A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (P.S.)

In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power—a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy—asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policy makers, access to newly declassified documents, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields, Power provides the answer in "A Problem from Hell," a groundbreaking work that tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.

While we may not agree with such a cynical and throwaway attitude toward foreign policy, it is consistent with the historical documentation the author so aptly demonstrates in this well documented and well written exploration of the most vexing and curious phenomenon of the 20th century; state sponsored genocide. And while I would quarrel slightly with her voiced notion that it is a peculiarly modern phenomenon (witness our handy slaughter of the American Indian in a very methodical and painstaking fashion over a hundred year period), it can not be denied that the scope and depths of the commission of such mass murder has reached epidemic proportions since the turn of the century. This indeed is a issue of satanic dimensions, a so-called "Problem From Hell".

Those of us who are systematically engaged in the examination of modern warfare have often marveled at the uncanny ability of statesmen like Wilson, Roosevelt, and Churchill to deny any personal knowledge or complicity in the events surrounding the Armenian debacle in the early years of World War One or the Holocaust visited on the Jews, Gypsies, and others during the Nazi epoch. And, as time has gone by, more and more evidence indicating such leaders were indeed quite aware of the circumstances and yquite deliberately chose not to act is even more damning. The, too, when one starts to consider the more recent train of events in Bosnia, we too have become eye-witnesses to a consistent policy of inaction, to what can only be described as the colossal reluctance of either the American government or the European allies to act decisively to stem or stop the wanton genocidal behavior of the Bosnian Serbs. Less clear was the role of the American government in the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, and in East Timor. Finally, it was painfully evident that William Jefferson Clinton was extremely reluctant to act to force the Serbian government from its bloody incursion into Kosovo.

Thus, in each case-study that the author provides, the same lack of national resolve is indicated, and the consistencies from administration to administration seems to indicate it is a pattern shared by both Democrat and Republicans while in power. It is instructive at this point to remember that most often our military actions are usually confined to extending the national government's foreign policy through extraordinary means, i.e., forcing a situation in which our perceived national interest is threatened by a change in the status quo. Genocide rarely so affects our interests. In fact, it is often our friends in power who are more likely to be the perpetrators in a genocidal situation. Proof of this is our lack of concern over Saddam's massacre of Kurds when he was considered our "bulwark' against Iran in the late 1980s. Then he made the fatal mistake of putting our oil supply at risk by invading Kuwait. At that point, we acted. Wow, what a surprise!

In summary, we should not be intellectually surprised by the lack of morality involved in public decision-making when it comes to the conduct of foreign affairs. We rarely do the "right" thing, but rather do the "smart" thing in terms of what we perceive will best serve our global economic and political goals. In such a world, public morality plays no significant part, and it is only when the media turns on the bright lights of public exposure that authorities will finally act. This is a terrific book, one that deserves a careful and meticulous read. But don't realistically expect to find any solutions for our baleful "realpolitik" lapses in public morality, or that things are likely to change in the future. The powers that be couldn't care less about murder and mayhem, as long as it doesn't affect their perceived national interests. It isn't even on their radar screens. Enjoy.


This book is truly an impressive tome   November 14, 2002
History Buff (Chicago, IL USA)
75 out of 83 found this review helpful

Samantha Power has done a wonderful job at researching events that few of today's youth have ever heard of, but certainly should know. Extremely well written, this book offers both the specifics and the historical context of some of the century's most heinous crimes.

Although I don't agree with the position that the author seems to promote throughout the book, that the United States should immediately jump into the fray when any crimes of this nature begin, I do think it's a viewpoint worth considering. There are many times in history demonstrated quite thoroughly in this book that we stood by and did nothing for too long. We can't stop all atrocities, but this book argues that we can do a lot more than we have so far.

I found this a truly fascinating evaluation of several important events that put even today's international conflicts into better perspective. It's a long book, but worth every page.


Why History Repeats Itself   March 25, 2003
62 out of 68 found this review helpful

During and after World War II, it slowly dawned on the world that the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust must never be allowed to happen again. With many books, films, speeches, memorials, etc., educating the public about the horrors of genocide, surely the international community would stand up and confront genocide in the future. Right? Well, guess what? Genocide has happened many times after the Holocaust and America, the United Nations, and other countries did nothing to prevent it. How did the world(and especially America) allow this to happen? What is Genocide exactly? What political issues erect roadblocks to something so morally indefensible? This book answers all these questions in a very engaging and informative way.

Samantha Powers has done an excellant job researching the origins of Genocide in the twentieth century; how it came to be ratified by the United Nations, and why America was one of the last countries to enact legislation to support it. Also, she reviews the ineffectiveness of the United Nations in preventing Genocide in Iraq, Rwanda, Kosovo, etc. This book is not a dry, academic study. It is very enaging and well organized. My hope is that we will not stand by silently anymore while brutal dictators like Saddam Hussein commit Genocide. Somewhere there is another Anne Frank waiting...hoping...praying silently that someone will help protect her basic right to life.


An earnest history   August 7, 2002
58 out of 86 found this review helpful

This rather earnest book covers US policy in response to some acts of genocide in the 20th century. It starts with Henry Morgenthal, Sr. and his attempt to alert the American public to the Ottoman massacre of the Armenians and continues on to US policy in Rwanda, Iraq and Kosovo.

This is primarily a book for people who believe that, in general, United States foreign policy is just: it's the other countries that commit genocide. While Powers does mention that the United States has occasionally aided the perpetuators of genocide, she only delves into areas where common opinion places the US on the side of the angels. She discusses Cambodia, but doesn't say much about the US war in Vietnam; she says a lot about the Iraqi violence against the Kurds, but nothing about the (US supported) Turkish war against the Kurds. Likewise there is literally nothing about US-sponsored actions in Central and South America; Kissinger's tacit approval of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor; or US support of Israeli violence against the Palestinians.

This is the kind of book that gets the author a reputation as a 'stern critic' of US policy while at the same time does nothing to prevent the same author from getting a prominent foreign policy position in the future. It's not surprising that this book has been well promoted on Book TV and public television, but for the whole truth about genocide and its causes, go elsewhere.

By the way, Stephen Holmes has a good review of this book in the November 2002 "London Review of Books." He writes about the problems of focusing on genocide (what should be done if an ethnic group commits mass murder against its own members?) and Power's impatience with multilateralism and legalism.


An Awesome Work!   January 13, 2004
54 out of 58 found this review helpful

This outstanding book was difficult to put down, and even more difficult to stop thinking about. Its topic was burdensome, sad, terribly unrelenting and tragic. Samantha Power's thorough research, well documented bibliography, and clean articulate writing style made the reading of such a depressing topic interesting and compelling. This book took me about a month of careful reading to complete and I highly recommend it.

What disturbs me more than the topic of Ms. Power's book, however, is the lengthy and jumbled review below entitled "Scholarship from Hell." The reviewer is engaging in sophistry designed to discredit Ms. Power and mislead. Beginning with the phrase "Armenian Relocation" the reviewer spirals into ten, inarticulate, horribly written and confusing paragraphs whose sole intent is to misdirect and mislead. Notice the use of the phrase "Ottoman-Armenian Conflict" giving the impression of moral equivalence and balance. In paragraph three, he then attempts to discredit Ms. Power - and subsequently her book - by claiming she did not utilize "objective sources" and as having "...a lack of sufficient grounding in history to tackle a subject as sensitive and controversial as the Ottoman-Armenian conflict." There is nothing controversial or sensitive about the Armenian Genocide, and the careful construction of this babble, undermines Ms Power and devalues the awesome bulwark of research she has undertaken and produced, and is intended to mislead the reader by throwing as much junk at the wall as possible and hoping that some of it sticks. Despite the fact that Ms. Power's work is almost seven hundred pages long (with a bibliography as long as a short novel), the reviewer claims that she fails to refer to "objective scholars" in reference to the Armenian Genocide.

References used by Ms Power include numerous newspaper and magazine articles published in 1915 when supposedly this "sensitive" and "controversial" "Ottoman-Armenian conflict" was at its height. The New York Times had very little doubt about what was occurring in Anatolia since in 1915 alone the Times published almost two hundred detailed articles - including dates, numbers of casualties, villages destroyed etc - about the slaughter of innocent Armenian men, women and children by the Ottoman Army.

Ms Power also references Henry Morgenthau the United States Ambassador to Turkey during World War One. It is almost comical to read the lame attempt by the reviewer at discrediting an ambassador of the United States, and the ridiculous suggestion that if you really want to understand Ambassador Morgenthau's memoirs and his "interpretation" of the "controversy regarding the Ottoman-Armenian conflict" that a book by some offbeat writer gives more information than Morgenthau's own words. Apparently his idea of an objective source does not include the memoirs of a U.S. Ambassador - nor the army of diplomats British, French and American - who were strewn all over Anatolia and who wrote voluminous accounts of the well organized genocide.

Other trustworthy objective references made by Ms Power include memoirs written by American and European missionaries, references to memoirs written by Ambassador Viscount Bryce (British Ambassador to the US), the renowned British historian Christopher Walker, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Arnold Toynbee, etc. This is a stellar bibliography. In stark contrast the reviewer offers no contemporary sources for his claim that the Armenian Genocide is controversial, sensitive or can be categorized as merely a "conflict." .

In addition the reviewer says nothing about all the other Genocides covered in the book and whether or not Ms. Power did a trustworthy job of covering them. Thus, presumably, Ms. Power had the "historical grounding" and sophistication to get everything else regarding all the other genocides in these seven hundred pages correct and properly documented except for the Armenian Genocide. Of course this begs the question, if she was sufficiently ungrounded to the point of getting the Armenian Genocide incorrect why should I believe anything that she has to say about the other genocides. And conversely, if her documentation is trustworthy about all the other genocides why should I not believe that she got everything correct and properly documented regarding the Armenian genocide?

The point is Ms. Power got everything correct. Genocide scholars, Holocaust scholars and professors from around the world have hailed her book as a monumental benchmark. The goal of the reviewer is to put forth a carefully worded babbling denial that actually does more than simply deny, and does more than simply babble. The reviewer also seeks to blame the victim, and also shroud the events of 1915-1922 behind a scrim of supposed controversy where there is no controversy. The reviewer's goal is not even to re-write history, but rather to paint a situation that seems so hopelessly confused that one would need a doctorate to figure it out. The Armenian Genocide is neither "controversial" nor is it confusing, nor is it a "sensitive" issue (though I am sure it is a sensitive issue if your grandfather was one of the perpetrators of the crime) nor does one need a doctorate to understand it. The Armenian Genocide was a carefully planned genocide by Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha who used a well-trained Ottoman Army, to murder 1.5 million innocent men, women and children. It had nothing to do with World War One (except to the extent that the War was used as a cover,) it had nothing to do with the Russians, it had nothing to do with "relocation," it was all about hate, power, envy and jealousy - the Armenians were a peaceful people who had lived on their ancestral lands for 2,500 years. In "A Scholarship from Hell" the reviewer's careful rambling use of words attempts to sow confusion where none exists, and bring into question the credibility of Ms Power and her research methods, thus rendering anything she has to say irrelevant.

Ms. Power has written an awesome, trustworthy account of Genocide in the 20th century. It is a heavy, time-consuming read, but it is also one of the best non-fiction books I have read in the last five years.