A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide [Paperback]

Samantha Power (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 6, 2003

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize For General Nonfiction National Book Critics Circle Award Winner

In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power -- a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy -- asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policy makers, access to newly declassified documents, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields, Power provides the answer in "A Problem from Hell" -- a groundbreaking work that tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

During the three years (1993-1996) Samantha Power spent covering the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica, she became increasingly frustrated with how little the United States was willing to do to counteract the genocide occurring there. After much research, she discovered a pattern: "The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred," she writes in this impressive book. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century, Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S. She does not claim that the U.S. alone could have prevented such horrors, but does make a convincing case that even a modest effort would have had significant impact. Based on declassified information, private papers, and interviews with more than 300 American policymakers, Power makes it clear that a lack of political will was the most significant factor for this failure to intervene. Some courageous U.S. leaders did work to combat and call attention to ethnic cleansing as it occurred, but the vast majority of politicians and diplomats ignored the issue, as did the American public, leading Power to note that "no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." This powerful book is a call to make such indifference a thing of the past. --Shawn Carkonen --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Power, a former journalist for U.S. News and World Report and the Economist and now the executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, offers an uncompromising and disturbing examination of 20th-century acts of genocide and U.S responses to them. In clean, unadorned prose, Power revisits the Turkish genocide directed at Armenians in 1915-1916, the Holocaust, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Iraqi attacks on Kurdish populations, Rwanda, and Bosnian "ethnic cleansing," and in doing so, argues that U.S. intervention has been shamefully inadequate. The emotional force of Power's argument is carried by moving, sometimes almost unbearable stories of the victims and survivors of such brutality. Her analysis of U.S. politics what she casts as the State Department's unwritten rule that nonaction is better than action with a PR backlash; the Pentagon's unwillingness to see a moral imperative; an isolationist right; a suspicious left and a population unconcerned with distant nations aims to show how ingrained inertia is, even as she argues that the U.S. must reevaluate the principles it applies to foreign policy choices. In the face of firsthand accounts of genocide, invocations of geopolitical considerations and studied and repeated refusals to accept the reality of genocidal campaigns simply fail to convince, she insists. But Power also sees signs that the fight against genocide has made progress. Prominent among those who made a difference are Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who invented the word genocide and who lobbied the U.N. to make genocide the subject of an international treaty, and Senator William Proxmire, who for 19 years spoke every day on the floor of the U.S. Senate to urge the U.S. to ratify the U.N. treaty inspired by Lemkin's work. This is a well-researched and powerful study that is both a history and a call to action. Photos.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 644 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 3rd edition (May 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060541644
• ISBN-13: 978-0060541644
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (218 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I could not put this book down . . . November 4, 2003

By Helen L.

Format:Paperback

"A Problem From Hell" is what Secretary of State Warren Christopher called the Bosnia war. After the author, Samantha Power, reported on that war, she studied the beginnings and ends of some other major genocides of the 20th century. This book is her report, and it is stunning, not as an indictment of anyone, but as a revelation to us all.

First, the beginning: Genocide begins with the policy choice of a man in command of a sovereign state to achieve state aims by killing pre-identified citizens. The book details the policies of the Young Turk Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Bagosora, and Slobodan Milosevic.

Second, the end: Genocide cannot be prevented or ended from the outside if respect of national sovereignty trumps other values, which it usually does. Even if international effort or an invasion from the outside runs over national sovereignty, genocide is unlikely to be stopped unless the suffering is personally witnessed. Genocide stops when individuals who MUST fight evil act to end it. The book tells the uplifting story of a number of heroic individuals who became political Good Samaritans to help the victims of genocide. The first of these was Raphael Lemkin, who coined the work "genocide." Read the book to find out who the others are -- you will be pleased and surprised to learn of the actions of some very selfless Americans.

This book was the parable of the Good Samaritan writ large. Most of us choose to walk by on the other side of the road when the thief attacks the victim, the better not to see the victim's terror and suffering. This book should jolt us out of that habit, and if you opposed our invasion of Iraq, you might find solace in knowing that we deposed a perpetrator of genocide.

44 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, readable, important January 4, 2004

By Judith Lautner

Format:Paperback

As I was finishing this book, one thought that crossed my mind was that Ms. Power's family should be proud of her. To have done the necessary research and then, more importantly, to have written the story of genocide in the last century, to have faced down what must have been periodic visions of horror and gone on, is a feat most of us can only imagine. Ms. Power stands out as one of the heroes who are rarely recognized. I was pleased to note her special tribute to her parents after I had this thought.

The book takes us from the Armenian massacres in 1915 through the Bosnian Serb massacres of Muslims in the 1990s, describing how each situation developed, how it was viewed by the world, what was done about the atrocities. There are hard facts, stories of bad decisions, details of massacres, rape, and destruction. What might otherwise have become a dry (yet horrifying) history book is lifted and made personal by the author's restrained yet compassionate style, and by her inclusion of the stories of the many individuals who worked to stop genocide over the years.

The focus of the book is on the response of the United States to repeated instances of genocide in different parts of the world, and that response in the 20th century was consistent. The United States did nothing to stop genocide unless it was in our national interest to do so. And it rarely is.

Oddly, although I feel shame and disgust with our leaders for choosing to do nothing in the face of indisputable information on massive slaughter, I also feel hope. Throughout the years a few people have stood up, have braved ridicule, loss of life, loss of careers, even loss of their mental stability, to speak for the invisible, the victims.... These few individuals rose like bubbles to the surface again and again, were forced down and rose up, would not let go. It is because such persons have arisen, often from unlikely places, that I hold out hope for our future.

I also take hope, although it may be premature, in the maturing of our society and its government. The analysis in this extraordinary work of the way decisions were made also suggests that there are alternatives. It is clear that when we have 1) no mandate for protecting innocent persons from slaughter and 2) no plan for dealing with genocidal regimes that we are going to be caught in a bind again and again, continually applying the lessons of "the last war" to the present one, and almost always choosing the wrong course.

Our government relies heavily on public pressure and when that pressure doesn't materialize primarily because the public does not know what's going on, decisions are made that do not reflect the feelings of the majority of Americans. Again and again I read that "the public doesn't care because [the country] is too far away". We do care. We care when we know. There is now a far simpler solution to filling this gap than there has been in the past: the Internet. I have high hopes for its use to provide accurate information and gather support for actions against future Milosevics.

The book is long and the information in it well-documented. There are 620 pages in the soft-cover edition, including a 17-page index and 80 pages of notes. Power used not only the extensive printed sources listed, but interviewed hundreds of persons. The result is readable, compelling, and for me difficult to put down. Read more ›

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Chastening October 19, 2003

By R. Albin TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

This powerful and chastening book is a detailed account of American official responses to the recurrent genocides of the 20th century. Power begins with the slaughter of the Armenians by Turkish nationalists in WWI, goes through the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Saddam Hussein's attack on the Kurds, and the disasters that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Much of the book is a detailed analysis of American response to the more recent events, notably Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo. For the sake of completeness, I'd like to mention that Power doesn't cover all the genocides of the last century. The massacres in Burundi and the mass killings in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) are barely mentioned.
What did the US do about these atrocities? The short answer is that US policy has been consistently not to do much of anything about these events. This has been true regardless of which party has been in power and regardless of whether administrations have been relatively liberal or conservative. Even worse, there are several examples of American administrations either implicitly (Cambodia) or explicitly (Hussein's Iraq) aiding governments engaged in genocidal activities. The hypocrisy of several administrations is simply startling and has ironic dimensions. Several important policy makers in the first Bush administration disparaged humanitarianism and support for human rights as appropriate responses to Saddam Hussein's genocidal attacks on the Kurds on northern Iraq. Some of these individuals are now prominent in the present Bush administration and use humanitarian arguments to justify the present Iraq policy. This type of hypocrisy is matched only by the behavior of the Clinton administration during the Rwanda and Bosnia crises.... This is a shameful record and many chapters make for very depressing reading.
It appears that it is very difficult to mobilize our system to do much about genocidal events. Kosovo is an interesting counter-example. Only when a number of important Clinton administration policy makers and members of Congress, and public opinion were in favor military intervention was it possible for efforts to be made to intervene successfully. When only a few influential figures are in favor of intervention, it is hard to accomplish much. Senator Dole, in probably the most distinguished episode of his long political career, was an outspoken advocate for the Bosnian Muslims. Despite his considerable influence, there was little support for intervention in either his own party or the Clinton administration for appropriate intervention.
A good part of the book is devoted to the efforts of individuals in the US who attempt to persuade our governments to pursue more aggressive policies towards genocides. What is striking is how isolated many of these individuals become. The obessive Polish-American lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide and worked tirelessly for international conventions against genocide,is the archetype of these individuals. At this death, Lemkin was a penniless fringe figure. What progress we have seen, howwver, is due in large part to the efforts of these quixotic people.
Power ends with a short final chapter that contains some actual policy prescriptions. These are generally sensible, even modest, but hard to implement in our political system. This is not an indictment of Power's suggestions but rather of a political system that doesn't place a great deal of value on human life. Read more ›