Samantha Power's ideas are ridiculous and support illegal policies.

So, for example, she supported the illegal bombing of Serbia in 1999--an act that LED to ethnic cleansing, as Gen. Wesley Clark admitted.

Then there's her support for intervention in Venezuela.

Here's the fine analyst, Chris Carlson over at zcommunications:

"'If...Chavez continues to deviate from what Obama thinks are international norms that should be adhered to domestically, then that's a problem,' said Power. [8]

Power went on to say that the Obama administration would focus on 'what Chavez does badly from the standpoint of the Venezuelan people.' This begs the obvious question: isn't it the job of the Venezuelan people to decide that?"

The hubris of the woman! She presumes to speak for the Venezuelan people? Who have elected President Chavez overwhelmingly several times?

She's just another imperialist. There is nothing to defend.

And there will be no progressive change from Obama if he's elected. He has a view of the widely popular Venezuelan president that is at variance with the facts, the law, and democratic and social justice. Chavez will easily turn the world against him as he has done to Bush.

Sad to say Samantha Powers fully lives upto the sterotype of the American elite : so full of themselves, self -obsessed ,hewing to the creed that America is where the sun rises and sets etc.

The following comment on youtube on her interview by Jeremy Paxman seems to say it all:

"She's too dense to realize that he's mocking her pseudo-intellectual responses that she concocted while in the ivory towers of Harvard. She's like a 14 year old girl who thinks that she and her friends are all smarter than all the more experienced adults around her."

The irony is had she remained in the land of her birth viz. Ireland , she might well have ended up being far more subtle , and perhaps more circumspect.

I did not know who Samantha Power was until I saw her debate the superb Jermey Schahill on Democracy Now! Jeremy exposed her for the imperialist that she is.

As Earthian says, charles shaw, user and Quark are correct.

The rest of you progs who praised Power: wake up!

Why doesn't the fact that Obama is hanging around with imperialists like Brzezinski and Power bother you? Connect the dots.

There ain't gonna be no change with Barack Obama. He is Hillary's political twin.

I've studied Power and was going to dispute the ridiculous claim in this article. It says:

"She is an individual who not only questions the status quo but also provides thoughtful alternatives to the formulaic foreign policy approaches of the post-Cold War world."

No, she is a denier of US genocides.

But these three comments say what needs to be said.

charles shaw March 15th, 2008 1:03 pm
user March 15th, 2008 3:37 pm
Quark March 16th, 2008 3:09 am

Thank you Charles Shaw, User, and Quark.

Novice Chess players often temporize by exchanging pawns...

It truly is an insult to monsters everywhere.

Obama's high-minded promise of a new politics at first seemed empty rhetoric, but now resonates with an increasing relevance. The problem is the political landscape is a minefield of corruption and dirty shots and the rallying cry of change seems weak and naive. Clinton is crude and she will stoop to racism and fear-mongering-essentially echoing the tactics of the Right to frame and attack the Democratic chances to get her pig foot in the door. I heard a pundit remark that this was great fuel for the Republicans against Obama. Clinton's tactics puts Obama on the defense and he is unwilling to open the floodgates of the vast treasure trove of Clinton dirt. So, Clinton's attacks benefits the Republicans at the expense of Obama--BUT the only problem with this dynamic is the Republicans will NOT hesitate to dredge up Clinton dirt in the General. Clinton is sabotaging the Democrats--keeping them mired in the primary struggle--although she doesn't have a chance--unless she steals it and the evidence points to her willingness to do just that. That will tear up the Democratic party and unite the forces of the Right, that can now focus on the General and vote in the continuing, but pointless Democratic primaries to stack the deck for their preference to run against: Clinton. In the meantime, Clinton continues to weaken Obama who is adverse to stooping to her level to use the tremendous amount of ammo to expose Clinton in the public perception. At a time when the odds are drastically against the Right, their advantages couldn't be more fortunate.

Raj Purohit and Rich Stazinski are poorly informed about S. Power, or worse. Power is a major apologist for the Rwanda-Congo genocide. One can only miss that if one has never understood the 'staged tragedy' that was enacted there.
Read www.taylor-report.com on the background.

Power's interview on BBC, the same week as the Scotsman interview, has not been discussed. She basically told the public that she is making decisions for Obama, and against his stated objectives in Iraq. Since when are advisers in a role to do that?

Besides, Power is a really bad public speaker, and that is not what candidates need.

It's not simply a case of Samantha Power not covering certain issues. There's a glaringly obvious pattern to what she covers and what she does not--she shies away from talking about cases where the US actually supplied weapons to the killers. It's obvious if you read her book already knowing what the US has done in East Timor, Central America, southern Africa, Turkey and other places. Crimes as bad or worse as any committed by the Serbs were supported by the US with weapons and diplomatic support and she has nothing to say about it, except for one highly misleading sentence regarding East Timor. And again, her pal Richard Holbrooke was one of the leading villains in the East Timor story.

I think liberals give Ms. Power too much credit either because she comes across as someone passionately concerned about genocide and having a moral foreign policy, but if you get past that and examine what she covers and what she doesn't, one has to conclude she's consciously downplaying the real guilt of our foreign policy establishment while posing as this harsh critic. It's as though she wrote a passionate denunciation of Al Capone as a really dishonest tax evader and people congratulated her on her searing honesty. Yes, that's a little bit exaggerated, but the point is she pulls her punches and stays friends with people like Holbrooke.

"To challenge this reality in Washington, it will be necessary to ensure that the president is surrounded by foreign policy thinkers willing to challenge conventionally accepted wisdom: Samantha Power is one such individual and we hope that she, and those like her, play critical roles in the next administration."

Don't hold your breath. Samantha Power was dumped precisely because she would challenge convention. Obama is now moving to the right, appearing with generals and admirals draped in American flags in an attempt to reassure the powers that be that he can be counted on and trusted to answer the phone at three am or whatever hour and give the green light to bomb whoever, wherever a danger is posed against US imperialist aims. Samatha Power being considered "leftist" by the establishment and became a liability. That's why she's gone.

Her comment about Clinton being a "monster" shouldn't of been a big deal. Clinton is obviously a monster and any semblance of humanity left her long ago as she became an establishment candidate. Samantha could have clarified her comment and said she meant Clinton was ruthless in her pursuit of power and Obama could have and should have stood by her. And who could have argued with the fact Clinton is ruthless? Even her supporters would have to admit it's true. The comment is clearly obvious.

Dump the Dims, change yourself and then join a 3rd party and help to build it up.

In order to re-escalate the US war against Iraq, Bush et al needed a coalition of the willing that included Democratic Senators. Hillary was one of those, which why she is guilty of mass murder. While I agree that she cannot be blamed for Mr. Bill's policies, she is 100% responsible for her actions as a US Senator.

Reinstate Samantha Power. She told it like it is. Let's us all put the pressure on!

More "liberal" interventionism equals maintaining our empire of bases which is not only immoral but which we can't afford anymore. Although I consider myself to be a Green I'd say Ron Paul gets this exactly right:

http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=12519

Why we'd have to maintain bases for "liberal" interventionism is obvious, in order to ship in troops, they need a safe place to land that is within reasonable air distance to the battlefield, hospitals need to be set up, troops need to fed and housed, and rotated in and out of combat, etc. Every dollar spent on this empire of 700 bases is a dollar less spent on sustainable energy, organic food, and social justice for New Orleans to the inner cities of Detroit. THINK people and don't just accept this new form of the empire of bases because you are being told it's the "liberal" thing to do.

p.s. Hillary is a monster that doesn't make Power right on foreign policy.

Out of Iraq and into Darfur equals billions more for widescale murder and destruction. If the Dims would actually listen to the American people they'd find we want no more war and don't want to be the worlds cops. "Liberal" interventionism in places like Darfur disgusts me every bit as much as Bush's blood for oil. Hint didn't work too well in Somolia or Haiti did it? If the U.N. wants to deal with it fine but leave the U.S. out of it, we need a breather after 60 years of more less continuous war with millions dead in "our" (governments) wake.

Lets do something constructive with OUR money like build windmills, subsidize local and organic farms, build high speed rail, better schools, and health care for all. Or we can blow it on other peoples civil wars in Africa, your choice. Are we serious about small is beutiful and local governance or not? "Liberal" interventionism is just another form of empire IMO, i.e. a bigger meta government telling local peoples around the world how to live, or else...

Samantha Power for sec of state…what a change that would be…God Save the Queen! from the likes of Ms. Power and her self righteous indignation. Hillary is not a Monster; Saddem was the monster responsible for the half a million Iraqi children starved to death; AND how do you know she did nothing said nothing; where you a fly on the wall? The hundreds of thousands in Cuba and Indonesia also suffered enormously and needlessly because of Clinton foreign policy- try their own government's policy. Then there is of course Rwanda and Congo under Clinton… as if the USA could stop ALL the ills of the world, especially when the principle paricipants HATE each other without reason. AND, pray tell, why are you holding Hillary Clinton responsible for her husband's and indeed the Republican Congress responsible for actions she was not and did not even make? I am so sick of all these self-righteous boobs who want it both ways: a First Lady who does nothing but serve tea and give parties; god forbid she use her brains, education and talents to serve the larger good. They refuse to acknowledge or accept that she does what she can; then hold her responsible for things totally out of her control. It seems so many of the talk-abouts on the website haven't got a clue how the world works or the nature of politics in general.

I encountered Ms Powers several times at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and she always made me cringe. She seemed a caricature right out of a scathing article by Chomsky describing how the Cambridge elite breeds future leaders who make sure all discussion is confined to polite discourse and to keep the populace in line. This may be a little unfair, as she organized or allowed for a good number of interesting guest speakers and discussion at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, many of which I attended.) But in essence she is one of those who perpetually proclaim the general benevolence of US foreign policy, with a few disclaimers thrown in such as 'mistakes were made'. At least, that's how I see her.
As for her eloquence: what do you expect from Harvard?

Watching shillerys gesticulating squirrel checks, spouting vapid, vacuous drivel out her bobble head crushes spirit.
How much longer will this nitemare go on.
Republicans and pasty white women who know
shit about politics vote for her. oh jesus
A nation of morons... we deserve what we get.

Every book ignores something - which is why it is better to read more than one.

Someone should give a check as to how often Naomi Klein cites Linda Mcquaig's work in her book - which is probably her way of saying "If you think I should have talked about this more, I didn't because this author already has so read her."

Powers has a job which involves keeping track of a subset of information on a specific subject area (and teaching students). She is still working at that job and if any new President wishes to access that information he can.

I hate Hillary Clinton as much as any body, but I think I would reserve words such as "monster" for Cheney and his puppet Bush.

Clinton is an opportunist, but it is possible that the Repugs are crediting the Clinton and Obama camps for their own misdeeds. If the political satirists can add the real "I am X and I approve this message" to the end of their spoof ad, then so can the Chen(ey) gang.

Not likely, but still possible.

Thanks to user at 3:37 who linked to the Joseph Nevins article. I think Ed Herman goes a bit too far, but Nevins hits the right balance.

The fact is that Samantha Power made a deliberate decision to pull her punches when she wrote "A Problem from Hell". The book is worth reading, in its self-limited way, but the reason it is so widely praised is because it flatters the US foreign policy elite with the notion that the only thing wrong with them is that they are too civilized to realize how evil some foreigners really are. She actually says that (though not in those exact words) in the preface. She carefully avoids any reference to cases where the US didn't just look away, but actively supported with weapons and training people who were committing either mass murder or genocide. She can claim if she wants that only genocide was her topic, but if you are writing a book about American foreign policy and genocide, the fact that our government has supported mass murder in El Salvador, Angola, Turkey, Iraq, and other places is clearly relevant. And what we supported in East Timor was genocide. Power lies about this, saying that we "looked away" from East Timor. Wrong. It's probably significant that her buddy Richard Holbrooke was one of the architects of our East Timor policy when the Timorese were dying at peak rates in the late 70's. Holbrooke does show up several times in her book, but as the "good guy" in the case of the Balkans and in Cambodia.

Power is not an apologist for genocide, as some of her more vehement critics claim. But she is a hypocrite.

Femme fatale--As Hillary reminds us constantly, she has had plenty of 'experience', so it is possible to assess her leadership style. Additionally, there is the matter of how she has behaved during this campaign. Several themes are consistent--a tendency to exaggerate her responsibility for achievements , and downplay the contributions of others (from S-CHIP to the authorship of 'It takes a village), persecution complex (why are you always asking me the first question--what a weird complaint that was!), lack of any clear and consistent principles (the woman who praised the business community for their concerted effort to pass NAFTA is now its biggest critic). There is every reason to believe she will continue with this style if she is elected president.

Actually I don't think Bill Clinton is that bad at all. Hillary is the real hatchet woman. He is actually the kinder and nicer of the two.

Hillary Clinton did not murder, or order the murder of, anyone. She is not her husband. You talk about them as if they're a monster with one head. You have no idea how she will perform as a leader, and you simply hate her because she's married to him. Thank heavens you represent a tiny minority of this country's population and that you have absolutely no power. You are not progressives; you are not informed; you are hatemongers of the worst kind. Yuck.

Hillary Clinton is not a nice, kind person. She has always asked for people's 'heads' even for minor offences (years ago she was responsible for firing the entire WH travel agency staff). Even recently she really wanted MSNBC to fire the reporter who talked about Chelsea being 'pimped' out.

This will not change if she becomes president (probably get much worse).

Hillary Clinton IS a Monster, so should t-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons all read. Why punish Samantha Power for telling the truth?

Honestly, I would rather Obama pay more attention to his 'conservative' advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski than to 'liberal' Samantha Power. Brzezinski has made a robust case for getting out of Iraq, whereas Power sounds like she wants to stay until everything is fine (i.e. forever). That was also a part of this controversy, forgotten by the authors of this piece. Brzezinski is also, for an establishment voice, pretty good on Israel/Palestine. The New York Times reported that pro-Israel groups were horrified that Obama was meeting Brzezinski--if that isn't an endorsement, I don't know what is. Power basically wants to relegitimize US power through 'good' interventions. She has helped to undermine international law through arguments about 'humanitarian' militarism. Has anyone ever heard her say a word about the Palestinians (update: her wikipedia page says "In a 2002 interview at Berkeley[3] , Power proposed that instead of encouraging negotiations between Israelis and Arabs, the United States should spend "billions of dollars" to send a "meaningful military" force to effect the "imposition of a solution" and create "the new state of Palestine" beside Israel." (great, another chaotic US intervention--why not just cut off military aid to Israel?))? The notion that she was targeted by the Clinton campaign for her criticism of B. Clinton's handling of Rwanda is ludicrous. Strobe Talbot (who I believe has advised Hillary on foreign policy) says that Bill makes the same criticisms (in Talbot's book, The Great Experiment). This relegitimizes US force--we should have stepped in then, we must step in around the world now, etc.

>The next president will have to address a plethora of challenges ranging from the crises in Darfur and Southern Sudan to Iraq and U.S.-Cuba relations.<

What challenges? Is Sudan the 51st state? Progressive arguments for interference in other nations' affairs lead to the same situation neocon arguments do: national bankruptcy and the undermining of OUR democracy. We need to get over this mindset that only we can solve other peoples' problems. We got enough of our own to keep us busy.

ezflyer... i think you need to consider the people previous presidents have appointed when you reflect on the "regressives" bush has put in power. there have been many "progressives" who brought a hell of a lot of suffering to this world. tom friedman with his cheerleading for unjust economic policies, sam huntington who brought us the urbanization of cambodia and vietnam that effectively turned them into concentration camps... carter's entire team that armed madmen from suharto to the shah to somoza. albright and richard holbrooke who brought us East Timor, the iraqi sanctions, and more. I don't know that a democrat is going to put "progressive" people in power. There is certainly nothing in our history that points to this.

i'll leave you with seymour hersh's review of the the book Overthrow:

"Stephen Kinzer has a grim message for those critics of the Iraqi war who believe George W. Bush to be America's most misguided, uninformed, and reckless president. Bush has had plenty of company in the past century -- presidents who believe that America, as Kinzer tells us, has the right to wage war wherever it deems war necessary."

user - good points! obama's campaign machine is still cowardly, but why should we be surprised?

Thanks user. I'll change "good people like Samantha" to "good progressives", in my previous post.

I'm surprised this article made it to this site... and that people read it and think Samantha Power would be good for America.

Does anyone watch Democracy Now where she appeared twice in the last month, debated Jeremy Scahill and denied that the Iraqi sanctions were tantamount to genocide? Did anyone hear her deny that the US targeted civilians and soft targets in Kosovo in breach of international law?

Does anyone read Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky on this site... did you read Herman's response to Power's criticism of their work on Cambodia? Titled Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power and the "Worthy Genocide" establishment?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12404

Or how about Joseph Nevins (who contributes to commondreams) criticism of Power in The Nation magazine:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020520/nevins

Howard Zinn also voiced criticisms of her book, thus anyone who frequented commondreams should be well aware.

She employs flowery rhetoric... others were good at that in the past too.

She ignores genocides we enable and harps on about those we conveniently have little or nothing to do with.

Read Charles Shaw's comments above at 1:03pm.

Bush conspicuously appoints liars, thieves, abusers, murderers and other criminals to high government positions. Why should Obama, if he becomes president, not appoint good people like Samantha to a high government position? If he could actually change things, something his masters would never allow, he could appoint a whole slew of progressives to high government posts just like Bush has appointed so many regressives to the same posts.

Whoah - if Killary has goons at her service who can force you to resign for expressing an opinion, there's no hope of "change" except to make the current issues worse.

Powers should have raised a ruckus that couldn't be ignored by Faux News etc. Why did Obama's campaign machine let her go at all? Why didn't they raise a ruckus?

Hillary=Monster. Obama=no better.

Samantha Powers is not dead. She's still around and Obama, if he likes her expertise, is quite able to pick up the phone and call her. I'm always surprised at the MSM who continually act as though once a person has left a campaign that the candidate never sees or talks to that person again. They're gone - poof, like magic. How idiotic can you be? Hopefully Obama will stay in contact with her, and as someone above suggested will give her a job at State, or the White House if he's elected.

I listened carefully to Samantha Power "recently" on WBAI....I think it was on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, 9-10AM show. The woman was logical, and plain brilliant! (I have lone ago ceased to pay serious attention to the venemous cues emanating from the MainStreamPress;I refuse to react as a Pavlovian Dog. Just as importantly,internet blogs always need a critical eye as well. Finally, some of the unrelenting posters on CD sadly have really been "overdoing it." WHY NOT Give it a rest and try some activism outside of cyberspace. It can recharge burnt-out but enraged "experts' with whom I empathize.

Dare I say it?

Samantha Powers was right.

Hillary & her advisors are monsters - they'll do anything and say anything to win.

Time to clean up the Democratic Party.

Now.

birdflewunder is correct, and Kernel March is speaking from a viewpoint of the candidate whose foreign policy is "not as bad as not as bad as Bush".

Those half dead million babies in an effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein is one the most important things to remember about how the US fights war. It was very predictable that situation would reoccur as a result of the 2003 re-escalation of the war.

Why all the fuss about Samantha Power? Based on her work, she has created a distorted, though very popular (in the US), view of the role of the US government. Her book discussed at length the crimes of official US enemies and entirely ignored the crimes the US was directly responsible for.

In her view, the worst the US did was look away from the select crimes she mentions, when in fact the US was an active agent in creating large body counts around the world. She does not mention our roles in Vietnam or Guatemala; she mentions Cambodia only to denounce Pol Pot but she ignores the US bombing of that country (prior to Pol Pot's rise) the most bombed country in world history.

She ignores the crimes of our military ally Suharto in Indonesia when he was, with our explicit military and political endorsement, killing close to a million of his own people. And Power completely ignores the US created mass death in Iraq due to the sanctions, the sanctions that killed at least 500,000 iraqi children and about which Madeleine Albright (a current advisor for hillary clinton!) stated she felt 'was worth it'.

Based on Power's perspective of US foreign policy, she should have no part in informing a potential president on foreign policy decisions. Not because she called Hillary a 'monster', but because she helped cover up the real 'monster' of US foreign policy.

Let me assure you there are no great articles in the Atlantic Monthly, and it is incredible that anyone is making a case for this clown of a woman. If she is so unsophistacated to make stupid remarks to reporters, she hardly needs to be anyone you could depend upon to have anything worthwhile to say about anything. Mush headed people such as the authors should know that the Powers woman is only going to support U.S. imperialism. Do not waste your time on such trivial people; if you really want to have a good treatment of U.S. foreing policy and political reality, read William Appleman Williams, "Imperialism as a way of Life". U.S. foreign policy must be totally refocused and Obama is not the one to do that, and certainly not Hillary. Perhaps Obama can start the process, but I do not have much faith that he will. But he is going to have to turn to someone entirely new to reformulate foreing policy, and that does not seem to be on the aganda. We do not need any more foreign interventions for any reason; that is nonsense and only increases imperialist agendas. We need to get out of the intervention business and let the UN do whatever can be done. Intervention for "humanitarian reasons" only fuel intervention to impose a "democracy" or other bogus agendas. The U.S. causes untiol misery and suffering around the world, and does far more harm than good anywhere it puts down its military.

Let's see, murders little innocent children (cluster bombs), CHECK

Does that make her a "monster", CHECK

No harm, no foul

Namste

Samantha Power for sec of state...what a change that would be...the people should start clamoring for that "en masse", what she said was true, Hillary is a Monster, half a million Iraqi children starved to death were under her husband's watch caused by his sanctions and she did nothing said nothing, hundreds of thousands in Cuba and Indonesia also suffered enormously and needlessly because of Clinton foreign policy, and of course Rwanda and Congo under Clinton...if that's not monsteresque I don't know what is!

Samantha Power may be an accomplished writer, but she still used an inexcusable term about a woman.. If she is so great then she should have known better. She has apologized, but she still said it, and the damage is done.

Her case is no different from Reverend Wright, except worse, as there is some truth to what the Rev said, though he also overdid it and faced consequences. The Governor of NY also has repented and resigned, but he still did a foolish and even a criminal act, and has to pay the penalty for doing so.

One cannot help but wonder what is bringing out all of this vile discussion we are hearing. People seem not to be able to get their point across without going overboard, which usually lessens the value of their discourse.

My only complaint is that she was giving the term "monster" a bad rap.

Citroyen:
spread this on big newspaper websites or we're doomed. It is one of the very best articles ever on Clinton INC.
(Iknow i cant stand reading about them either but this article is different!)

You would be surprised how many people STILL dont get it how the CLintons are deeply complicit in the Rush ever rightwards. THIS IS BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO DO GET IT ARE ON WEBSITES AND DONT PROVIDE LINKS BACK TO THE MSM, SO ALL THEY HEAR IS THE OILY CNN ANALYSTS!

http://www.counterpunch.org/wypijewski03082008.html

Purohit and Stazinski are right. Let's hope Obama when elected President has the integrity and fortitude to appoint Powers to a senior foreign policy position where her insights and intelligence can be utilized in untying the Gordian knot that has bound up US foreign policy for the past 50 years since like sheep we submitted to the lies about the "Red scare", the 1940s version of "islamo fascism". Then it was the Russians who were going to be marching down the streets of middle America. Today it is hoards of Muslims. All of it is bull shit propounded by the elite that believe if they keep terrorizing us we will keep our mouths shut and submit to their lies. Let's hope those days are over and we are ready to stand up and tell the emperor he has no clothes on when that is clearly the case.