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jldaylu's review against another edition
Started grad school in the fall, made me less inclined to read this; stopped in the middle of the chapter and didn't feel like starting up again after six months; Samantha Power has gone on to become an apologist of US policy and a friend to war criminals like Henry Kissinger, which soured me on the book and I decided it wasn't worth slogging through.
jaclyn_youngblood's review against another edition
5.0
Power provides an excellent thesis-as-lens on America's reaction to, and level of (non)involvement in, genocides occurring around the world in the 20th century. I would recommend having read some work of scholarly or academic bent on these countries and aggressors before picking up Power'a tome, but I appreciated her argumentation (and, bias here since I agree) and position. Thanks to Power, I'm off to learn more about Iraq and Kosovo.
johnsaveland's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent, heavily-researched examination of the last century of genocide, but really the last century of how foreign policy is conducted, and how political risks of action can outweigh the potentially catastrophic human toll of inaction.
It's also, perhaps surprisingly, an incredibly engaging read. This isn't a textbook; it unfolds like a few dozen interconnected stories, but with real stakes.
Anyone interested in foreign policy, in the inner workings of how the US undertakes action (from diplomacy to force), and in very underreported parts of our history will love this book.
As a side note: it was published in 2003 (written in the decade leading into that), and I wonder how she'd expand upon some of her observations today.
It's also, perhaps surprisingly, an incredibly engaging read. This isn't a textbook; it unfolds like a few dozen interconnected stories, but with real stakes.
Anyone interested in foreign policy, in the inner workings of how the US undertakes action (from diplomacy to force), and in very underreported parts of our history will love this book.
As a side note: it was published in 2003 (written in the decade leading into that), and I wonder how she'd expand upon some of her observations today.
vlodko62's review against another edition
4.0
This book is not for the faint-at-heart. And it's best read when one has the stomach for human tragedy. That said, this is one of the most important books I've read in a very long time. The author, Samantha Power, is the current US Ambassador to the United Nations.
This is a clear-eyed and impassioned view of some of the 20th Century's most horrific events - those that have cleared the definition of genocide in international law. That story is in itself a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.
The book is doubly tragic by framing its narrative around the quixotic figures who did what they could against evil - Raphael Lemkin, who fought tirelessly to get the UN Genocide Convention adopted, and died penniless and broken. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who stood on the floor of the US Senate every day that it was in session and spoke out to get the US to ratify the Convention (over 3,000 speeches). State Department field officers who put their careers on the line - sometimes destroying those careers entirely - by speaking out about the killings in Cambodia or the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s. The generals who led UN peacekeeping missions and who were marginalized for demanding the troops and the rules of engagement that would allow them to stop the killing.
Thank you, Raphael Lemkin. Thank you Peter Galbraith. Thank you Romeo Dallaire. Thank you General Wesley Clark. Thank you Richard Holbrooke. I'll end with a quote from Holbrooke: "If we had bombed those f**kers, as I recommended, Srebrenica would not have happened."
This is a clear-eyed and impassioned view of some of the 20th Century's most horrific events - those that have cleared the definition of genocide in international law. That story is in itself a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.
The book is doubly tragic by framing its narrative around the quixotic figures who did what they could against evil - Raphael Lemkin, who fought tirelessly to get the UN Genocide Convention adopted, and died penniless and broken. Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who stood on the floor of the US Senate every day that it was in session and spoke out to get the US to ratify the Convention (over 3,000 speeches). State Department field officers who put their careers on the line - sometimes destroying those careers entirely - by speaking out about the killings in Cambodia or the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq in the late 1980s. The generals who led UN peacekeeping missions and who were marginalized for demanding the troops and the rules of engagement that would allow them to stop the killing.
Thank you, Raphael Lemkin. Thank you Peter Galbraith. Thank you Romeo Dallaire. Thank you General Wesley Clark. Thank you Richard Holbrooke. I'll end with a quote from Holbrooke: "If we had bombed those f**kers, as I recommended, Srebrenica would not have happened."
aldenmackie's review against another edition
5.0
After owning this book for nearly 9 years I was able to finish it. I had attempted to read this book no less than three times prior only to get bogged down in the depressing nature and overall frustration wrought with the "system". It's hard to recommend this book to others because it is so painstaking to read but at the same time the images of the events, the reactions of the supporters and dissenters toward action, and the results of action and-more commonly-inaction is so powerful that it would benefit every single human being to read it.
In every case of genocide in the 20th century there is no one reason why more often than not apathy was chosen over action. It was not a conservative or liberal agenda that prevented intervention as can be exemplified by Bob Dole pushing for US persons out stating "I don't think we have any national interest there. The Americans are out, and as far as I'm concerned, in Rwanda, that out to be end end of it." (more than 700,000 civilians were slaughtered AFTER that was stated) yet in the event of Srebrenica and Kosovo, Dole was one of the key protagonists for action to stop the genocide of the Muslim population by the Christian Serbs.
I think the crux of the issue Samantha Power raised with this book was that everyone, liberal and conservative, diplomacy, national interests, or military intervention oriented, from those dedicated to the military machine to those determined to see a world without guns - all have to drastically redirect their vision in the face of genocide. It is not a problem that goes away with inaction, it is not a problem that can often be fixed by lobbing ordinance at the perpetrators; it requires a consolidated effort of worldwide influence, often including military intervention consisting of troops on the ground and the acceptance that if we truly want to protect the lives of innocents, we have to be willing to risk our own.
We cannot continue the notion, as one state department official speculated when intervention in Rwanda was being mulled over, that one American casualty in the effort to stop genocide was only worth every 85,000 dead civilians in a country that we had no national interest in. Most importantly, we, as a world that stated over five decades ago that "never again" would we allow genocide to take place, have to start listening to the witnesses of such events when they first raise their concerns - as Power states in her conclusion "They were usually branded 'emotional,' 'irrational,' 'soft,' or 'naive.' Many of them saw their careers destroyed by the stands they took...how many of us who look back at the genocides of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust, do not believe that these people were right? How many of us do not believe that the presidents, senators, bureaucrats, journalists, and ordinary citizens who did nothing, choosing to look away rather than face hard choices and wrenching moral dilemmas, were wrong? How can it be that those who fight on behalf of these principles are the ones deemed unreasonable?"
In every case of genocide in the 20th century there is no one reason why more often than not apathy was chosen over action. It was not a conservative or liberal agenda that prevented intervention as can be exemplified by Bob Dole pushing for US persons out stating "I don't think we have any national interest there. The Americans are out, and as far as I'm concerned, in Rwanda, that out to be end end of it." (more than 700,000 civilians were slaughtered AFTER that was stated) yet in the event of Srebrenica and Kosovo, Dole was one of the key protagonists for action to stop the genocide of the Muslim population by the Christian Serbs.
I think the crux of the issue Samantha Power raised with this book was that everyone, liberal and conservative, diplomacy, national interests, or military intervention oriented, from those dedicated to the military machine to those determined to see a world without guns - all have to drastically redirect their vision in the face of genocide. It is not a problem that goes away with inaction, it is not a problem that can often be fixed by lobbing ordinance at the perpetrators; it requires a consolidated effort of worldwide influence, often including military intervention consisting of troops on the ground and the acceptance that if we truly want to protect the lives of innocents, we have to be willing to risk our own.
We cannot continue the notion, as one state department official speculated when intervention in Rwanda was being mulled over, that one American casualty in the effort to stop genocide was only worth every 85,000 dead civilians in a country that we had no national interest in. Most importantly, we, as a world that stated over five decades ago that "never again" would we allow genocide to take place, have to start listening to the witnesses of such events when they first raise their concerns - as Power states in her conclusion "They were usually branded 'emotional,' 'irrational,' 'soft,' or 'naive.' Many of them saw their careers destroyed by the stands they took...how many of us who look back at the genocides of the twentieth century, including the Holocaust, do not believe that these people were right? How many of us do not believe that the presidents, senators, bureaucrats, journalists, and ordinary citizens who did nothing, choosing to look away rather than face hard choices and wrenching moral dilemmas, were wrong? How can it be that those who fight on behalf of these principles are the ones deemed unreasonable?"