Getting through these dark times (Samantha Power-Obama senior foreign policy advisor)

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/18/samantha_power/index.html

Getting through these dark times

Foreign policy whiz Samantha Power sheds light on a legendary diplomat killed in Iraq, advising Barack Obama and how America can emerge from the Bush era.

By Leigh Flayton

snip//


You recently wrote in Time magazine that the U.S. needs to "rethink Iran." What did you mean?

We lunge between two extremes, neither of which is helpful. One is the Bush-Cheney saber rattling -- hyping of the threat, alienation of international stakeholders because of the sense that this is about ideology rather than about problem solving. In saber rattling we're ultimately strengthening Ahmadinejad's base, because the one thing that will unite Iranians -- whether secular, moderate, Islamic or nationalist -- is the idea that we're going to come and attack their country.

On the other hand, there are people who are so disgusted and disillusioned with the Bush years that they romanticize in some way this wily Iranian head of state instead of acknowledging that the Iranian government is by all accounts a supporter of terrorist acts, or that Ahmadinejad is a head of state who denies the occurrence of the Holocaust and has made no secret of his militant animosity toward Israel. My feeling is that we need something in between the extremes that acknowledges that this individual, this regime, is dangerous and unconstructive -- but that also acknowledges we have strengthened its hand by saber rattling, invading Iraq, dislodging the Taliban and rendering Iran the regional heavyweight.

To neutralize the support Ahmadinejad has domestically, we need to stop threatening and to get in a room with him -- if only to convey grave displeasure about his tactics regionally and internationally -- and then try to build international support for measures to prevent him from supporting terrorism and pursuing a nuclear program. If we're ever going to actually put in place multilateral measures to contain Iran, the only way we're going to do that is if we do it in a more united way with our allies.

How do we get out of Iraq?

We have to put Iraqis at the center of our planning and our thinking, which is not something we've done naturally at all -- from the '80s when we supported Saddam Hussein, when he was using chemical weapons against his own people, to the '90s, when we had sanctions against the regime and paid very little attention to the toll of those sanctions on Iraqi civilians. And then, in the decision to go to war and the way we went to war -- which was so not about Iraqis, as shown by our refusal to protect civilians and our failure to do adequate postwar planning.

We need to be incredibly sensitive as we leave Iraq to the welfare of Iraqis who are going to be left in our wake. That potentially entails the idea of sectarian or ethnic relocation if people are in a mixed neighborhood and feel that they'd be safer in a more homogenous neighborhood. Also, massive support for neighboring countries that have taken in 2 million refugees, and some very systematic effort between now and the time we begin leaving to build funding and resource streams to internally displaced people.

We have shown again and again that we care about Iraq only insofar as it serves our interests. But I think it's time to show not only Iraqis but the rest of the world that at least as we leave, we're leaving with a very vigilant eye on how to mitigate the consequences of our actions.

[riverwalker]

1. good article

Obama is guided by an impressive team.
"In 2003, Samantha Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide," in which she chronicled the United States' responses to the major genocides of the 20th century."

[Cha]

2. Very impressive!

"We have shown again and again that we care about Iraq only insofar as it serves our interests. But I think it's time to show not only Iraqis but the rest of the world that at least as we leave, we're leaving with a very vigilant eye on how to mitigate the consequences of our actions."