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Part I: Samantha Power And Other Pros                                                                 

Part II: Netanyahu, Stephen Harper And Other Cons

William Annett Global News Centre

(DAYTONA BEACH) Back in ’03, Samantha Power was the High Priestess of  dissidents protesting genocide in general, manqué  American foreign policy in particular and, specifically,  Rwanda butchers. (Concerning that tortured nation, the Canadian Commanding General of UN forces there, General Romeo Dallaire, went nuts just thinking about it, but that didn’t cut any ice back in ice-bound Canada, then and now cheek by jowl with whatever official America thinks, says and does on the subject of genocide, foreign policy-wise). Not to mention the G-word right here at home on Turtle Island.

In fact,  that was the year Samantha published “A Problem From Hell: America and The Age of Genocide.” And instantly became the darling of talk-show hosts and book reviewers, celebrated by every gutsy commentator from Charlie Rose to Mike Huckabee. Mainstream America just loves rebels and dissidents who tentatively rock the boat – as long as their rocking doesn’t upset or cause vertigo among the mainstream media owners who power all boats, those half-dozen billionaires who tend to agree with all the other billionaires (to wit that the world,  as is, is just peachy keen, and by God we’re going to keep it that way). The more extreme shit-disturbers are simply ignored.

Anyway, Samantha Power’s book got a lot of ink and it won her a Pulitzer and – gee whiz  - a sinecure at  Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, second best by popular fiat to a berth in the White House;  perhaps as chair of the Department of Entrepreneurial Genocide, or some such thing, because the one thing Harvard does is keep au courant. Budget-wise, that prestigious faculty post probably ranks right up there with that of the hockey coach.

There followed an on-again-off-again series of White House appointments that are a little difficult to put in sequence, but we’ll try.

As Samantha reported in her book, despite the worldwide reports of the huge death toll in Rwanda, official Washington tended to look the other way – toward Canada, perhaps -  and avoided taking any action, even to the extent of using the G-word. During the Clinton era, there was enough gee-whiz stuff  going on in the Oval Office to preclude any other G-words. Meanwhile, after a million or so people had been erased, the UN Security Council speedily established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Throwing a fish called Rwanda, as one reporter put it. Perhaps it was me.

The first White House appointment came later, or was it earlier, than the Harvard day job? Anyway, it came to pass that Obama selected her as special advisor, and even let her set up an Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), despite all those nasty things she had said in the book about American Foreign Policy (now owned by B.H. Obama, Prop,), and later venting her Irish temper on the former First Lady, then Senator, then Secretary of State and finally (dare we conjecture?) bashful Presidential contestant. The APB cut quite a swath, reforming the UN, defending women’s, LGBT’s and religious minorities’ and human rights, while opposing the rights of human traffickers. By the time the President had appointed her ambassador to what’s left of the UN, Power was listed by Forbes as the 63rd most powerful woman in the world, right after Oprah and Jane Fonda. (Perhaps in a dead heat with Beyonce.)

But before that happened, she had formerly been shunned in the inner Presidential circle because she bad-mouthed Hillary, although Samantha was about to come full circle. The main reason everybody from Ron Paul to Lawrence O’Donnell had raved about Samantha was that she courageously accused the United States of direct inaction and failure to prevent or even oppose genocide in Rwanda, where, as noted, at least one million people were massacred.  We’re getting accustomed to six zeros, of course, but that total is one sixth of all the Jews Hitler erased. That of course pre-dated her being hired by the same government that she had bitterly criticized. But such is how politics makes cowards of us all.

So for quite some time, actually, Samantha had been on Obama’s team, as a consultant and advisor  about genocide and other nasty foreign policy subjects. But that didn’t last very long, because Samantha disrespected Hillary – I think the word “monster” is alleged to have been bespoken – and Samantha was toast, albeit temporarily (perfhaps like the French variety), except that she wasn’t exactly unemployed because of the Harvard thing. And more recently, after Hillary was warming up in the Presidential bull pen and actually disagreeing with the President’s foreign policy as well as the way Michelle had refurbished the East Wing, Obama appointed Samantha to the distinguished post of American Ambassador to the United Nations. And that, politically speaking, is where the fun began.

The official website  concerning Samantha’s adventures with the Obama administration of course sort of sluffs over the interregnum when the Irish lady was put out to pasture with Harvard, as if there was no break in her love affair with official government policy. All’s well that ends well, in D.C. politics as elsewhere.

But just recently, when a vote was taken in the UN to chastise Israel for bombing and rocketing kiddies in schools and hospitals in Gaza, guess what prominent nation – no doubt daily  advised and consulted with by Ambassador Power (power depending on absolute Power corrupting absolutely, and how she got out of bed that morning)  - was the sole abstainer from fingering the militant Israeli Holocaust survivors as committing a little junior grade holocaust of their own. You guessed it. America according to Obama (AAO) and the female genocide adviser it rode in on was the only nation that turned a blind eye to those Israeli proclivities in Gaza that the rest of the world considered genocide – and performed with American hardware at that.

Twenty years after Rwanda, with the genocide for the world to see and witness, Samantha, the chief UN point person, expert and practitioner, appears either to have lost her scruples or her marbles.

“America,” Veterans Today recently pointed out, “has once again exercised its political clout in favor of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity; its voice the lone one to vote against a call to investigation by UN Human Rights Council into the Israeli offensive’s violations of international laws. (Samantha) Power and her bosses give their full support to Israel’s continued crimes against humanity and genocide.”

It does  indeed depend  – in D.C., the Middle East or Pamplona – upon whose bull-chaser is being gored.

But if you, gentle reader, believe that such was the final twist in this ping-pong   Washington saga of genocide management, wait till we get to Part II, in which we bring on board other switch hitters, such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Stephen Harper, not to mention Barack Obama’s finally going straight. That is to say, seeing the light. Genocide-wise.

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Bill Annett grew up a writing brat; his father, Ross Annett, at a time when Scott Fitzgerald and P.G. Wodehouse were regular contributors, wrote the longest series of short stories in the Saturday Evening Post’s history, with the sole exception of the unsinkable Tugboat Annie.

At 18, Bill’s first short story was included in the anthology “Canadian Short Stories.” Alarmed, his father enrolled Bill in law school in Manitoba to ensure his going straight. For a time, it worked, although Bill did an arabesque into an English major, followed, logically, by corporation finance, investment banking and business administration at NYU and the Wharton School. He added G.I. education in the Army’s CID at Fort Dix, New Jersey during the Korean altercation.

He also contributed to The American Banker and Venture in New York, INC. in Boston, the International Mining Journal in London, Hong Kong Business, Financial Times and Financial Post in Toronto.

Bill has written six books, including a page-turner on mutual funds, a send-up on the securities industry, three corporate histories and a novel, the latter no doubt inspired by his current occupation in Daytona Beach as a law-abiding beach comber.

You can write to Bill Annett at this address: [email protected]