Samantha Power: How Obama Will Get Us Out of Iraq

Read coverage and reaction to Samantha Power's resignation from the Obama campaign here

Samantha Power is Barack Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, but when his office first called her in 2005, she thought, "who is this guy?"

Her 2003 book on genocide, A Problem from Hell, won a Pulitzer Prize, and she's a professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard. In a recent interview I asked her why Obama called her. "His office said he had just read my book, and he wanted to talk about, literally, 'a smart, tough, and humane foreign policy.' No one from the US government had every called me - no mayor, no school board head."

And why didn't she know who he was? "I had been out of the country, in Sudan, at the time of Barack Obama's national coming out, which was the Democratic National Convention of 2004." When she asked around, she heard he was a great speaker. "So I went onto iTunes and downloaded his speech and got on the shuttle down to Washington and listened to the speech on the plane. And I had a cry. I couldn't believe the speech, couldn't believe the country he was telling me I lived in.

"And then I went and met with him. We were supposed to meet for an hour. One hour gave way to two, then three. Entering the fourth hour, I heard myself saying, 'why don't I quit my job at Harvard and come and intern in your office and answer the phones or do whatever you want?' It was literally that spontaneous."

Had she been thinking about a job in Washington? "No," she replied. "I had never had any aspiration to go anywhere near government."

What was it about that three-hour conversation that changed her mind? "It was the rigor of the interrogation that I was subjected to," she said. "He really pushed me. Barack is incredibly empirical and non-ideological. He's very aware of the tectonic plate shifts in the global order - the rise of China, the resurgence of Russia, the loss of influence by the US -- and how those affect your ability to get what you want, on anything from global warming to getting out of Iraq to stopping genocide. I thought, if you're interested in helping change the world in your small way, grandiose as that sounds, even if I was just answering his phones, I would have more impact than writing these big books that I put out ever half decade or so."

I pointed out that a lot of people say Clinton and Obama are pretty much the same on foreign policy. She disagreed. The biggest difference, of course, is "not wanting to go into Iraq in the first place." But beyond that, she said, Obama has "a plan to get out of Iraq responsibly. He is willing to make the Iraqi people central to his plan: to think about moving people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods if that was required; creating a war crimes commission; giving two billion dollars in aid to Iraq's neighbors who are sheltering these refugees."

Cuba presents more differences. Obama, she said, "was the first person to come out and say there has got to be a statue of limitations on a failed policy, and surely five decades is enough to know that this isn't working. So he favors allowing family travel and family remittances as the beginnings of a pathway to normalization.

She pointed to one other difference: "this question of whether we talk to our adversaries without preconditions. Obama said, I'm not afraid of Ahmadinejad. He's a Holocaust denier, he supports Hamas and Hezbollah, he has infiltrated Iraq, he's enriching uranium- and by being in the room talking to him, it's actually being tougher than lobbing these verbal grenades that Bush and Cheney toss from 5,000 miles away. Even if we fail to make progress on any of these issues, we will then have the international wind at our back, and we will have the capacity to mobilize a global response to his regime."

"On all these sacred cows," she concluded, "Obama wants to change the debate, expand the bandwidth" in ways that Clinton does not.

Samantha Power's latest book is a biography of UN diplomat Sergio Vieiro de Mello called Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.

Comments

[kratty]

i love her;

[tbone99]

On tv last nite ( bill Maher ) a top miliitary advisor said it took us to 2 years to remove all our equipment following the 100 DAY Gulf war.

She said it will take years to extricate ourselves from the amount of hardware following a war of several years, and of course the insurgency will be making it as hard as possible.On the other hand- it seems that Iraqis are more than ready for us to go( per the interveiws with them) so they'll probably help us pack.

Bush has guaranteed it won't be an easy situation for anyone, but the sooner we start the better.Hope Obama is true to his word but I'm sure its way more complicated than we can imagine.What would happen for example if iraq decides to hire the private security contracters , but we've passed the law H.C has put forth to make them answerable to U.S. military law.? Are these companies independent businesses or not?

[Hitsong]

When I first heard Ms. Power, I was so incredibly impressed with her clarity, intelligence and visionary outlook. Simply put: she's brilliant. Obama has surrounded himself with the best of the best and Samantha Power is just that.

[YankeeCanuck]

I've been reading her book "A Problem from Hell",not knowing she is associated with Obama.Her work deservedly won the Pulitzer-- she builds a brilliant discussion on a foundation of solid investigation. Her thoroughness and depth of foreign policy knowledge brought to mind my favorite also-ran, Senator Biden. Who, I wondered would have the inspiration to involve this woman in foreign policy for real?
Now I know.

[MIHOP]

Before someone summarily dismisses this as another Kool Aid moment:

Samantha Powers in not some naive idiot. My guess is she's a heckuva lot brighter and more accomplished than just about any of the Kool Aid accusers.

Also, she did not simply hear him speak and swoon into his outstretched arms. Inconveniently but true, she's not some flighty bimbo.

What specifically sold her was:

"the rigor of the interrogation that I was subjected to"
that "Barack is incredibly empirical and non-ideological"
that "He's very aware of the...global order...and how...to get what you want, on anything
the differences between Hillary & Obama on Iraq and Cuba
(he's right and he has the courage to give voice to unpopular ideas in a general forum, not just before Democrats.)

[RogerHWerner]

A person doesn't gain a professorship at the Kennedy School for being a dim bulb.

[TruthLives]

Oh my god...star struck by the new messiah listening to a replay of a speech and wants to follow as a new convert. Another on the Jim Jones road....

[Cunningham]

You could read the entire article, but that would defeat your purpose, wouldn't it?

[LoloZ]

You don't get it. I heard Samantha Power speak at a conference with Obama and his foreign policy team, and they are the real deal. You should educate yourself about this woman and the rest of his team before making a typical anti-Obama comment.

[MIHOP]

Uh, I believe that SHE, an expert in the matters at hand, was taken by the intensity of the interview, his awareness of the forces at work, his appreciation of global forces on getting things, his openness to thinking out of the box when it comes to solutions, and his courage to promote a different way. (Not that he didn't deliver the best speech, by about 10 orders of magnitude, than anyone in this party has given this milennium.)

But there's really no difference between that and an emotionally delussional response, at least not to a Clinton supporter.

[NoFactsJustTruth]

Seeming PROOF the 'day one' argument is hyperbole, and that perhaps her opponent is MORE ready than she.

[SShaw490]

You couldn't find stronger evidence that Barack is the anti-Bush than his meeting, and subsequent alliance with, Samantha Power.

As to a previous comment on Hillary's Blackwater legislation, that's one more piece of evidence against her - it's obviously an attempt to gain personal political power by using her office, not a serious attempt to do anything that will benefit anyone. Just like her vote on Iraq, just like her steadfast support of the war until it became politically inexpedient, just like her flag burning issue, just like her vote on Iran in Kyl-Lieberman, she thinks first, last and only about her personal political power in every decision. If Barack is the anti-Bush, Hillary is just Bush with a brain. Hillary is the worst example of a "what's in it for me" politician since George W Bush.

[Ajita]

Samantha Powers sounds like she would be the perfect chief adviser on foreign relations. I'm cautiously excited about the future of our planet.

[PaulLoeb]

Samantha Power is emblematic of Obama's advisors in that they almost all opposed the Iraq war, while almost all of Clinton's supported it.

[MIHOP]

Bingo.

People who saw what was going on, understood and acted accordingly and those who did not.

[larry278]

His Barackship's grilling of people who want to work for BHO gives me more reason to have hope. While Barack Hussein Obama may not have presented his solutions to the USA's problems-he's establishing a brain trust which can be expected to make the solutions BHO selects workable, practical & enforcable. That will be a great change from the solutions W & Co have selected for the USA. We will be free of impossible, impractical, un-Constitutional schemes which were destined to fail from day 1. That will be W's legacy. W is well on his way to proving that he's the very worst POTUS which the USA has ever had.
A President Obama will work to clean up the mess W & Co has made of the US government quickly & most thoroughly. His brain trust will implement the solutions which BHO selects. No, BHO won't be like FDR or JFK-he will be altogether something else as he cleans up the mess W has inflicted upon America. There is a rumor that BHO knows & respects the Constitution of the USA. That will be a change from W's administration. The USA could be a country of laws again-not W's autocracy which operates by fiats, fatwas & flatulent, failed Presidential decrees.

[RusStyles]

Great article! Wise beyond his 46 years...Obama neds to articulate these FP differences more clearly and comprehensively.

[lovethesinner]

I watched the interview Amy Goodman did with Samantha Powers a few days ago and thought "this is the first time I've ever heard someone sane speak about foreign policy."

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/25/barack_obamas_senior_foreign_policy_adviser

A more recent debate with Jeremy Scahill on the Balkans:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/22/samantha_power_v_jeremy_scahill_a

Samantha Power on "Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World" (part one)

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/22/samantha_power_on_chasing_the_flame

(part two)

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/25/samantha_power_on_chasing_the_flame

[plutorage]

Thanks for the link.

Samantha Powers seems to have grown up a bit since her nineties Balkans days.

She appreciates that Kosovo could turn into a Pandora's box and rightfully wonders what in the heck George Bush has been doing for eight years while a stale mate developped.

The land we are talking about is a miniscule molehill and our foreign policy "geniuses" from Albright to Holbrooke to Rice are making it into a mountain. Moreover, the open ended nature of the result will be a clear disadvantage for America's interests in the decades to come.

American corporations will no longer know if they have the security of contracts with sovereign nations since the whole issue of sovereignty will be in question. A nigerian secessionist movement can establish a country in a province by proving human rights abuses from Nigeria - a rather easy matter if you know how it is in that country - and disavow oil contracts made by the Nigerian government, for example. Why not? if the price of oil triples, it might even be a good idea.

Bush/Clinton are a nightmare of incompetence.

[jeffmorgan]

Who doesn't love Samantha Power?

[poppyseed]

Answer: Tyrants, despots, bullies and cowards, and the people and governments who support them.

I love Samantha Power. She is one of the reasons I wholeheartedly support Barack Obama.

End the Violence in Sudan.

Obama 2008!

[warpoet]

I know it's sexist...but in addition to loving her mind and manner, I wouldn't mind being a "donor" if you know what I mean...just another reason this woman is great! You go Sam.

[jeffmorgan]

omg you went there