WASHINGTON — Fiery human rights advocate Samantha Power famously has taken presidents to task for refusing to use military force to stop genocide. But as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Power may need to bite her tongue as the Obama administration resists being drawn into Syria.
Those who know her well describe Power, 42, as vociferously passionate about confronting international atrocities, berating those who, in her mind, sit idly by. In 2008, Power called then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton a “monster.” A year earlier, she disparaged U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s work in Darfur as “disappointing.”
And in an article she wrote in 2001, titled “Bystanders to Genocide,” Power hammered those who put politics ahead of peacekeeping in Rwanda — including, she said, Susan Rice, the woman with whom she shared a podium Wednesday as she was nominated as the next U.N. ambassador. Rice was named President Barack Obama’s national security adviser at the same ceremony.
“To those who care deeply about America’s engagement and indispensable leadership in the world, you will find no stronger advocate for that cause than Samantha,” Obama told reporters in announcing the nomination.
Power, a native Dubliner who grew up in Pittsburgh and Atlanta, likely will have an even harder time watching her words. Reflecting on her time in the early 1990s as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Power said she returned to the U.S. “very sort of dispirited about the power of the pen, very dispirited about the United States and foreign policy.”
“The battle to stop genocide is lost in the realm of domestic politics,” Power said in the same June 2002 interview with C-Span, to discuss her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” “And that is where it can be won — if it’s to be won.”
Her self-written book summary was even more blunt: “The United States has never intervened to stop genocide,” she wrote.
Most governments have been careful not to label the civil war in Syria, which has killed more than 80,000 people and is now in its third year, as genocide.
Within minutes of her nomination, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., predicted Power will win an easy Senate confirmation, calling her “well-qualified for this important position.” McCain is one of the leading proponents of U.S. intervention in Syria.
“The hope is that her experience will give her the expertise and ability to address situations of mass atrocities in Syria effectively, and to be persuasive within the administration,” said Peggy Hicks, the global advocacy director at Human Rights Watch and a longtime Power friend and colleague.
Hicks added: “That doesn’t mean intervention, necessarily. It could be a broad range of strategies that could be effective in addressing human rights crises, like in Syria.”
She began working for Obama in 2005 as a foreign policy adviser and also served on his first presidential campaign, when Power described Clinton as “a monster” for, she said, fear mongering to voters in Ohio. Power resigned from Obama’s campaign, and apologized to Clinton shortly after his victory.
She remained influential in the White House as a senior national security staff adviser to Obama, overseeing human rights and multilateral affairs and stepped down only earlier this year to care for her two young children.
