Samantha Power on the duty to intervene

Even if she were in town, Power most likely wouldn’t be tweeting, or speaking publicly. The administration is bollixed-up by this latest horrendous news from Syria, and the Pentagon has been pushing hard against the diplomats — John Kerry chief among them — who would like to see more direct American intervention. …

But it’s not impossible to guess what Power might be thinking. Her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “‘A Problem From Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” published a decade ago, will be our useful guide.

I pulled the book off the shelf last night, and was reminded that it is brilliant, a carefully written, deeply researched indictment of American indifference in the face of atrocity. And I realized that the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria must be driving Power mad with frustration — frustration, of course, with Bashar al-Assad’s killer regime and frustration with the international community (so-called), in particular the Russians, who will do almost anything to protect the regime from censure, but also frustration with those in the administration who have spent the past two years looking for ways to distance the U.S. from the horror. …

So I have a sense that Power would believe that the following statement, which she made in her book’s concluding chapter, would apply to Syria: “When innocent life is being taken on such a scale and the United States has the power to stop the killing at reasonable risk, it has a duty to act.”