Samantha—who lived with the permanent tagline “Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of ‘A Problem from Hell’: America in the Age of Genocide”—passed me a note saying that this was going to be the first mass atrocity that took place on our watch. I looked at the names of towns and cities written on the map in front of me, most of which I was unfamiliar with just a few weeks ago. And here we were, debating whether the people in those places would live or die. I looked at Obama, leaning back in his chair and holding the piece of paper, eyeing the same map, the same places.
