Another Point for Barack [Ben]

One of the first things that made me optimistic about the candidacy of Barack Obama was his choice of Samantha Power as the senior foreign policy adviser for his campaign. I'd just finished reading Power's Genocide: A Problem from Hell--widely considered to be the best treatment of 20th century genocide and America's (very muted) reaction to it--and was hugely impressed. You could call it a "scathing critique", but the style is really just good journalism, and the events chronicled provide their own damning commentary, with no need for excess editorial scaffolding.

One could ask many interesting questions of a campaign with Power in the leading foreign policy role; particularly, what do you do about an occupation of Iraq that is clearly draining America's military and diplomatic resources but whose presence may be the only thing preventing a full-scale civil war? For those not familiar with her work, there's significant tension here for someone who's clearly in favor of increased domestic and international military presence where deployment could prevent a possible genocide--conditions most agree Iraq satisfies.

Power discusses some of these issues in this Salon interview. However, one of the more interesting quotes describes how she became involved with the Obama campaign:

His office called me when he began serving in the U.S. Senate in early 2005. He had just read "A Problem From Hell" and wanted to meet to discuss fixing American foreign policy. I thought, "Well that's interesting -- clearly he's in some other league." I mean, who spends Christmas reading a dark book on genocide? No other politician had ever contacted me to discuss it.

Just to be clear, you can write the defining treatise on one of the most important issues of the past century, intimately concerned with the deployment of the US military to prevent mass murder (forgive me for feeling this to be topical), and expect to be contacted by no one--save a junior senator--interested in what you might have to say.