A Problem From Hell

I started reading, A Problem From Hell by Samantha Power this morning. A Problem from Hell is a Pullitzer prize winning book which Amazon.com describes as...

During the three years (1993-1996) Samantha Power spent covering the grisly events in Bosnia and Srebrenica, she became increasingly frustrated with how little the United States was willing to do to counteract the genocide occurring there. After much research, she discovered a pattern: "The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred," she writes in this impressive book. Debunking the notion that U.S. leaders were unaware of the horrors as they were occurring against Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, and Bosnians during the past century, Power discusses how much was known and when, and argues that much human suffering could have been alleviated through a greater effort by the U.S. She does not claim that the U.S. alone could have prevented such horrors, but does make a convincing case that even a modest effort would have had significant impact. Based on declassified information, private papers, and interviews with more than 300 American policymakers, Power makes it clear that a lack of political will was the most significant factor for this failure to intervene. Some courageous U.S. leaders did work to combat and call attention to ethnic cleansing as it occurred, but the vast majority of politicians and diplomats ignored the issue, as did the American public, leading Power to note that "no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." This powerful book is a call to make such indifference a thing of the past.

It is that last quote, "no U.S. president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no coincidence that genocide rages on." that really bothers me. The book has been a challenge to the pacifist stand that has been talked about so long on the blogs during the Iraq War II. I really don't believe that the Iraq war was just from a theological point of view and nothing have convinced me of anything any different but when we walk away from defending people who are going to be slaughtered (Srebrenica and Rwanda to name a few places), and then do nothing when thousands are slaughtered because of their race, something is horribly wrong. I remember preaching a sermon during the Rwanda genocide and pointed out that as a nation during that time we were much more concerned with who was going to cut our taxes most effectively then we ever were that a people group was being slaughtered at 8000 people a day.
Maybe she is right, people will continue to die because even in the day of the global village, we really don't care that much. Just some thoughts that will be keeping me up tonight.