The woman is repulsive.
The National Interest piece, by Jacob Heilbrunn, is here: "Samantha and Her Subjects."
And Peter Berger has a critical review at The American Interest: "Samantha and the Lone Sheriff."
Heilbrunn criticizes Power on a number of counts—for being selective in her choices of outrageous atrocities (no mention in the book of the genocidal actions of Stalin and Mao), for giving undue respect to endorsement of interventions by the United Nations, for painting too rosy a picture of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian diplomat murdered while on a UN mission in Iraq (he is the subject of another book by Power, Chasing the Flame, 2008). But he criticizes her mainly for “providing an ideological smokescreen for the use of American military power in dubious circumstances”. Heilbrunn savors the irony of Power having opposed George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq and now justifying Obama’s in Libya. In defending the latter action, she (as well as Obama himself) sounds very much like Bush defending the invasion of Iraq. She insists on an important difference: Bush, though he tried, failed to get a UN endorsement; Obama acted with such an endorsement, thus seemingly in accord with the liberal creed of “multilateralism”.RELATED: See a more friendly albeit obstreperous interventionista: GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD.
We don't need the permission of the UN for anything, from declarations of war to painting the White House bathrooms a different color!
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of the UN building, I think of that classic line from Obi-wan Kenobi in "Star Wars":
"You'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!"