The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

by Samantha Power

To this day, when I hear people judge students on the basis of their test scores, I think of my sleep-deprived African-American classmates as we geared up to take English or math tests together. We may have been equal before God, but I had three more hours of sleep, vastly more time to prepare, and many more resources at my disposal than those who were part of the busing program.

He never seemed afraid of looking uninformed—which, to me, seemed to be the highest form of confidence.

If I end up not making it as a journalist, will something else I learn in the process make it worth trying?

As Mother Teresa famously said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”4

An identifiable American life would almost always be more galvanizing than thousands of faceless foreigners in a faraway country.

I was struck that, fifty years after the Holocaust, the world had stood by during both the Bosnian and the Rwandan genocides.

I was never as disciplined as I intended to be, but early on, I learned to forgive myself. I came to understand that writing a book would ultimately require thousands

of hours on the phone, on the road, and at my computer. I realized that it was okay to read Sports Illustrated, watch a baseball game, or spend a few hours talking on the phone to my parents, Mort, Jonathan, Laura, or other friends.

Second, I emphasized that the United States has a large toolbox when it comes to preventing genocide. I described the many options short of military engagement at the disposal of a powerful country like the United States: public and private diplomacy, public shaming, negotiations, deploying intelligence and technical resources, international peacekeeping, arms embargoes, asset freezes, and more.

“Killing is wrong, whether you’re killing a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim,” he said. “God made the people there in Darfur. For us to ignore them would be a sin.”

Darfur exposed the limits of what one country could do—even one as powerful as the United States. The perpetrators of genocide knew they could still rely on powerful players in the international community, like China, to defend them.

John Sarno’s Healing Back Pain, which I read cover to cover. Sarno argued that pain of the sort I had been experiencing could stem from a failure to grapple with deep distress that then gets “somatized”—lodged or manifested—in the body as physical pain.

he used every nook and cranny of the day, no matter where he was, to write. As soon as he had turned on his MacBook Air and pulled up a document on the screen before him, he simply picked up where he had left off ten minutes, an hour, or the day before. Whenever he received thoughtful criticism of his articles or books, it usually brought a smile to his face.

Although Obama had appointed more women to cabinet-level national security roles than any president in history, his NSC was the most male-dominated place I had ever been in the United States.

“Feel the fear and do it anyway,” he told me.

But just because we couldn’t right every wrong did not mean we couldn’t—or shouldn’t—try to improve lives and mitigate violence where we could do so at reasonable risk.

“If America sneezes, people in my country catch a cold.”

We had also heard from several developing countries that Russian diplomats were offering cash in return for their support.

Finally allowed to run for seats in Afghanistan’s Parliament, women had won 28 percent of the positions—a higher proportion than in the United States Congress.

TOUSSAINT’S DEATH FORCED ME to more directly confront a charge often made against the United States—that even when we try to do right, we invariably end up making situations worse.

Of the millions of refugees admitted to the United States since the landmark Refugee Act of 1980, not one has carried out a lethal act of domestic terrorism.

Although it took months, NSC aide Ronnie Newman worked with the web designers at the White House to create aidrefugees.gov, a site that allowed users to easily find out how they could offer after-school tutoring or provide groceries, bed linens, or even rides to job interviews.52

if we can’t solve the whole problem,” I would say, “surely there is something we can do.”

When I was a journalist starting out in Bosnia, I viewed the conflict there as a last gasp of ethnic chauvinism and demagoguery from a bygone era. Unfortunately, it now seems more like a harbinger of the way today’s autocrats and opportunists conjure up internal or external threats in order to expand their own power. Those of us who reject these tactics have yet to figure out how to assuage the fears of those who have been shaken or radicalized by false claims.

In the end, the best predictor of whether we will ultimately “be okay” is if people who stand to benefit or lose from political choices vote and organize.