A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  76. Laura Silber and Bruce Clark, “US Threatens Serbs with Tougher Bombing Action: Attacks on Bihac Continue Despite NATO Raid on Airfield,” Financial Times (London), November 23, 1994, p. 28.

  77. Roger Cohen, “NATO and the U.N. Quarrel in Bosnia as Serbs Press On,” New York Times, November 27, 1994, sec. 1, p. 1.

  78. John Burns, “Nationalist Says Serbs’ Rejection of Pact Means the End of Bosnia,” New York Times, May 17, 1993, p. A1.

  79. Michael Gordon, “Powell Delivers a Resounding No on Using Limited Force in Bosnia,” New York Times, September 28, 1992, p. A1. The New York Times editorial board responded that “the war in Bosnia is not a fair fight and it is not war. It is slaughter. . . . President Bush should tell General Powell what President Lincoln once told General McClellan: ‘If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.’” New York Times, “At Least Slow the Slaughter,” October 4, 1992, p. A16.

  80. Colin L. Powell, “Why Generals Get Nervous,” New York Times, October 8, 1992, p. A35.

  81. Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe, p. 170.

  82. The three networks mentioned Somalia in only fifteen news stories prior to Bush’s decision to involve the United States in the airlift. See Strobel, Late-Breaking Foreign Policy, p. 132.

  83. Western, “Warring Ideas,” p. 309, citing data from Network Evening News Abstract, Television News Archives, Vanderbilt University.

  84. Don Oberdorfer, “U.S. Aide Resigns over Balkan Policy; Administration’s Handling of Civil War Decried as ‘Ineffective,’” Washington Post, August 26, 1992, p. A1.

  85. Mary Battiata, “War of the Worlds,” Washington Post Magazine, June 30, 1996, p. 8.

  86. White House briefing, Federal News Service, August 6, 1992.

  87. Steven Kull and I. M. Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999), p. 95.

  88. UN Security Council Resolution 780, October 6, 1992.

  89. Lawrence Eagleburger, statement at the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia, Geneva, Switzerland, December 16, 1992. See also Elaine Sciolino, “US Names Figures It Wants Charged with War Crimes,” New York Times, December 17, 1992, p. A1.

  90. It also included Borislav Herak, a Bosnian Serb who confessed to killing more than 230 civilians; Drago Prcac, who ran Omarska; and Adem Delic, commander of the Croatian-run Celibici camp.

  91. Sciolino, “US Names Figures.”

  92. Richard Johnson, “The Pinstripe Approach to Genocide,” in Stjepan G. Mestrovic, ed., The Conceit of Innocence: Losing the Conscience of the West in the War Against Bosnia (College Station, Tx.: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), pp. 66, 67.

  93. UN General Assembly Resolution A/47/121 of December 18, 1992; passed 102 for (including the United States), none against, and 57 abstentions. The portion that accuses Serbian and Montenegrin forces of genocide is buried in a paragraph in the preamble.

  94. Patricia Diaz Dennis, assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, special State Department briefing on report to Congress on human rights practices for 1992, Federal News Service, January 19, 1993.

  95. Sobel, Impact of Public Opinion, p. 185.

  96. Anthony Lake and Roger Morris, “The Human Reality of Realpolitik,” Foreign Policy 4 (Fall 1971): 158.

  97. Holbrooke, To End a War, p. 50.

  98. Marshall Harris, “Clinton’s Debacle in Bosnia,” in Mestrovic, ed., The Conceit of Innocence, p. 241.

  99. Ibid.

  100. U.S. Department of State press release, Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s press conference and statement, “New Steps Toward Conflict Resolution in the Former Yugoslavia,” February 10, 1993, U.S. Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.

  101. Quoted in John Darnton, “Does the World Still Recognize a Holocaust?” New York Times, April 25, 1993, sec. 4, p. 1. Wiesel told me that he had little choice but to ad-lib because the speech he had prepared for the opening ceremony had been soaked by a heavy downpour and rendered illegible.

  102. White House briefing, Federal News Service, April 23, 1993.

  103. Hearing of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Federal News Service, March 30, 1993.

  104. They also wondered whether they could have done more to protect loved ones and felt guilt over being spared. Of the 650 men, women, and children who were delivered to Auschwitz from Italy with Primo Levi, Levi was one of only three to survive. In 1986, before his apparent suicide, he wrote that his shame of survival “nestled deeply like a woodworm; although unseen from the outside it gnaws and rasps.” In his last book Levi wrote that, “You cannot exclude it. It is no more than a supposition, indeed the shadow of a suspicion: that each man is his brother’s Cain, that each one of us . . . has usurged his neighbor’s place and lived in his stead.” The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit Books, 1986), pp. 81–82.

  105. Hearing of the International Operations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Federal News Service, April 1, 1993.

  106. The cosigners were Marshall Harris, Janet Bogue, Eric Rubin, Gordana Earp, Jon Benton, Jim Moriarty, Brady Kiesling, Ellen Conway, Scott Thompson, Drew Mann, John Menzies, and Mirta Alvarez. See Michael R. Gordon, “12 in State Department Ask Military Move Against the Serbs,” New York Times, April 23, 1993, p. A1. Jim Hooper, John Fox, and Richard Johnson did not sign the letter because they were not technically working on the region. Johnson was in fact on a one-year assignment in Congressman McCloskey’s office on Capitol Hill.

  107. Margaret Thatcher in a BBC Television interview, April 13, 1993, as cited in Marion Finlay, “Thatcher Sparks Row over Bosnia,” Toronto Star, April 14, 1993. William Safire, “Clinton Abdicates as Leader,” New York Times, July 27, 1995, p. A23.

  108. Joseph R. Biden Jr., To Stand Against Agression: Milosevic, The Bosnian Republic, and the Conscience of the West, report prepared for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 103rd. Cong., 1st sess., 1993, Committee Print 103–33, p. 3.

  109. Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).

  110. Bob Dole, “Bosnia: It’s Not Too Late; a Plan for Military and Diplomatic Action,” Washington Post, August 1, 1993, p. C7.

  111. Hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. Involvement in Bosnia, Federal News Service, June 7, 1995.

  112. Charles Krauthammer, “War and Public Opinion,” Washington Post, January 11, 1991, p. A21.

  113. Richard Morin, “Two Ways of Reading the Public’s Lips on Gulf Policy; Differently Phrased Questions Seem at First Glance to Yield Contradictory Results,” Washington Post, January 14, 1991, p. A9.

  114. Paul Taylor and Richard Morin, “Poll Finds Americans Back U.S. Response, but Warily,” Washington Post, August 10, 1990, p. A1.

  115. Ronald Brownstein, “The Times Poll; Americans More Wary About Prospect of War,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1990, p. A1. Poll numbers are notoriously unreliable, as most Americans prefer to answer, “No, but” or “Yes, if.” Nonetheless, they can give a hint of the public mood.

  116. During the Vietnam and Korea conflicts, opposition to the war increased by 15 percentage points once the casualty toll hit 1,000 and by another 15 points once it reached 10,000.

  117. Ronald Brownstein, “The Times Poll; Americans Back Bush Decision Overwhelmingly,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 1991, p. A1. Support for the Korean war was never higher than 66 percent, whereas support for the Vietnam conflict peaked in August 1965 and fell consistently as casualties mounted. By 1973 only 29 percent of Americans supported the war. Richard Morin, “Backing for War, Bush Role Grows with Ground Attack,” Washington Post, February 26, 1991, p. A6.

  118. Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 153.

  119. Interview with Warren Christopher, Face the Nation, CBS, March 28, 1993.

 
; 120. Interview with Warren Christopher, Nightline, ABC, May 25, 1993.

  121. Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 253.

  122. Johnson, “The Pinstripe Approach,” p. 70.

  123. Anna Husarska, “Tough on Crime, Murky on Genocide,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1994.

  124. Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Federal News Service, May 18, 1993.

  125. Johnson, “The Pinstripe Approach,” p. 72. In June 1993 the United States did join an appeal by the UN World Conference on Human Rights to the UN Security Council to take “necessary measures to end the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

  126. “An Officer and Nerve Shock,” Times (London), July 31, 1917, p. 8.

  127. John Gannan, CIA deputy director for intelligence, “Ethnic Cleansing and Atrocities in Bosnia,” statement before a Joint Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Select Committee, Intelligence, Federal News Service, August 7, 1995. The same month the CIA issued this report, Croatia’s army seized territory in the country’s Krajina border region that had been taken in the 1991 war by Serb forces. In the three-day operation, Croatia forcibly expelled or frightened into fleeing some 200,000 Serbs.

  128. State Department briefing, Federal News Service, July 21, 1993.

  129. John F. Burns, “Thousands of Shells Hit Sarajevo as Serbian Units’ Pincers Close In,” New York Times, July 24, 1993, p. A1.

  130. James C. Thomson Jr., “How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1968, p. 49; Michael Crozer, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). See Albert O. Hirschman, Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1991), p. 115. Thomson himself left the NSC in 1966 in what he called a typical “muddled departure.” Because of some combination of frustration and fatigue, it took him time to speak out. In May 1967, while teaching at Harvard University, he wrote a memorable letter to the New York Times in which he asserted that men in Washington bore a paramount obligation: “For the greatest power on earth has the power denied to others: the power to take unilateral steps, and to keep taking them; the power to be as ingenious and relentless in the pursuit of peace as we are in the infliction of pain; the power to lose face; the power to admit error; and the power to act with magnanimity.” James Thomson, “Alternatives Rejected,” New York Times, June 4, 1967, p. E13. Thomson’s observation would make a fitting epigram for this book.

  131. Hirschman described the government official’s preexisting attitude of “my country, right or wrong” and his reluctance to leave and thereby abandon his country at the moment it most needs fixing. He wrote that the attitude can become “the wronger, the myer.” Bureaucrats often see a choice not between voice and exit but between voice inside the system and voicelessness outside it. See Hirschman, Rhetoric of Reaction, pp. 39, 104.

  132. Michael Gordon, “A State Dept. Aide on Bosnia Resigns on Partition Issue,” New York Times, August 5, 1993, pp. A1, A11.

  133. News conference, Capitol Hill, Federal News Service, August 5, 1993.

  134. Gordon, “A State Dept. Aide on Bosnia Resigns.”

  135. Steven Walker, resignation letter, Federal News Service, August 23, 1993.

  136. Steven A. Holmes, “State Dept. Expert on Croatia Resigns to Protest Policy in Balkans,” New York Times, August 24, 1993, p. A6. Clinton’s press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, likewise said, “I think the president is sympathetic to people who, as a matter of conscience, feel that they have to resign.” White House briefing, Federal News Service, August 25, 1993.

  137. Drew, On the Edge, p. 150.

  138. See Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999).

  139. Perry, March 9, 1995, cited in Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion, p. 225.

  140. Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Foreign Aid Budget for FY94, Federal News Service, May 18, 1993.

  141. Hearing of the Europe and Middle East Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Federal News Service, September 15, 1993.

  142. Toby Gati to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, “Legal Analysis,” 1993, p. 32. Declassified as attachment to May 18, 1994, memo from Joan Donoghue in the Legal Adviser’s Office to a number of the State Department bureaus concerning the occurrence of a possible legal genocide in Rwanda.

  143. Ibid., p. 3; emphasis added.

  144. Ibid.

  145. Johnson, “The Pinstripe Approach,” p. 69; Frank McCloskey, “Christopher, Resign,” New York Times, October 24, 1993, sec. 4, p. 15.

  146. Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Federal News Service, November 5, 1993.

  147. Ibid.

  148. McCloskey raised Bosnia at one hearing in 1992, eight in 1993, and six in 1994.

  149. Jason Vest, “Battle Cry of the Anti-War Congressman,” Washington Post, February 19, 1994, p. G1.

  150. White House briefing, “Statement by President Clinton Regarding Proposals to Deal with Situation in Bosnia,” Federal News Service, February 9, 1994.

  151. Dick Kirschten, “How Will Bosnia Play This Fall?” National Journal, February 5, 1994, p. 336; and Vest, “Battle Cry of the Anti-War Congressman.”

  152. Kirschten, “How Will Bosnia Play This Fall?”

  153. UN Security Council Resolution 827, May 25, 1993.

  154. Michael P. Scharf, Balkan Justice: The Story Behind the First International War Crimes Trial Since Nuremberg (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1997), p. 54.

  155. Anna Husarska, “Weak Voices,” New York Times, July 25, 1995, p. A14.

  156. Michael Adler, “Owen Fears Beirut-Style Division of Sarajevo,” Agence France-Presse, December 19, 1992.

  Chapter 10, Rwanda

  1. Memo from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Prudence Bushnell, through Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff, to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, “Death of Rwanda and Burundi Presidents in Plane Crash Outside Kigali,” April 6, 1994. The Rwanda documents were released to Will Ferroggiaro at the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act.

  2. Alison Des Forges, “The Method in Rwanda’s Madness; Politics, Not Tribalism, Is the Root of the Bloodletting,” Washington Post, April 17, 1994, p. C2.

  3. James Woods, interview, “The Triumph of Evil,” Frontline, PBS, January 26, 1999, p. 15; available at PBS Online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/interviews/woods.html. The Interahamwe, meaning “those who attack together,” were Hutu extremist militiamen supported by the National Revolutionary Movement for Development party, which helped orchestrate the slaughter of Tutsi civilians.

  4. Cited in Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000), p. 71.

  5. Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), pp. 207–208.

  6. Ibid., p. 212.

  7. Canadians are extremely supportive of international peacekeeping. Some 80 percent of those polled in 1994 backed Canadian forces’ participation in armed UN interventions. A survey published in 1998 placed the figure at 82 percent. National Defense Headquarters, “Canadians on Defense,” April 1998.

  8. Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, pp. 96–179; United Nations, Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, UN Doc. No. A/54/549, December 15, 1999, pp. 3–11, 47–52; Organization of African Unity (OAU), International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (Organization of African Unity, 2000), chap. 7.

  9. IMF Rwanda Briefing Paper, 1992, Article IV, “Consultations and Discussions on a Second Annual Arrangement,” May 14, 1992, given to Melvern and cited in A People Betrayed, pp. 64�
�65.

  10. Africa Watch, International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, Interafrican Union for Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Report of the International Commission of Investigation of Human Rights Violations in Rwanda Since October 1, 1990 (Paris: 1993).

  11. United Nations, Report of the Independent Inquiry, pp. 3–4. See also report by B. W. Ndiaye, special rapporteur, on his mission to Rwanda, April 8–17, 1993, Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, E/CN.4/1994/7/Add. 1 (Geneva: United Nations, 1993).

  12. Organization of African Unity, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, OAU, chap. 9, p. 5.

  13. Reprinted and translated in African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (New York: African Rights, 1995), pp. 42–43. The commandments in fact referred to “Muhutu” and “Mututsi” for the singular and “Bahutu” and “Batutsi” for the plural. I have omitted the prefixes here.

  14. OAU, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, ch. 9, p. 4, citing Federation Internationale des Ligues des Droites de l’Homme, Rwanda Report of March 1993, pp. 24–25.

  15. The HRW report by Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, includes thirty-two pages of early warnings prior to April 1994. The OAU report found, “If the rest of the world could not contemplate the possibility that they would go that far, it was certainly known that they were prepared to go a great distance indeed”; OAU, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, ch. 9, p. 3.

  16. UN Security Council Resolution 872, October 5, 1993.

  17. From 1956 to 1977 the United Nations launched just ten peacekeeping operations; from 1978 to 1987 it staged only one. But in the stormy six years leading up to 1994, the Security Council had authorized twenty missions.

  18. Bob Dole, “Peacekeeping and Politics,” New York Times, January 24, 1994, p. A15. Dole noted that the Security Council, with U.S. assent, had begun, continued, or expanded peacekeeping operations in Mozambique, on the Iraq-Kuwait border, in Somalia, Georgia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Haiti, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Liberia. In fact, Dole noted, the council had “said no only to Burundi.” The Peace Powers Act that he introduced the next day would have banned U.S. troops from serving under foreign command in UN operations. “Our military personnel should be asked to risk their lives only in support of U.S. interests, in operations led by U.S. commanders,” Dole wrote. The act also demanded that the White House consult more with Congress before casting Security Council votes for deployments. And it urged that the UN “be put on notice” that the United States would not continue to pay 31.7 percent of peacekeeping costs or subject itself to the “UN’s warped accounting methods.”