Goodreads | Kevin's review

Kevin's review

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

[close]

blog this review

Copy/paste the text below into your blog.

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368731.A_Problem_from_Hell_America_and_the_Age_of_Genocide?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1174179182m/368731.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/368731.A_Problem_from_Hell_America_and_the_Age_of_Genocide?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13271.Samantha_Power">Samantha Power</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/12847388?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars Samantha Power's excellent history of American responses to genocide in the 20th-century is a very enlightening and very depressing story of moral failure. It follows the story of genocide from the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 through the Jewish Holocaust 30 years later, and on to the Khmer-Rouge sponsored killing fields in Cambodia in the late '70s, the mass murder of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam's government in the late '80s, the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides in the early and mid '90s and ending with the massacre of Kosovar Albanians in the late '90s. In almost all cases, the American government sat on its ass and did virtually nothing, despite ample warnings of what was coming, alarm bells rung by observers and survivors about the crime in progress, and lackadaisical attempts to punish perpetrators in the aftermath. This book is very well-documented and well-researched. It is also pretty depressing. We have put our faith in certain institutions of national and international government to keep the peace, and this book begs the question: when both the United States, and the international peace-keeping organization it helped create, the United Nations, fail to step in when men butcher hundreds of thousands or millions of each other like dogs, was our faith in these institutions well-placed? The book exposes the litany of excuses that the US government and the UN trotted out for doing nothing, but it raises another question, not so much what could really be done to stop a genocide in progress, but what has to happen in the future to make genocide interdiction happen? What price must we pay to save the lives of our fellow men? A friend of mine reccommended this book to me while I was doing research for an author who is writing about the feeble American response to the Holocaust going on in Nazi-occupied Europe. I saw with my own eyes State Department cables by the dozens full of excuses as to why we could nothing to rescue Jews from Nazi extermination. It struck me that one of the difficulties which governments have in making the decision to stop genocide is that the goal of governments in regards to the rest of the world is to further its own interests, not to further the interests of all mankind. This is precisely why the United Nations is so often paralyzed: because its individual member nations have a cacophony of clashing interests that rarely coincide. This is a good thing to keep in mind when considering the problem of how to motivate governments to take steps to halt genocide. I haven't finished reading it yet (I'm more than 3/4 through), but this is a good book well worth reading. 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/799542?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Kevin's review
rating:
bookshelves: currently-reading

Samantha Power's excellent history of American responses to genocide in the 20th-century is a very enlightening and very depressing story of moral failure. It follows the story of genocide from the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 through the Jewish Holocaust 30 years later, and on to the Khmer-Rouge sponsored killing fields in Cambodia in the late '70s, the mass murder of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam's government in the late '80s, the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides in the early and mid '90s and ending with the massacre of Kosovar Albanians in the late '90s. In almost all cases, the American government sat on its ass and did virtually nothing, despite ample warnings of what was coming, alarm bells rung by observers and survivors about the crime in progress, and lackadaisical attempts to punish perpetrators in the aftermath.

This book is very well-documented and well-researched. It is also pretty depressing. We have put our faith in certain institutions of national and international government ...more Samantha Power's excellent history of American responses to genocide in the 20th-century is a very enlightening and very depressing story of moral failure. It follows the story of genocide from the slaughter of Armenians in 1915 through the Jewish Holocaust 30 years later, and on to the Khmer-Rouge sponsored killing fields in Cambodia in the late '70s, the mass murder of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam's government in the late '80s, the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides in the early and mid '90s and ending with the massacre of Kosovar Albanians in the late '90s. In almost all cases, the American government sat on its ass and did virtually nothing, despite ample warnings of what was coming, alarm bells rung by observers and survivors about the crime in progress, and lackadaisical attempts to punish perpetrators in the aftermath.

This book is very well-documented and well-researched. It is also pretty depressing. We have put our faith in certain institutions of national and international government to keep the peace, and this book begs the question: when both the United States, and the international peace-keeping organization it helped create, the United Nations, fail to step in when men butcher hundreds of thousands or millions of each other like dogs, was our faith in these institutions well-placed?

The book exposes the litany of excuses that the US government and the UN trotted out for doing nothing, but it raises another question, not so much what could really be done to stop a genocide in progress, but what has to happen in the future to make genocide interdiction happen? What price must we pay to save the lives of our fellow men?

A friend of mine reccommended this book to me while I was doing research for an author who is writing about the feeble American response to the Holocaust going on in Nazi-occupied Europe. I saw with my own eyes State Department cables by the dozens full of excuses as to why we could nothing to rescue Jews from Nazi extermination. It struck me that one of the difficulties which governments have in making the decision to stop genocide is that the goal of governments in regards to the rest of the world is to further its own interests, not to further the interests of all mankind. This is precisely why the United Nations is so often paralyzed: because its individual member nations have a cacophony of clashing interests that rarely coincide.

This is a good thing to keep in mind when considering the problem of how to motivate governments to take steps to halt genocide.

I haven't finished reading it yet (I'm more than 3/4 through), but this is a good book well worth reading.

...less

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it) flag

comments (showing 0-0 of 0)

newest »

date

all Kevin's books »