''A Problem from Hell'': America and the Age of Genocide

From former UN Ambassador and author of the New York Times bestseller The Education of an Idealist Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on America's repeated failure to stop genocides around the world In her prizewinning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act. A modern classic and "an angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book" (New Republic), "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780465061518 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Basic Books Publication Date: 12-24-2013 Pages: 656 Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.80(d) Age Range: 18 YearsAbout the Author Samantha Power, the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School, served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 and was previously Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and the Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and is also the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir The Education of an Idealist and Sergio: One Man's Fight to Save the World and the co-editor of The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World. Power is a former Balkan war correspondent and a recipient of the National Magazine Award and the Pulitzer Prize, among numerous other honors. She has been named by Time as one of the world's 100 Most Influential People and by Forbes as one of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt Chapter One "Race Murder" Trial by Fire On March 14, 1921, on a damp day in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, a twenty-four-year-old Armenian crept up behind a man in a heavy gray overcoat swinging his cane. The Armenian, Soghomon Tehlirian, placed a revolver at the back of the man's head and pulled the trigger, shouting, "This is to avenge the death of my family!" The burly target crumpled. If you had heard the shot and spotted the rage distorting the face of the young offender, you might have suspected that you were witnessing a murder to avenge a very different kind of crime. But back then you would not have known to call the crime in question "genocide." The word did not yet exist.     Tehlirian, the Armenian assassin, was quickly tackled. As pedestrians beat him with their fists and house keys, he shouted in broken German, "I foreigner, he foreigner, this not hurt Germany.... It's nothing to do with you." It was national justice carried out in an international setting. Tehlirian had just murdered Talaat Pasha, the former Turkish interior minister who had set out to rid Turkey of its Armenian "problem." In 1915 Talaat had presided over the killing by firing squad, bayoneting, bludgeoning, and starvation of nearly 1 million Armenians.     The outside world had known that the Armenians were at grave risk well before Talaat and the Young Turk leadership ordered their deportation. When Turkey entered World War I on the side of Germany against Britain, France, and Russia, Talaat made it clear that theempire would target its Christian subjects. In January 1915, in remarks reported by the New York Times, Talaat said that there was no room for Christians in Turkey and that their supporters should advise them to clear out. By late March Turkey had begun disarming Armenian men serving in the Ottoman army. On April 25, 1915, the day the Allies invaded Turkey, Talaat ordered the roundup and execution of some 250 leading Armenian intellectuals in Constantinople. In each of Turkey's six eastern provinces, local Armenian notables met roughly the same fate. Armenian men in rural areas were initially enlisted as pack animals to transport Turkish supplies to the front, but soon even this was deemed too dignified an existence for the traitorous Christians. Churches were desecrated. Armenian schools were closed, and those teachers who refused to convert to Islam were killed. All over Anatolia the authorities posted deportation orders requiring the Armenians to relocate to camps prepared in the deserts of Syria. In fact, the Turkish authorities knew that no facilities had been prepared, and more than half of the deported Armenians died on the way. "By continuing the deportation of the orphans to their destinations during the intense cold," Talaat wrote, "we are ensuring their eternal rest."     "Official proclamations," like this one from June 1915, cropped up around town: Our Armenian fellow countrymen, ... because ... they have ... attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state, ... have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior ... and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined upon all Ottomans:<Table of Contents Table of Contents Preface     xi"Race Murder"     1"A Crime Without a Name"     17The Crime With a Name     31Lemkin's Law     47"A Most Lethal Pair of Foes"     61Cambodia: "Helpless Giant"     87Speaking Loudly and Looking for a Stick     155Iraq: "Human Rights and Chemical Weapons Use Aside"     171Bosnia: "No More than Witnesses at a Funeral"     247Rwanda: "Mostly in a Listening Mode"     329Srebrenica: "Getting Creamed"     391Kosovo: A Dog and a Fight     443Lemkin's Courtroom Legacy     475Conclusion     503Notes     517Bibliography     583Acknowledgments     599Index     603 Show More