The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  FROM WHERE CASS AND I PARKED every morning, the most direct route to our offices was simply to stroll two blocks down 17th Street and turn west into the EEOB, where we worked on opposite sides of the sprawling building. But when I returned from leave, Cass started insisting that we enter the building through the front gate of the White House, adding five extra minutes to our walk.

  As early as 7:00 a.m., as we flashed our badges and underwent a security screening, we would see tourists pressing their faces up to the iron gates. They hoped to spot, if not the President himself, then at least Bo, the Obama family dog, or the television reporters who were doing their morning stand-ups on the lawn.

  When the workday ended late, I was so eager to be reunited with Declan that I was tempted to forgo this circuitous path back to our car. However, Cass refused to let me deviate, insisting we walk by the illuminated White House on our way out. These daily strolls became a kind of gratitude ritual for the opportunity that we shared.

  At the office, I tried to follow through on the commitments I had made to myself while on leave. With Denis’s support, I expanded the size of my staff from one NSC quasi-deputy (or “director”) to four; with each NSC director who worked under me, we would be able to drive progress on three or four more real-world issues.

  My early hires had been men, in part because many of the talented women I approached about working at the NSC told me they were turned off by the notoriously grueling hours. But for the first time, I began aggressively reaching out to women who had made an impression on me in meetings, trying to convince them to join my small team rather than waiting for them to apply. I also dedicated more energy to building coalitions with like-minded individuals across government. And I regularized the practice of holding several meetings each week with outside groups to be sure I was continually being exposed to fresh thinking.

  The aspect of government that I had least appreciated before I joined was the importance—and shortage—of “bandwidth.” So much was going on in the world on any given day that one could easily lose an afternoon editing language in various press releases. Mort, my longtime mentor, urged me to prioritize, helping me understand my days as analogous to my mother’s when she worked in the emergency room. He advised me to start by doing triage: patients with life-threatening conditions should be seen first. At the same time, I needed to look for opportunities. Was there a place in the world that was ripe for reform? Was there a conflict or situation where, with more diplomacy, resources, or pressure, the United States could make a positive impact?

  Richard Holbrooke, whom Obama had named Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was also influential in shaping this approach. At the height of my frustrations with my new role, he had taken me to Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown for a cheeseburger. He wisely urged me to change my focus. Rather than fighting to get into meetings where I would be outnumbered, he suggested I prioritize issues about which there might be no White House meetings at all.

  Holbrooke summed up this advice in one phrase: “Go where they ain’t.” By “they,” he meant senior US officials. Legions of government aides flocked to consequential issues that drew presidential attention. But all around the world, immense suffering was occurring in forgotten places. With even a modest time investment, one could support positive change in ways that would not make the evening news. Lower down in the bureaucracy, he and Mort both stessed, one could also find enthusiastic partners brimming with ideas about how to help.

  If ever I sounded self-conscious that I was not working on “big-ticket” foreign policy challenges, Holbrooke would snap me out of this myopia. “Stop it, Sam,” he would say. “Do good where you can do good. The people in those countries don’t give a damn how high a priority what you do is to anybody else. They don’t have another hope besides America.”

  He boosted my spirits, telling me that as long as I fixated on getting things done and “not the bullshit,” I would earn a reputation for competence. I took his message to heart, telling my team that our prime asset was our doggedness. “We just have to care more,” I said. Our comparative advantage would be that we would never give up.

  A month after returning from leave, my attitude had been transformed. I sent Cass an email message that included just one line: “Revelation: I love my job.”

  IN THIS SPIRIT of constructive opportunism, I thought I could help Iraqi refugees garner stronger support from the US government. At my urging back in 2007, then-candidate Obama had pledged to expand humanitarian assistance to the four million Iraqis who had been displaced in the wake of the US invasion and to increase the number of Iraqis resettled in the United States. Instead of meeting resistance when I tried to ensure we followed through on these promises, I encountered many US officials who had themselves lived in Iraq and were especially concerned about those who had risked their lives working as translators for the US military. By the time Obama took office, at least three hundred of these Iraqis had already been murdered as retribution for assisting our soldiers.*

  After some bureaucratic wrangling, I got myself designated “White House coordinator for Iraqi refugees,” which would show both the Iraqi government and US officials across the administration the emphasis President Obama was placing on this issue. To see the scope of what needed to be done, I decided to try again to make a foreign trip in my official government capacity. This time, my travel was approved.

  The sense of satisfaction I felt at finally being able to leave the insular world of Washington was immediately dimmed by the realization that I would be away from Declan for the first time since his birth nearly seven months before. My mind began to run wild, imagining the various ways I would die on the trip. After landing in Iraq, our vehicle would be attacked on “Ambush alley,” the road that connected Baghdad Airport to the Green Zone. Or we would make it to the US embassy—a $740 million fortress larger than Vatican City—but as soon as we ventured outside to meet displaced Iraqis, a suicide bomber would ram his truck into our convoy. Here, my morbid thoughts were especially vivid, because of the year I had spent reporting on the 2003 suicide bomb attack on the UN base in Baghdad that had killed Sergio Vieira de Mello and twenty-two others.

  By the eve of the trip, I had spiraled into what the intelligence community would call “moderate confidence” that I would not be returning home. Cass was not helping. He had not known me back when I traveled to dangerous places, and his idea of a far-flung destination was Florida. He thought the idea of willingly taking a trip to Iraq was insane. He harped on the issue for days, repeatedly urging me to reconsider.

  Since I was determined to go, I decided I would write my young son a letter in case my worst fears were realized. Rereading the letter today, it is jarring—and moving—to see how determined I was to express to Declan what my father had never been able to say to me. But it is probably also not unlike the letters thousands of service members, aid workers, diplomats, and journalists have written their own loved ones before deploying.

  November 12, 2009

  Dear Declan,

  You are reading this note because something bad happened to your mother. I have had six months and almost three weeks with you. They filled me—you filled me—with the greatest sense of peace I have ever known. When you came out, your dad cried, “He has red hair!” and from that moment we were joined as red heads—determined, proud, ferocious, observant—and this is the most important part—kind red heads. You and me Declan, two Irish beings together taking on the world.

  The most important thing for you to know is that you have the best father any child could have or has had. Cass is the best father because he is the best man. He has an enormous heart. It is almost too big for this world. Sometimes cynicism and deceit escape him because he can only do goodness. You were born to more love concentrated between two people than words can really capture. Maybe you can watch the video of our wedding and catch a glimpse. The love was almost instant (though I was in denial for a while!) and it was completely unwavering.
We used to have contests as to who loved each other more. Maybe you and he will have these contests together some day. Cass can love infinitely, and you will bathe in the glow of that love for the rest of your life. I have never been happier. Even the lowest moments of the last two years were life highs because I was sitting beside Cass.

  The second thing you should know is that you changed my life. I used to work really hard—really long hours with a really single-minded focus—and I used to think that work to change the world was my reason for being on this Earth. I still want to change that world—this is why I’m going to Iraq—but my new reason for being is you and your daddy, our family. Every night when I rush up the back stairs and down the hall, and you hear my footsteps and crane your neck back toward the door from the red couch, I am soothed. Whatever my failures at the office, or my frustrations, I touch your soft skin, and am struck by a flash of amnesia so potent that it is literally as though the day hasn’t happened at all. By the time I am grabbing you and we are dancing toward the bath, I am blissfully happy. Every minute we had together was a blessing and made my life better.

  The third and final thing I would like you to know is that you have the capacity to take care of many people in your long life. Please start with your daddy, the love of my life. And then, when you’re ready, look around at all the people in need around you. You, Declan Power Sunstein, will be a boy and man of many gifts. That is obvious already. Please share them with others. (But don’t forget to start with daddy, and also with granny and Eddie, who taught me everything and, like Cass, know how to love fully.) And as you grow up, please know that whenever you hear thunder, that will be me. Whenever the Red Sox win in the ninth, that will be me. Whenever you and daddy dance together, know that I am there too. I will always be watching my boys. My boys, whom I love so much that I feel my heart will burst.

  Love, Mum

  The morning I left for the airport, Cass continued to plead with me to cancel. Then, belatedly realizing he was compounding my sadness and worry, he switched gears. As I finished packing, I suddenly heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers blaring on full volume from our bedroom: “You don’t have to live like a refugee . . .” As Cass so often managed to do, he made me smile.

  When we parted, he also came through with a wonderful saying that became our go-to phrase: “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” he told me.

  As compared to almost everyone else in Iraq, the truth was that I was kept remarkably safe. Unlike when I was traveling solo as a journalist, as an official US visitor I was encased in an armed bubble at virtually all times. In the old days, the security precautions would have made me feel shackled. But because of my new family, I was grateful. The flipside of this protection was that I saw just how many US service members put themselves in harm’s way on behalf of civilian visitors like me. They staked out our routes and venues before we arrived, flew us in helicopters over insurgent areas, and drove convoys through congested streets.

  Although I would meet with the Iraqi prime minister and his senior aides, the most important part of the trip was my dialogue with dozens of Iraqi displaced persons. Many described dire living conditions and spoke longingly of their previous neighborhoods, from which they had been expelled just because they were Sunni or Shia. I also met with US military officers who begged me to do more to help their translators reach safety in the United States.

  Once I had returned to Washington, I went to work expanding support for Iraqis, whose lives the US invasion had irreparably changed. I successfully fought to increase by some $50 million the resources we could make available to those trying to return to their homes. I also pushed to resettle more Iraqis to the United States, an initiative on which the Bush administration had done far too little.6 On average, we were able to bring some 17,000 Iraqis to the United States each year of Obama’s presidency, including thousands of interpreters and other US-affiliated Iraqis, and their families. And when we discovered that the Iraqis arriving in the United States were getting so little financial support that they were quickly falling into poverty, working with Eric Schwartz, the tireless assistant secretary of state for refugees, we found a way to double the modest initial stipend newly resettled refugees received.*

  DESPITE MY ENTHUSIASM for my job, when I got up each morning I did not look forward to opening the emails and alerts that had come in overnight, describing a coup, massacre, terrorist attack, or natural disaster happening somewhere in the world.

  In October of 2009, I awoke to a very different form of bad news: Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Less than a year into his presidency, Obama was receiving an award previously bestowed on Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  When I relayed the news to Cass, he looked stricken, as if I had told him someone we knew had fallen ill. The choice seemed wildly premature, as well as a gift to Obama’s critics, who delighted in painting him as a cosmopolitan celebrity detached from the concerns of working-class Americans. But there was no getting around it: come December of 2009, Obama would travel to Norway to accept the most prestigious prize in the world.

  Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes, Obama’s two gifted speechwriters, took on the difficult task of drafting the Nobel address. I popped into Jon’s tiny office on the first floor of the West Wing, and he told me that the President had decided to directly confront the awkwardness of receiving the prize so early in his presidency. He also wanted to frame the speech around the more profound irony of winning a peace prize at the very time he was deploying 30,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan, augmenting the force of over 67,000 US troops already there.

  This could be Obama’s most important speech yet, I thought, as my mind lit up with a million ideas about how he could use it to meditate on profound questions of war and peace, modern-day evil, and the ethics of responsibility. The following day, I set my alarm for four a.m., fed Declan, and then sat down at my home computer to work. I grabbed books from my shelf on the modern history of efforts to regulate warfare. I dug into the writings of the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom I had first read in law school in the class about the political and moral criteria for using force. And over the course of a few hours, I wrote a detailed memo that offered thoughts on how the President could use “just war theory” as a frame to explain his vision for what he called “our common security, common humanity.” This was the most animated and assured I could remember feeling since I entered government.

  I emailed my lengthy memo on warfare and morality to Jon and Ben, who, with time expiring, were too immersed in drafting the speech to look at it. Determined to get a hearing for my ideas, I brought the memo to Denis, who initially agreed to give it to Obama, but then, after I had checked on its status multiple times, informed me that the President was immersed in finalizing his decision on the new Afghanistan strategy. He would not have time to read it.

  I subsequently took to carrying a copy of the memo around, wondering how I could get past the gatekeepers to the one person I thought might appreciate it. Then, in a stroke of fortune, just a few days before the speech, Obama’s motorcade pulled up as I was exiting the West Wing. When he stepped out of his limousine, he saw me and shouted over the heads of the Secret Service, “We need to talk.”

  The day before he was scheduled to fly to Oslo, Obama summoned me to the Oval and described the outlines of the address he wanted to give. “I have the clay. I can see in it the shape of what I’m trying to do,” he said. “But I just may not have enough time to execute.”

  As he spoke, I interrupted excitedly with thoughts, which he then riffed off. I felt like nothing had changed since the Senate days when we first discussed books and ideas. After forty-five minutes, he was given a note saying he needed to wrap up. I handed him the memo I had prepared, which included a history of humanitarianism, an account of the relationship between human rights and conflict, and thoughts on violence from Hume, Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., Niebuhr, and Henry Dunant, the founder of the Internati
onal Committee for the Red Cross.

  Obama stayed up through the night, starting a new speech from scratch and developing an elaborate, deeply original, handwritten draft on a yellow legal pad. In the morning, he called Jon, Ben, and me into the Oval to walk us through what he had done. The President had produced a piece of rhetoric that embraced contradictions that most politicians blew past. He rejected pacifism in the face of evil and aggression; at the same time, he insisted that while soldiers could achieve great glory, “war itself is never glorious.” He criticized the “reflexive suspicion” toward the United States and the use of military force prevalent in Europe, defending America’s record in underwriting the global order and the modern-day peace in Germany, Korea, and the Balkans.

  “I understand why war is not popular,” Obama had written. “But I also know this: the belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility.”

  As we walked out of the Oval, Obama put his hand on my shoulder and said, “We may just have to bring you along as a stowaway.” Within an hour, I had received a formal invitation to fly on Air Force One. I raced home, packed a suitcase, and kissed Declan goodbye, calling Cass from a cab on the way to the airport to tell him that I was on my way to Norway.

  Jon, Ben, Denis, David Axelrod, and I worked through the night in the airplane conference room. The President, dressed in a golf shirt and khakis, wandered in and out with his handwritten edits as we each tried to reconcile the core tensions inherent in his argument. It did not seem ideal that Obama was pulling what appeared to be his second consecutive all-nighter, so we were relieved when he retired for a few hours of sleep. When he awoke, he dove back into the speech, refining it until Denis told him he had to let it go.