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Title: "A Problem from Hell" : America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power ISBN: 0-06-054164-4 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (139 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Why Genocide Is Repetitive
Comment: It should be the easiest subject to have universal agreement on; Genocide is reprehensible and cannot be defended. The reality is of course much different for our species is the only one that kills, tortures, and maims its members without cause. Differences in religion, the desire to control land, natural resources, or hunger for power are not reasons to kill entire groups. The title of the book is, "A Problem From Hell", and it is an outstanding work by Samantha Power. She is not only a competent historian she spent years in the midst of one of the more recent examples of what could also be called, a problem of human nature. This Nation's Congress took 40 years to ratify the treaty on Genocide. It seems some Southern Congressmen were worried about culpability from Jim Crow that was still alive and well, others for the millions of Native Americans slaughtered because they were in our way.
She specifically covers the massacre of Armenians by Turkey, Hitler's murder of the Jews, Pol Pot's slaughter of Cambodians, Saddam Hussein gassing minorities in Iraq, the 1994 murder of 800,000 people in Rwanda, and most recently the Serb Nationalist's bid to join the roster of those who kill almost for sport. The mass killing is not sport however the individual conduct of the sadists who enjoy inventive killing is hard to read.
In 1915 The United States was not in a position to impose on Turkey. It is now 2002 and The United States deems Turkey an ally, a country that has refused to admit any Genocide took place. The United States has a congress that killed a vote condemning the Turkish Government because hours before the vote President Clinton, a lame duck President asked them too. It is a sad commentary that our congress lacks the moral fiber of men like Henry Morgenthau our Ambassador to Turkey while they were killing, a man who was denouncing what he called, "Race Murder", while trying to gain the attention of his government.
The Holocaust is well documented and some of the participants were punished, but it and Armenia are events that are 50 and 100 years old, and blurred by time. They are still better remembered than millions of Native Americans slaughtered, and millions, who were bought, sold, enslaved, and murdered because they were black.
In the 1970's 2,000,000 were killed in Cambodia, the 1980's brought Saddam Hussein and his slaughter of The Kurds, and then in 1994, the world watched Rwanda, 800,00 dead, and then the former Yugoslavia, they are still counting the missing. In 2001 on September 11th on a comparably small scale we experienced the murder of our citizens only because they were Americans.
Largely because of what was Yugoslavia a new international treaty was created to establish a body to constantly deal with the crimes discussed. The treaty requires 60 nations ratify the document for it to become reality. When this book was written 43 had signed, about 10 days ago 66 was reached. The United States is not a party to this effort.
When I started this book it was easy to deal with U.S. conduct simplistically. At the end of the book the same issues became very gray. As the world stands today any intervention will require The United States. This has nothing to do with misplaced national pride it's reality. We had Special Forces in Afghanistan 48 hours after The World Trade Center was hit. We can monitor any piece of ground on the planet with either satellites, manned or unmanned aircraft capable of real time intelligence gathering within hours of deciding to deploy them. Our military is without peer in both individual capability and technological superiority. So what should we do?
The Rwandan Genocide took place in approximately 100 days, 8,000 murdered per day. The only effective response would have been a unilateral move by The United States into Rwanda. The United Nations would take 100 days to agree on the shape of the table to meet at. What would be our reason for violating another sovereign nation? Genocide seems to be a very good reason. But now back to reality. How many confirmed deaths justify military intervention, what threshold needs to be met for our country to commit forces and lose lives of our soldiers? And it may be unpopular to state but there needs to be more than philosophical outrage to act. What is Rwanda to The U.S.? The reality is virtually nothing. Iraq threatened our economy intervention was an easy call. A U.N. sanctioned operation; it took 5 months to start, had severe limitations, and left Iraq a viable threat.
The conclusion I came to after reading and thinking about the book is that the closest one can get to a stated policy would be something like what follows. The United States decides that we are going to be the world's police force. No other country can do it, so we will. Economic sanctions will be forced upon the offending country to pay the bill, because the citizenry of this nation will not. This will necessitate our not being involved in any treaty that exposes us to any liability or sanction other than those we place on ourselves. The other extreme is we act only when it is in the interest of our country to do so The Rwandas of the world are ignored, and we protect our interests or punish those responsible for September 11th like attacks.
I enjoyed this book, and I share the author's anger and frustration. There is no record on effective international cooperation, and there is no way The United States will become a police force. It is true a Serb official killed himself 2 weeks ago to avoid being deported and tried, and the Dutch Government resigned last week over their inaction during Srebrenica. Neither action saved a single life.
Genocide will stop when humans evolve further, not before.
Rating: 5
Summary: Why History Repeats Itself
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Thorough but short-sighted
Comment: In "A Problem From Hell", Samantha Power makes an ambitious attempt to analyze a century of Genocide, beginning with the 1915 Genocide of Armenians by the Turks, and ending with the still all-too-recent horrors in Kosovo. She finds the usual suspects, in the form of ruthless dictators and hate-mongers who cynically deny any wrongdoing even as mass graves are dug up, and western politicians who hold the scales of justice in their hands (in the form of modern military forces) but who find their own precious political careers weightier than the lives of thousands--or even millions--of people "over there". She also finds a few unusual heroes, particularly a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin with a habit of accosting high goverment officials as they stroll the halls of Congress.
I must give Ms. Power credit for avoiding some of the knee-jerk anti-war attitudes of the contemporary left. No shrinking violet, she clearly advocates the position that it is acceptable--even an imperative--to go to war when the moral cause is compelling. Nor is she in principle averse to using the tools of retail politics. If a western coutry can muster selfish reasons to act on behalf of a moral cause, so much the better.
She falters, however, by not showing how a western politician can make such a decision more palatable to his or her constituents. She musters a powerful argument for the moral need to stop genocide, and to pay a price in blood and treasure to do so, but this is of little practical value in the post-Nazi, post-civil rights era when every politician pays lip service to ending genocide. As such, I am afraid this book must be viewed as merely one of the best in a long series of books whose only real value is to preach to activists for whom genocide is already an overriding concern. Despite an earnest effort, Samantha Power has failed to bridge the gap between activists, and those western leaders who have the muscle to stop genocide, but who also have quite a bit else on their minds.
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Title: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch ISBN: 0312243359 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges ISBN: 1400034639 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 10 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Realizing Human Rights : Moving from Inspiration to Impact by Samantha Power, Graham Allison ISBN: 0312234945 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Pub. Date: 30 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: When Victims Become Killers : Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda by Mahmood Mamdani ISBN: 0691102805 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 12 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire ISBN: 0679311718 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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