Obama's Atrocities Prevention Board

On August 4, the Obama Administration issued a press release calling for an Atrocity Prevention Board, where the president is calling upon the US to strengthen its ability to prevent mass atrocities and crimes against humanity. As the release makes clear, the directive establishes "a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies...to be responsive to early warning signs."

Clearly, such an initiative should be applauded, especially given the US track record vis-a-vis genocides and mass atrocities. I suspect that Samantha Power is having an influence on the president, given that her book, a well-written and researched playback of how the US has time and again turned its head during times of international crisis, is a must-read on the subject of US non-intervention. Situations like Bosnia and Rwanda are the obvious ones in recent history, but the calamity in Cambodia following on the heels of the Vietnam conflict is also top of mind, and one cannot neglect mentioning the Holocaust, when it was known by the West what Hitler had in store for European Jewry early enough where some action could have been taken to prevent the number murdered to reach 6 million. It's known today that the intervention in Kosovo was done to prevent a possible genocide, as Milosevic was determined to create a pure Greater Serbia, whereby he was going to cleanse the former autonomous province of its Albanian population.

This directive puts the wrongs committed by the US on the table in the past and seeks to create a new framework from which the US will operate under should there be, or perhaps when there will be, the next opportunity to prevent massive crimes against humanity. It adds two key elements to the discussion, the first ensures that the US "does not become a safe haven for human rights violators or those responsible for other atrocities....such as participants in genocide, torture, extra-judicial killings or certain violations of religious freedom." The second element acts as a deterrent for groups wishing to carry out a crime by shaming them before the actual act were to take place.

With regards to the first element, watching current events one will see that the US has been fairly proactive in deporting former Nazi soldiers, with the most notable one coming in 2009 when John Demjanjuk was sent to Germany and has since been convicted of killing some 28,000 Jews at Sobibor. And I believe the US has acted on Hutu Rwandans who have sought safe haven here, with one seemingly coming to mind who was living in Texas over the past 2 or 3 years. So this directive puts in place, at least in theory, a mechanism that keeps these people from entering the US in the first place after the crime was committed.

As for the second element, Power expresses outrage in her book in at least one chapter at the lack of shaming to come out of the US government in the past. This now aims to correct that and rightfully so.

Many Jewish organizations have come out and applauded the administration for the directive, not surprisingly given the history of the Jewish people.

But if there is a concern about all this, it goes back to the question of intervention. In the Power's book, if we were to take each situation and see to it that the US intervened militarily each time, the American people would, in my view, express outrage. The US is already seen as the world's policeman; it's not something to celebrate, especially at a time when state building at home is in dire need. Given that the military is already over-stretched, and the cost for military deployment has drained the US economy, stopping mass atrocities from happening militarily seems almost out of the question. Of course, there are non-military levers that can be pulled, shaming constituting one of those, that would leave the military out of it, but not necessarily stop the atrocities from occuring. One would hope that all diplomatic mechanisms would be pulled first before sending in the military, but an adventurous president is not necessarily a rare breed.

With all that said, Obama would like to see the Atrocities Prevention Board operational within 120 days. While the directive is no doubt a lofty and admirable goal, one hopes that the US can live up to the obligations it is setting out for itself. Establishing leadership in the world is a wonderful thing, but now the US has to make good on its promises. Only time will tell if it has the political will, and the American people have the stomach, for more interventions in far away places that may or may not directly impact the United States and its national security.

Odds and Ends

Today's January 27, which is Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day for those of us who choose to remember and who choose to think of the significance surrounding such a day. President Obama put out a press release on the day, as he did for other topics this morning, one of which was the murder of a gay Ugandan man, savagely beaten to death for speaking out on behalf of homosexuals in Uganda.

Perhaps most importantly, Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity to not just think about European Jewry and the horrors that would nearly wipe it out 60+ years ago, but the other genocides that have occurred since, especially when the words 'never again' have been uttered numerous times. Those two words ring hollow to the ears of those people in the world who strive to prevent mass murders from happening. They also ring hollow when you look at cases like Bosnia and Rwanda, where the UN was on the ground, charged to keep the peace. And yet, in both instances, systematic mass murder followed, and perhaps, if it wasn't for Bill Clinton and others, it may have happened again in Kosovo in 1999. The threat of genocide is here with us today, as it was 70 years ago.

On the topic of Uganda and the brutal murder, I do not know enough about the country nor am I a close enough follower of issues surrounding the LGBT community to comment on it intelligently. Suffice to say, I support their efforts to solidify the same rights that majority populations enjoy, including marriage. I know from watching Rachel Maddow's show last year that Uganda has a real problem vis-a-vis their LGBT communities and efforts need to be put forth to mitigate the inflammatory rhetoric spouted off by their politicians and others. A couple of articles on HuffPost, here and here, advocate cutting off aid to Uganda in response. Again, not being entirely informed, I hesitate to put forth an opinion; but clearly, if the U.S. is sending aid to Uganda used by organizations that perpetuate hateful rhetoric targeted at the LGBT community, it must re-evaluate what it is doing if not stop entirely. With that said, the U.S. has some work to do in its own backyard vis-a-vis extending equal rights to the LGBT community as well.

As far as I know, Tunisia, Egypt, Albania, and today Yemen, have seen citizens taking to the streets protesting their present regimes. If there's anything to learn from this show of citizenry power, it's that the U.S. doesn't have to export democracy by force, nor should it in my view. Give an oppressive leader enough string, and they will eventually hang themselves. These nations, Belarus as well, somehow need to find what Poland found 30 years ago when Lech Walesa put forth what would become the Solidarity Movement. Eventually, democracy has the potential to take root, and with it, a free market economy.

And finally, tomorrow is Friday, January 28, one full year since I was rejected for a Fulbright to Poland. It does not seem like a year, for I remember the circumstances of the day prior, the day of and the weekend I was going into clearly. The email arrived at 5:24 pm. I received it after 7 pm. The next day, I had to be up at 3am to be at work for 4 to deal with changes JetBlue was making to its reservation system. The day prior, one year ago at this writing, I was in Polish class, beginning my second semester. I remember glazing over the first sentence of the email, the thank you for applying nicety, and getting to the second sentence, the one that started with the word "Unfortunately." I knew without reading the remainder what it was going to say. It bothers me to this day.

G. Clooney and Darfur

You really have to admire George Clooney for his work in calling attention to the crisis in Darfur. He just outdid himself with the recent news that, in coordination with several actors including the UN and Harvard, he'll be launching private satellites to watch for any kind of increasing conflict in the Sudan as the referendum approaches between the north and south.

The Satellite Sentinel Project will launch on Dec 30, with the website going live right about now. It's nice to have deep pockets, connections, and a brand name to make things happen! Clooney is spending $750,000 to launch the effort, which will monitor troop movements with the images being uploaded to the satsentinel.org website within 24 hours for all the world to see what may or may not be happening in the lead up to the vote for succession. How's that for revolutionizing genocide prevention?

Clooney makes a great point when he makes note of how one can imagine the impact if this were 1943 and we were able to detect through pictures what was happening at Auschwitz. No one would be able to say they didn't know, and the deniers would be denied after the fact. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this? Kudos to George Clooney and his passion for the cause.