Care Tactics: Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights (War‪)‬

AMERICAN LIBERALS rejoiced at Samantha Power's appointment to the National Security Council. After so many dreary Clintonites were stacked into top State Department positions--Dennis Ross, Richard Holbrooke, Hillary herself--here was new blood: a dynamic idealist, an inspiring public intellectual, a bestselling author of a book against genocide, a professor at Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights. And she hasn't even turned 40. The blogosphere buzzed. Surely Samantha Power was the paladin, the conscience, the senior director for multilateral affairs to bring human rights back into U.S. foreign policy. Don't count on it. "Human rights," a term once coterminous with freeing prisoners of conscience and documenting crimes against humanity, has taken on a broader, more conflicted definition. It can now mean helping the Marine Corps formulate counterinsurgency techniques; pounding the drums for air strikes (of a strictly surgical nature, of course); lobbying for troop escalations in various conquered nations--all for noble humanitarian ends.