up persevered. Its a clear headed evaluation of a shameful subject which will help those who read it understand the reasoning behind official obfuscations, and in understanding, take the first step towards eliminating a crime against humanity.
Rating:
Summary: The costs of "doing nothing" in an era of genocide
Review: Power's award-winning, critically acclaimed doorstop of a book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the rise of international authoritarianism, ethnic retribution, and genocidal atrocities and about the world's apparent inability to stop such occurrences. It's not a comprehensive history of twentieth-century genocide; instead, Power includes a series of case studies, focusing on Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, along with brief capsule summaries of the 1917 Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.
She opens the book with a history of the word "genocide" and its recognition as an international crime. The hero of this part of her story is Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word, formulated its legal definition, and badgered the United Nations to adopt the 1948 Genocide Convention (which, sadly, the United States refused to ratify until 1986--and then only to save face after Reagan's embarrassment at Bitburg).
She then moves to her gut-wrenching examples, showing how (except in the case of Kosovo) each followed a nearly predictable trajectory, with a complacent and cowardly world community standing by in denial. Still, she spotlights heroic actions by a few, including William Proxmire, whose 3,211 Senate speeches over 19 years failed to shame his colleagues into passing the Genocide Convention; Peter Galbraith, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff member who struggled to publicize Hussein's gassing of the Kurds; and Robert Dole and Madeleine Albright, whose combined fury forced the Clinton administration to confront the nightmares in Bosnia and Kosovo. Her accounts of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia are especially lucid for those of us whose heads spin with confusion whenever we hear mention of the Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Slovenian-Macedonian conflicts.
Because Power's stories are so distressing and her goal is so laudable, the sympathetic reader is all the more frustrated by the book's faults, of which there are several. While emotionalism and outrage can be commendable (and understandable, given the inconceivable number of innocent victims whenever the world fails to respond to genocidal atrocities), her pronunciations sometimes betray her zeal. The resulting indignation can often result in Monday-morning quarterbacking and moral condescension, either of which might simply alienate those readers who aren't convinced that the United States has the wherewithal to be the world's policeman. Granted, Power is right to condemn U.S. officials for doing nearly nothing, especially in the case of Rwanda, but she often assumes that what, in retrospect, we should have done is what, at the time, we could have done. (Surely we must do something, but it doesn't follow that anything will do.)
Likewise, she claims that the United States has "done nothing, practically or politically, to prepare itself to respond to genocide," and she bases this statement--and several like it--mostly on the assumption that, before Kosovo, this country has never prevented genocide. Such statements are easy to assert (since genocide has certainly occurred) but impossible to rebut (since it's difficult to claim genocide was prevented in those situations when it didn't happen at all).
Second, she maintains that, given the world's dysfunctional international and regional organizations, the United States must assume the role of white knight. She bridles at suggestions by opponents of unilateral intervention that our status as a superpower will always make our motives suspect or that American ground troops are not as capable of both imposing regional order and handling multiple crises as she seems to believe. (Perhaps our adventures in Iraq have made her reconsider this pollyannaish militarism.) She is unimpeachably correct that our country must act when signs portending genocide are detected, but certainly we must hesitate before we ever do it alone.
A model of successful non-military intervention, for example, is East Timor. Although Power gives a two-sentence mention to the 1975 genocide, she doesn't point out that the United States took the lead in preventing a repeat occurrence in 1999--without committing a single American troop. After an initial hesitation, the U.S. coordinated a multilateral response against Indonesia with members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, support from China, and troops from Australia. (See Michael Hirsch's "At War With Ourselves" for an excellent summary of this unheralded diplomatic coup.) Such a regionally concocted solution might work as well in other--but certainly not all--situations.
Finally, and most seriously, Power is quick to condemn governments and government officials, but (except for an anecdote in the Introduction), she neglects entirely to chastise her colleagues and employers in the media. She repeatedly asserts that political leaders can convince the public to disregard any initial qualms about humanitarian intervention, but she never acknowledges that it is difficult to do so in an environment where journalists and editors entirely ignore (for example) the current horror in Sudan and prefer instead to plaster the Scott Peterson trial across the front page and cover sports-team brawls during every news-hour.
If these criticisms sound disproportionately harsh, it is simply because I am holding Power (and her colleagues in the media) to the same high standards she posits for our elected leaders. My caveats should in no way minimize the importance of her work; instead, "A Problem from Hell" is so successful in large part because it motivates readers to face such unforgivable horrors and to consider how best to prevent them.
Rating:
Summary: A Must read ..passionate and Provocative
Review: Ill keep it short and say it is probably one of the most significant books I have read in the last 10 years in relation to understanding geo politiks . Passionate and Provocative
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