One of the most compelling chapters is about when Power joined the Obama presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser but ended up making news herself for a “large and public mistake.” That was describing Obama’s rival, Hillary Clinton, as a “monster” - while on a book tour in Ireland no less - and being forced to resign from the campaign. The interweaving of Power’s personal story, family story, diplomatic history and moral arguments is executed seamlessly - and with unblinking honesty.
#LONG ROAD TO HELL AMERICA IN IRAQ HOW TO#
It’s an unusual combination of autobiography, diplomatic history, moral argument and manual on how to breast-feed a child with one hand while talking to Secretary of State John Kerry on a cellphone with the other. I’d like to review her book.” I wanted to see how she sorted it all out. I wondered: How did she wrestle with all that as she went from reporter-author to policymaker? So I told the Book Review editors: “Yes. But then she had to eat some heaping plates of realism in public, like defending Obama’s nonintervention in the genocidal Syrian civil war. People told me she was a real idealist - not a tortured one like me. She had worked as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Obama, and then as a human rights adviser to President Obama before ultimately becoming his second United Nations ambassador. This Samantha Power - she had started her career as a journalist covering the mass killing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs, which led her to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “‘A Problem From Hell’: America in the Age of Genocide,” about why American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to halt genocides.
#LONG ROAD TO HELL AMERICA IN IRAQ FREE#
But many other Iraqis wanted to be free to be more Shiite, more Sunni Jihadist, more corrupt or just more powerful than the tribe or sect next door. Bush was right on one thing about the Iraq war - many Iraqis wanted to be free to be more democratic once the tyranny of Saddam Hussein was lifted from their necks. I am much more wary today - not isolationist, but wary - about what well-intentioned outsiders can do to sustainably reshape another country or region. Alas, idealism is now a recessive gene in me after so many crushed hopes and covering one-too-many massacres. I began reporting from the Middle East in 1979 with a lot of Minnesota optimism in my DNA. Having been a foreign correspondent in London, in Beirut during its civil war, in Israel and then the foreign affairs columnist for this newspaper since 1995, I’d long wrestled with how much idealism one should allow oneself when advocating for or against the uses of American power abroad. And lately I have struggled with that position. She was a table-pounding idealist and human rights advocate, and believed in using American power to protect innocent civilians and advance democracy.
No, it was because I knew only one thing about Power - from afar. I’ve met her only once - in her last week as Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations. And it certainly wasn’t because Power is a friend. It wasn’t because I suddenly had time on my hands. But when the Book Review editors asked me to review Samantha Power’s “The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir,” I said yes, without hesitation. I’d rather spend my extra time writing books than reviewing them. Whenever The New York Times invites me to do a book review, I look for an excuse. JQuery('.search-field').THE EDUCATION OF AN IDEALIST A Memoir By Samantha Power
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