A Problem from Hell

I often wonder what it is that our government leaders know and don’t know as it relates to foreign affairs.  Todays’ read is a frightening inside view to the horrors of life in very tumultuous environments.  In the book A Problem from Hell, reporter Samantha Power examines the idea of how much did American governmental leaders know about the killing of countries’ own citizens around the world.  Power, who served as a reporter from the fields in the Balkans witnesses first-hand the killing of innocent people by the government which leads her to come back to the US and begin to review all 20^th century mass murders in countries around the world that the US and other nations sat back and knowingly allowed to occur.  Through the research Power presents Raphael Lemkin, who escaped from Europe and attempted to tell the story of the atrocities occurring due to the Nazi occupation of his homeland.  Lemkin’s history of his efforts and coining of the phrase “genocide” – which was later added to the Webster’s dictionary because of Lemkin, lobbied American elected officials for decades to attempt to intervene in Europe and later bring to trial those who lead the innocent killings.  Unfortunately, history always repeats itself and Power has far too many stories to tell of the twentieth century genocide cases.  She provides in-depth data from primary sources on other individual genocides and the U.S. response in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo.  Power does find some leaders who tried to tell the story, such as Romeo Dallaire (a Canadian UN peacekeeping military leader) , politician Senator Proxmire, and even President Reagan, who eventually passed a US response to genocide during his term, 50 years after Lemkin began his efforts.  The book is filled with horrific details, some with pictures of the dead (graphic pics…) and outstanding supporting documents to illustrate her case.   Her story is based on her first-hand experiences often wondering how this could happen again and again.  The question seems to repeat itself, how do we know when it is really happening and what should outsiders be expected to do from a moral standpoint.  If you don’t believe intervention from the outside is necessary, then be moved by the data.  A harrowing tale that needed to be told.  Having the morals to act when needed is critical in political leadership and Power has been able to tell the story the citizens did not know at the time.  Kudos for sharing this tale to the citizenry.  Hard, but necessary read.