Samantha Powers, President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, came under fire for inflammatory comments she has made targeted at the U.S. and Israel at her confirmation hearing this morning. The Harvard academic did her best not to wade too deeply into her past by providing plenty of platitudes.

Marco Rubio led the charge, citing a number of pieces Powers had written. He pressed her on a 2003 article in The New Republic in which she wrote that the U.S. needed “a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States”; Power responded by pointing to the U.S.’s lack of action on the Rwandan genocide as a crime permitted, but dodged the first part of the question about crimes committed and sponsored.

When asked again, she said, “I think this is the greatest country on Earth . . . I will not apologize for America.”

While not directly answering the questions, she made sure to praise the U.S. for being a leader on human rights, a sentiment that runs counter some of her previous statements. She’s strongly criticized the U.S. for its record on human-rights, including its trade policies and its refusal to sign certain international treaties, calling on the country do a “reconceptualizing” of its foreign policy.

Upon her nomination last month, Charles C. W. Cooke highlighted some of Powers’s other controversial statements.