RICK FRIEDMAN

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE Where Things Stand Can Iraqis build a normal society amid terrorist attacks and political chaos? [3/22/2004]

What made Power's argument so bracing — and cemented its place as one of the past decade's most important books on U.S. foreign policy — was her verdict that, far from ignoring genocide, three generations of American leaders knowingly and deliberately decided it was not in the country's interest to stop it. "One of the most important conclusions I have reached," Power wrote, "is that the U.S. record is not one of failure. It is one of success ... U.S. officials worked the system and the system worked."

A Problem from Hell won the Pulitzer Prize and made Power, an Irish-born 33-year-old who is the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, the new conscience of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. Though she worked as an adviser to former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark, Power has a nuanced philosophy that is not an easy fit with either party. She condemns the first Bush Administration for not committing military force to stop Iraqi genocide before and after the first Gulf War. But she opposed the second Gulf War. "My criterion for military intervention — with a strong preference for multilateral intervention — is an immediate threat of large-scale loss of life," she has said. "That's a standard that would have been met in Iraq in 1988 but wasn't in 2003."

Feb. 17, 2003	Sept. 10, 1984	April 29, 1991
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