When I read that Samantha Power (the former Barack Obama foreign policy adviser who recently referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster”) had resigned because of those comments, I was heartbroken.
When I was in college, I first met Power at a public lecture and fell in love with her then. She was beautiful, bold and brilliant. While other students swooned over sorority sisters, I developed the world’s biggest crush (not kidding) on Samantha Power. I know … I’m a nerd.
Power was and still is a fresh, young voice in the area of foreign policy. She rose to fame through her reporting on the history of genocide in her book, “A Problem from Hell.” Power represents a new generation of global thinkers who factor human rights into their broader foreign policy agenda, which meshes extraordinarily well with young people.
Since the year 2000, human rights degrees, majors and student organizations have increased dramatically. Look no further than the nation-wide student campaign(s) to bring awareness to and to stop the Darfur genocide. Power was The symbol of this movement, so who now will take her place?
As we should learn from Power’s (inexcusable) campaign missteps, words do matter. But more importantly, when selecting a candidate, the voters should analyze and scrutinize the campaign advisers/officials as much as the candidates themselves. The candidates are the symbols of a movement, but the advisers are the commanders, who will be holding the top government posts in the next administration.
In upcoming months, I will frequently feature a key adviser who is likely to take up a key position in government should their candidate win. The person to take Power’s throne will be Susan Rice.
Like Power, Rice is a key Obama adviser who is beautiful, bold and brilliant. And also like Power, she first received her notability working on issues related to genocide and other human rights’ abuses. During the (Bill) Clinton administration, Rice served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and a special assistant to the president on the National Security Council.
Former President Bill Clinton has repeatedly called his failure to intervene in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide his “largest foreign policy mistake as president.” Susan Rice was a key government official who advised the president on the matter. And like Clinton, Rice has had to endure the violent images of massacred Rwandans in her conscious.
Obama’s campaign foreign policy team is an interesting assembly of human rights-centric thinkers. But as history has shown, while human rights are critical as a fundamental human issue, it is always trumped by national interests in the end.
Rice understands this dilemma and in an attempt to transform human rights thinking into a more realistic platform, she argues that human rights are a fundamental national security issue. It’s not enough anymore that it’s morally wrong to commit these horrific acts, but we also need to show it’s in our best interests.
Like it or not, this is the future. But don’t take my word on it. In a short interview, Rice describes her nightmares after seeing “thousands of bodies” littered throughout Rwanda and how this experience altered her perception on foreign policy.