On March 18, President Obama explained his decision to mobilize the United States military for international intervention in Libya. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Qaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.” (As if it hasn’t been already?)
Advertisement
That last sentence was a Realpolitik, national-interest justification for the U.S. intervention. But it rang hollow. Regional destabilization would be likelier to center on Egypt, where a nascent and fragile democracy’s first vote reflected growing power for the Muslim Brotherhood and marginalization for young secularists; or on Yemen, where an important ally in U.S. counterterrorism efforts is following a script uncannily similar to Egypt’s, but with greater sectarianism; or on the tiny kingdom of Bahrain, where all the elements of a perfect Middle East storm — Sunni vs. Shia, Arab vs. Persian, and American-backed vs. anti-American — are cooling America’s relations with Saudi Arabia, and threatening the cold peace between the latter and Iran; or even on Syria, where a regime that kept Israel’s northeastern border relatively quiet for 40 years is endangered. The citizens of Benghazi, on the other hand, are hardly essential U.S. allies or linchpins of geopolitical stability.
The real motivation animating the intervention was humanitarian. At a private conference with foreign-policy experts last week, President Obama’s advisers reportedly admitted as much. In justifying a “limited humanitarian intervention,” White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross explained to the conference that “We were looking at ‘Srebrenica on steroids’ — the real or imminent possibility that up to a 100,000 people could be massacred, and everyone would blame us for it.” That allusion has been common (a Wall Street Journal op-ed was subtitled, “Benghazi would have been the president’s Srebrenica”). And it is especially apt for one reason: Samantha Power.
Power, who is the senior director of multilateral affairs for the National Security Council, says a formative experience in her life was her attempt in early July 1995 to file a report with the Washington Post about Gen. Ratko Mladic’s approach toward the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. She had gone to Bosnia fresh out of Yale, and now wanted to sound the alarm in order to inspire international intervention. Her report was rejected, and the next day Mladic ordered the systematic executions that would send more than 8,000 Muslim boys and men to mass graves.
Power later rose to intellectual prominence with a book inspired by that experience. A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide is a sustained examination of America’s and the international community’s responses to the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge massacres, Saddam’s chemical warfare against the Kurds, Hutu versus Tutsi violence in Rwanda, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. She describes herself in public appearances as “an old-fashioned human-rights person,” or “a genocide chick.” The ironic inflection conveys that she is (1) conscious that her ideas might seem basic, simple, even clichéd, and (2) no less committed to their fundamental goodness and truth. And she’s no provincial liberal: She has extensively praised American evangelicals’ international charity and takes shots at the lit-department Left’s apologists for human-rights abusers in Third World countries.
On a wave of critical acclaim, Power went on to prestigious appointments in human-rights advocacy groups and academe, eventually becoming the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Power became well ensconced within the halls of influence. While at Harvard, she invited her students to dinner with Marty Peretz, Niall Ferguson, and other heavy hitters of public intellectual life. She’s also charismatic. She towers vertically, with a looming brow and a booming voice. Men’s Vogue profiled her as “a rare Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot.”
So it was only natural that, in early 2005, Power got a call from then-senator Obama. He had just read A Problem from Hell. The two met up in Washington, and by the end of a four-hour conversation, she was completely taken with him. She joked later, “I said, Why don’t I leave my job at Harvard and come work as an intern for you?”
OHHHH. This makes sense, and the humanitarian impulse was directly stated by President Obama in his address last night. We cannot now know if a humanitarian crisis was averted in Bhenghazi. We cannot even know whether the threat of American/Nato response acted as a precipitant for Qaddafi's (supposed) intent to massacre. It is not that I doubt that he did, but rather that the intervention could have been a form of genocide in itself. It's a knotty problem.
When obama, Power et al stop abortion and stop bannkrupting America, then their argument for a humanitarian cause to intervene in Libya might be valid.
Since becoming President, about 2.6 million innocent, American babies have been aborted, yet obama and his team have done nothing to stop this humanitarian crisis in America.
Indeed, obama and his team have worked to expand this crisis. Moreover, they not only war with innocent, unborn babies, but work to saddle every born, American baby with a debt they can never repay, clearly a threat to thier liberty and ability to pursue happiness.
If the government of the United States of America will not secure the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in America, then how can it justify risking our talent and spending our treasure to secure life in Libya or anywhere else?
1. Matthew, thanks for the balanced discussion of Power. Perhaps a future piece might discuss the relationship between Bush's liberty agenda and Power's views.
2. If the country were on sound footing and leading the world into the future, it would be distasteful to argue with liberty and humanitarian agendas. It's a very different matter for a nation in decline--a nation that is unwilling or unable to competently conduct its internal affairs--to entertain such sweeping policies. (NB: I do not believe that American decline is yet irreversible.)
Samantha Powers may be right or wrong and she and her supporters should be given a voice.
However, they have no constitutional authority to use a gun, yet. They have to convince the Congress first.
The President currently has no authority to prosecute this war because it is not defensive in nature.
He has the authority to send humanitarian aid, if there were a staging area outside of Libya that would allow it. We did that in the Balkans conflict and I think it was the only good thing we did.
Not knowing the geography, or the location of the fighting in Libya, I have no idea if that would be practicle.
The obvious problem with her theory that the U.S. should act to prevent genocides, which now, apparently, includes culminating battles in civil wars, is that U.S. military power, as great as it is, is a scarce commodity.
It is not the instrument of a universal police force.
Her formative moment was Bosnia. Here's a hard fact about Bosnia: It's in Europe. As the ethnic cleansing proceeded, might I be so bold to ask, where were the Europeans?
The United States has a very important role for which the scarce commodity of its military power must be conserved: The U.S. is the status quo superpower, which means that it can restore a breach in the sovereign state system (but not everywhere or all the time), and it is the guarantor of strategic peace, which means that it has sufficient military power to deter wars, and that includes nuclear deterrence. Those are its chief "humanitarian" missions and they must not be compromised.
In the general run of things, the U.S. will deploy its military to help in disaster relief. That's not warfare. And will occasionally help to alleviate man-caused suffering, with minor incursions where violence is rife.
Ms. Power should think hard about her role in launching hundreds of cruise missiles and flying hundreds of bombing missions against Libya's army in the name of "humanity." That was "humanity" on steroids, and it was taking sides in a civil war where we have a known tyrant and a supposedly unknown "rebel" force.
Humanitarian relief in Libya, as inconvenient as it might have been for such an newly ambitious CINC, would consist of setting up a zone protecting civilians who chose to flee the war. The "rebels" could continue at their own risk and peril to challenge the government.
Warfare was the choice, not humanitarian relief, in the face of this prospective genocide.
It is most unfortunate that Samantha Power appears to be the driving force behind Obama's recent course of action. And yet it is no surprise. No good will come of this for anyone who believes in the rule of law and the separation of power in the United States, already seriously challenged during the last two years.
"Samantha Power also condemns those who argue that humanitarian interventions can have unpredictable consequences that could eventually add to the harm."
Well, I hope she remembers this a year from now. We're now learning that the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Quaeda have a presence in the Libyan uprising. And if history serves as a guide, a power vacuum usually serves the well organized. Just look at what's happening in Egypt. Has she heard of Iran?
We could very well be enabling our enemies in Libya. For the sake of argument, let's say AQ and the Brotherhood gain power and start committing atrocities toward the loyalists. Are we going to start shooting at them?
What if Libya does indeed become the next Afghanistan, basically serving as a giant terrorist camp in which to launch future terror attacks against the United States.
It's all well and good to think "humanitarian." Just be careful you're not inadvertently defending our enemies in the process. If there's one thing we've learned from Muslim fundamentalists: no matter how many times we go in and defend them, they still hate us all the same.
Leftists sure seem comfortable with making decisions about life and death. Powers et al want to save bunch X, which will probably result (if they are successful) in killing bunch Y. Of course, they may not be successful, and by adding complexity may create a whole new set Z = collateral +([X + Y]/.422). Or something.
Meanwhile, Powers et al are so certain they are morally right (never mind factually right) that they are comfortable making a decision for America, bypassing Congress, that may also involve the lives of Americans. It certainly spends taxpayer $. Just a touch of humility now and then would be attractive, even the pretense would acknowledge that they realize it's a desirable character trait!
How ironic it is that a president who was elected in large part thanks to another revival of America's latent instinct towards isolationism will wind up conceiving a doctrine that essentially mandates American interference in every modern conflict that comes to the attention of the United Nations. It's a good thing he did a rotten job of articulating it.
If Gadhafi wins, there's a good chance for genocide. If he loses, there's a good chance for genocide. The only way Power's "impressive intellect" can produce a winning scenario is if we create a stalemate with neither side winning - or if we invade the country and try to put in a government loyal to Western sensibilities.
You know, this sounds awfully familiar. Dear left wing luminaries: welcome to the last 40 years of American Middle Eastern policy. Glad to have you aboard.
Are we supposed to be impressed because Obama and his cadre of intellectual flatulators suddenly figured out the world is a jungle? Or perhaps we should be impressed because they've re-framed the same arguments the right has been shouting from the rooftops for years in terms that please the arrogant myopia of high society hand wringers?
Whether we bomb Arabs for oil or we bomb them because we think they have weapons of mass destruction or we bomb them to neutralize Al Qaeda or we bomb them to stop them from bombing themselves, one inescapable fact remains: we are bombing Arabs. And we are doing it indecisively.
History shows that whatever high minded rationalizations we choose to employ to make ourselves feel better about it, war is best waged decisively. Obama should listen to his generals, who know a thing or two about warfare in the Middle East even if they haven't written any impressive Harvard publications about it lately. The fact that he doesn't explains why every foreign policy initiative this president has undertaken that was not conceived by the previous administration has backfired.
Thank you Belltower. Power represents, like Obama, academic left wing arrogance and pure hubris on the part of someone who has clearly never been to war, never been in the military. The left's disdain for the military that thinks they are all a big "kill squad" of morons leads to an arrogance that bequeathes to us what we have now. This administration is completely out of control in just about every way one can imagine. Their behavior is far worse than anything Bush ever did. It is so out of control that we will all be forced to agree with Dennis Kucinich!
