Not at all. She just omits mentioning it.
I found this interesting. On the cover of the _NYRB_ the article is prominently advertised in the middle of the page as "America & Genocide". Inside, in the table of contents, it's "Genocide and America". Below, under "Contributors", it says "SAMANTHA POWER is Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of the forthcoming _'A_ _Problem_from_Hell':_America_and_the_Age_of_Genocide_ (Basic Books), from which the article in this issue is drawn." (I confess to a certain low delight in savoring such passages repeatedly -- "executive director, carr center, human rights policy, harvard, kennedy, school, government, executive director..." -- but! Let us go on.) It seemed to me, then, that a general consideration of the relationship of "America" -- John Smith, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and all that -- to genocide, the deliberate extermination of large numbers of people because of their nationality, race or ancestry -- or maybe culture -- would _have_ to start with the genocide which, with slavery, is one of the fundamental facts of the creation of the United States. As I pointed out, the trailing edge of the American Indian genocide can be detected in 1910. A person could have shot an Indian for sport in his youth, and read in his middle age of Auschwitz and Dachau in the newspaper.
But (unless I missed something), there's no mention of this. Somehow, the world of genocide got stopped and restarted between the early 1900s (the aforesaid Indians and the Congolese) and 1917 (the Armenians who, Hitler to the contrary notwithstanding, have not been forgotten). Isn't this odd? Maybe it's because the Armenians are sort of White, at least with respect to the Turks. I don't know.
Now, I think this is important because in the _New_York_ _Review_of_Books_ and the Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, we're not talking about some goofy dumb asses talking idle shit in the Walmart parking lot, we're talking about the _haute_bourgeoisie_ at their most self-conscious. The Indians and what happened to them have _disappeared_from_ _the_bourgeois_scope_. Doesn't Samantha Power think those acts and the way they're construed by the nation that perpetrated them might have _something_ to do with the American political mind? I'm not moralizing here; I find the omission peculiar and troubling for the most self-centered, practical reason: it indicates to me that there are large, important holes in the metaphorical heads of our leadership, either because they actually think this way or they think they can pretend they do. (Not that I haven't gotten this idea before.)
The review in the _Nation_ tried to get at this by another route, I suppose, in noting that Powers's attention to intervention was very selective. But that is what I expect: the leadership are people who desire power, especially over other people, or they wouldn't be the leadership; if they desire power, they will notice and publicize what serves this power and downplay or omit what opposes or undermines it. But that game has a genealogy which I would think they would at least admit to themselves, i.e. talk about in the _NYRB_ and down at the Carr Center.
So there's something of a mystery there -- hence my interest and comments. I concede these are sort of half-baked, and that is why I didn't mention them until provoked. There's this line drawn across the pages of even the fat, heavy books the wonks read.... I haven't figured it out.
-- Gordon