Having just recently re-read Samnatha Power's work "A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," and having met Ms. Power at a gathering of Yale Law students for Obama, I am finding it necessary to call people's attention to what happened during the Clinton administration, when the worst Serbian atrocities were being comitted.

  Elie Weisel spoke out to a packed crowd (pg. 298) in The Dean Achenson Auditorium at the State Department. He begged policy makers to see the comparison between the Holocaust and what was happening in Bosnia. As Powers writes for page after page, the Clinton administration did not take action. In fact on page 362 this Pulitzer Prize work states that despite hearing Elie Weisel, despite knowing of the camps, the rapes and the autocities, "Clinton's support for the plan proved shallow and Christopher's statesmanship non-existent. According to journalist Elizabeth Drew, Hillary Clinton gave her husband a copy of Robert Kaplan's 'Balkan Ghosts', a deftly written travel book that portrays people in The Balkans as destined to hate and kill." The following page outlines how it was Senator Bob Dole that took to the editorial pages of major newspapers to critisize Clinton It was Dole that outlined the American interests at stake that Clinton did not grasp. Clinton was, bent on balancing the budget. At the same time Muslims abroad were using our indifference to the Bosnian Muslim's suffering,  as a recruiting device.(pg. 303). Dole wrote that the Serbs must have an ultimatum set. "The Serbs must adhere to the latest  cease-fire accord, permit the free passage of all humanitarian convoys, place its heavy weapons under UN control, and disband its parimilitary forces. If they failed to meet demands, air strikes should begin and the arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslims should be lifted so that the Muslims themselves could protect the vulnerable safe area. DOLE WAS IGNORED RIGHT ALONG WITH the State Department's in-house hawks.(pg.304)."

   Samantha Powers is fair in her assessment. She goes on to outline why Clinton's team, including Colin Powell did not want to intervene, but in the end it was the polls. "The Clinton administration kept one eye on the ground in Bosnia and one eye fixed on the polls."

   This lack of commitment went on while Serbs were indeed set on a policy of ethnic cleansing. Marshall Harris, was a Bosnian desk officer and continued to write policy and send it to President Clintoon. It would be discussed but not seriously entertained. "Harris was tired of the hypocrisy of Clinton's rhetoric. The administration refused to lead either the American people or its European allies and the complained the policy was constarined by a lack of support from both.(pg.313). 

   During all this the United Nations was invoking the genocide convention and created the first international crminal tribunal since Nuremberg. "But in the Bosnaian War .what was missing was US willingness to risk its own soldiers on the ground and to convince the Europeans to suppport NATO."     Remember people, if anything went wrong, Bill Clinton may not have been re-elected. He needed to wait to stop Slobadan Milosivic after the elections. In fact European negotiator Lord David Owens, begged the Muslims not to wait for an American rescue. It wasn't going to happen. Clinton did finally act but only after the Rwandan tragedy was coming to a close with 800,000 dead.

    I write this summary of the harrowing work by Power, knowing that I don't do it well. I simply am enraged when people say that we are not giving Clinton his due. Barack Obama has hired Power as a foreign policy advisor and Power stated in a meeting I attended that Senator Obama is the greatest foreign policy mind she had ever met. She would have done anything for him. Well, now she is advising him. This is why I  know he is well aware of how we waited to long to intervene in a war that made sense. When people critisize Barack Obama for not giving Clinton his due, maybe that's because he knows better.