A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power.

4/5 rating. 516 pages.

Book #64 of 2021. Read November 14, 2021.

This book was all about the 20th century’s genocides and the complete lack of help from the world’s governments to end these massacres.

I realize the older I get the more that the huge blocks of World History that I missed in high school come to the forefront. I knew next to nothing about the majority of the genocides talked about in this book: the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. While combined, there have been millions of people killed, the US and the rest of the world have seemed to forget these victims and done everything they could possibly do to not engage in stopping the atrocities.

As has been proven again and again: “The prospect of atrocity seemed too remote, the notion of a plot to destroy a collective too inhuman, and the fate of vulnerable groups too removed from the core interests of outsiders.”

This book was very hard to read at times as the world did so little to help these suffering people, but I learned so much about these atrocities. I think it’s very important to educate as many people as possible about these genocides so that we are more aware of the possibilities of evil. More importantly than this, we – each and every one of us – must act with our conscience when we hear of atrocities around the world. We must spur our governments to act. “One may not be able to triumph over evil, but one need not remain silent in its presence”

We must remember: “Wherever [genocide] occurs, it must concern the entire civilized world.”

Quotes:

“‘We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty,’ [former Turkish interior minister and one of the leaders of the Armenian genocide, Mehmad] Talaat told a German reporter. ‘But that was utterly impossible, in view of the fact that those who were innocent today might be guilty tomorrow.’”

“It was knowingly and lightheartedly that Genghis Khan sent thousands of women and children to their deaths. History sees in him only the founder of a state….The aim of war is not to reach definite lines but to annihilate the enemy physically. It is by this means that we shall obtain the vital living space that we need. Who today still speaks of the massacre of the Armenians?”

“BELIEVE THE UNBELIEVABLE” – cable to the World Jewish Congress in New York about the atrocities against Polish Jews in 1942.

“Karski traveled to the United States and met with Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who graciously heard him out and then responded, ‘I don’t believe you.’ When a stunned Karski protested, Frankfurter interrupted him and explained, ‘I do not mean that you are lying. I simply said I cannot believe you.’ Frankfurter literally could not conceive of the atrocities Karski was describing.”

“‘Wherever it occurs, it must concern the entire civilized world.’ If the convention were passed, genocide would become everybody’s business.”

“All told, in the three-and-a-half-year rule of the Khmer Rouge, some 2 million Cambodians out of a populace of 7 million were either executed or starved to death.”

“They quickly discovered that of the 16,000 Cambodians who had arrived [at the Tuol Sleng Examination Center], only five had departed alive.”

“Yet nothing changed as a result of the declaration. The Khmer Rouge flag continued to fly outside the United Nations, and KR foreign minister Ieng Sary continued to represent Cambodia at the UN as if the KR terror had never happened.”

“Ninety-seven nations had ratified the [genocide] convention ahead of the United States.”

“In 1987-1988 Saddam Hussein’s forces destroyed several thousand Iraqi, Kurdish villages and hamlets and killed close to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds, nearly all of whom were unarmed and many of whom were women and children.”

“Kurdish sources say nearly half a million Kurds were [forcefully] resettled in the late 1970s.”

“Iraq used chemical weapons approximately 195 times between 1983 and 1988, killing or wounding, according to Iran, some 50,000 people, many of them civilians. One Iraqi commander was quoted widely saying, ‘for every insect there is an insecticide.’”

“To a Kurd the mountain is no less than the embodiment of the deity: mountain is his mother, his refuge, his protector, his home, his farm, his market, his mate – and his only friend….”

“Yet despite unprecedented public outcry about foreign brutality, for the next three and a half years the United States, Europe, and the United Nations stood by while some 200,000 Bosnians were killed, more than 2 million were displaced, and the territory of a multiethnic European republic was sliced into three ethnically pure statelets.”

“Non-Serb life in Serb territory was banned. Some 10,000 Bosnians were fleeing their homes each day.”

“What would the West be doing now if the religious convictions of the combatants were reversed, and a Muslim force was now trying to destroy two million beleaguered Christians and/or Jews?”

“President Bush himself never paid much attention to the conflict in Bosnia. National Security Adviser Snowcroft remembers that about once a week Bush would turn to him and say, ‘Now tell me again what this is all about?’ This was at a time when some 70,000 Bosnians had been killed in seven months.”

“Bold tyrants and fearful minorities are watching to see whether ethnic cleansing is a policy the world will tolerate. If we hope to promote the spread of freedom, if we hope to encourage the emergence of peaceful ethnic democracies, our answer must be a resounding no.” – Secretary Christopher

“Instead of remembering friends and loved ones for the ways they lived, survivors remembered them for the ghastly ways they died.”

“But in the Bosnian war, the truth had never been in short supply. What was missing was U.S. willingness to risk its own soldiers on the ground or to convince the Europeans to support NATO bombing from the air. As a result, the ethnic cleansing and genocide against the country’s Muslims proceeded apace, and more than 200,000 Bosnians were killed.”

“The Rwandan genocide would prove to be the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. In 100 days, some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were murdered. The United States did almost nothing to try to stop it.”

“When Woods of the Defense Department’s African affairs bureau suggested that the Pentagon add Rwanda-Burundi to its list of potential trouble spots his bosses told him, in his words, ‘Look, if something happens in Rwanda-Burundi, we don’t care. Take it off the list. U.S. national interest is not involved and we can’t put all these silly humanitarian issues on lists….Just make it go away.’”

“In the three days during which some 4,000 foreigners were evacuated, about 20,000 Rwandans were killed.”

“In fact, in a shocking new revelation, some two dozen U.S. special forces were sent on a one-day reconnaissance mission to Kigali within a few days of the beginning of the murder campaign. According to one U.S. officer, the Marines returned from Kigali ‘white as ghosts,’ describing ‘so many bodies on the streets that you could walk from one body to the other without touching the ground.’”

“How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?”

“It is shocking to note that during the entire three months of the genocide, Clinton never assembled his top policy advisers to discuss the killings.”

“[Dallaire’s] bigger problem is his guilt over the Rwandans. They entrusted their fate to the UN and were murdered: ‘I failed my mission,’ he says. ‘I simply cannot say these deaths are not mine when they happened on my mission. I cannot erase the thousands and thousands of eyes that I see, looking at me, bewildered. I argued, but I didn’t convince, so I failed.’”

“Either Dallaire had to abandon the ‘Rwanda business’ and stop testifying at the tribunal and publicly faulting the international community for not doing more, or he would have to leave his beloved armed forces. For Dallaire, only one answer was possible: ‘I told them I would never give up Rwanda’ he says. ‘I was the force commander and I would complete my duty, testifying and doing whatever it takes to bring these guys to justice.’”

“Milosevic’s forces drove more than 1.3 million Kosovars from their homes, some 740,000 of whom flooded into neighboring Macedonia and Albania.”

“But the fact that we do not know everything does not mean we know nothing. And the fact that we are unable to prevent this tragedy does not mean we should ignore it now.”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw

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