Conversation with Samantha Power

Berkeley.edu ^ | April 29, 2002 | Harry Kreisler

[ari-freedom]

...

Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let's say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?

I don't think that in any of the cases, a shortage of information is the problem. I actually think in the Palestine - Israel situation, there's an abundance of information. What we don't need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing -- or investing, I think, more than sacrificing -- billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you're serious, you have to put something on the line.

[ari-freedom]

Samantha Power is a key Obama foreign policy adviser.

[NinoFan]

How can anyone support Obama after all we’ve learned the past few weeks? He’s worse than Carter. Nobama, nobama, nobama...

[Bertha Fanation]

Just checking to see if I’m signed in and can post.

[ari-freedom]

the next paragraph:
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Freidman has called “Sharafat.” I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention, which, very much like the Rwanda scenario, that thought experiment, if we had intervened early.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.

[caaptaingc]

All this sounds like we need to give up and let Big Government hand us our breakfast lunch and dinner. GOD I have had enough of the Left

[caaptaingc]

Palestine needs to go away, Israel is our friend. We need to support our only friend in the EAST

[Iron Munro]

This woman makes Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seem almost sane.

Speaking Truth To Power

"What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation.
Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military,

but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take,

also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence.

Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.

[UCANSEE2]

“But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. “

That tells me all I need to know about Samantha Power.

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