Browser.final 8/5/02 11:06 AM Page 26

THE BROWSER An End to Evasion America’s role in a century of by jennifer leaning

mong the unsung heroes of the twentieth century is menian populations and through arbitrary B , a Polish Jew, a linguist, and an interna- arrests, terrible tortures, whole-sale ex- O pulsions and deportations from one end of tional lawyer, who reached the United States in 1941 and the Empire to the other accompanied by O frequent instances of rape, pillage, and died in 1959, alone and penniless. As the “Father of the murder, turning into massacre, to bring K ” (the only inscription on his tomb- destruction and destitution on them. S These measures are not in response to stone in Queens, New York), Lemkin devoted his life to popular or fanatical demand but are Amaking the world understand, name, and “Persecution of Armenians assuming un- purely arbitrary and directed from Con- reject the crime that is the topic of “A Prob- precedented proportions. Reports from stantinople in the name of military neces- lem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. widely scattered districts indicate sys- sity, often in districts where no military Whether he failed, or we failed, or even tematic attempt to uproot peaceful Ar- operations are likely to take place.” what constitutes failure in this matter— these are questions one must explore by reading ’s magnificent book. Power, former executive director of the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and now a lecturer at the school, begins with the deaths of perhaps a million Armenians at the hands of the Turks in 1915, and continues through the instances of mass death we label sim- ply as , Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Srebrenica, Rwanda, and Kosovo. We are two years past this grim century of atrocity. Historical reckoning takes time, to allow for reflection, memory, courage, and the release of documents. Power has pushed that process through sheer personal engagement and intellec- tual ferocity. Whatever has been written and released, she has read. Whoever might speak, she has spoken to. However we might evade the facts, she has gathered and explained them here. “A Problem from A sinking sense of Hell”: America and recognition takes over the Age of Genocide, in the first chapter. by Samantha Henry Morgenthau Sr., Power, J.D. ’99 the U.S. ambassador to (Basic Books, $30). Turkey, cables Wash- Memorial to the slain, Rwanda, 1997 ington on July 10, 1915:

26 September - October 2002 Armando Franca/Associated Press 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re The campaign against the Armenians sight she develops—it is also not because anyone with a seventh-grade education or had been underway at least since April we do not want to know. The problem of eyeglasses. Similarly, the Iraqi Kurds, 1915. Morgenthau had initially not be- evil, for ordinary people not trained to hounded, killed, and gassed throughout lieved the reports he was receiving, then apprehend it, is that it cannot be seen for the late 1980s, were conveniently viewed considered them consistent with Turk- what it is. for years by the U.S. State Department as ish e≠orts to suppress internal dissent In the midst of World War II, a Protes- the fifth-column enemies of Saddam Hus- during wartime, and then, after weeks tant theologian based in Switzerland sein in his war against Iran. The Bosnian of interviews with refugees and mis- muses on why there seems to be no action Muslims were characterized by the sionary witnesses, determined that in directed at saving the European Jews. He United States as waging a civil war fact something he called “race murder” speaks of people living “in a twilight be- against the Serbs, justifying this country’s was occurring. tween knowing and not knowing.” He persistence in maintaining an arms em- Those who have studied the meaning goes on to say that “people could find no bargo against them until the Serb mas- and patterns of mass atrocity will appre- place in their consciousness for such an sacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in ciate immediately in this quotation from July 1995 made it impossible to dismiss the the anguished ambassador the key fea- The Khmer Rouge killings as a “problem from hell.” The tures we now seek to define: evidence Rwandans came from a region of “ancient from di≠erent sites and sources, sugges- went after political tribal enmities,” where the latest fight be- tion of systematic rather than random tween the Tutsi and the Hutu was being events, indications of direction from the enemies, defined as held o≠ by a small contingent of UN top, extensive cruelty to distinct civilian, peacekeepers. In that setting, the sudden noncombatant populations (not just indi- anyone with a seventh- annihilation of 800,000 Tutsi looked to viduals), all these unprovoked by military outsiders who could not see as if the war necessity. As a textbook example on how grade education had just rekindled. to report from the field, this fragment Perhaps it takes practice to see it di≠er- from almost 100 years ago is breathtak- or eyeglasses. ently. Power demonstrates that, certainly ingly good, overwhelmingly sobering. If by the time of the Serb attacks on Kosovo one man (albeit gifted and brave) could unimaginable horror and that they did not (1998-99), journalists and human-rights see it coming in 1915, how is it that the have the imagination, together with the activists had acquired increasing sophisti- task to avert and intervene has been so courage, to face it.” cation in pattern recognition and data hard, so long, and so un- Power mines the record of the last cen- gathering. More to the point, however, is successful? tury for quotations, insights, issues, and that there was a cadre of government o∞- It is fitting that we pivotal instances in the service of her main cials in the United States and Europe still see this first twenti- theme: an explication of the cognitive and in place who had witnessed Milosevic’s eth-century genocide political deflections we employ, as individu- previous campaigns in Bosnia and Croatia through the eyes of an als and at the governmental level, to ward and who were prepared to move more ag- American diplomat. o≠ coming to terms with and acting upon gressively when faced with “indicators of Power’s thesis is that the information that washes up on our genocide” (the words are those of David the United States gov- shores. She holds in her sights the U.S. gov- Sche≠er, then head of the State Depart- ernment has had suf- ernment. Her best assessments combine her ment’s new war-crimes unit). ficient early warning journalist’s capacity for swift and pungent Another important blinder is that the regarding all these in- narrative with her lawyer’s understanding United States, like most entities, is always stances of mass death of the path that genocide has taken as a fighting the last war. Thus our response to to make an enormous concept, a moral category, a legal construct, instances of mass killing in one war is di≠erence in reducing a convention, and a political force. constructed in light of what was done, or or stopping the kill- One important camouflage for genocide not done, in the war just past. Vietnam ing—and that in every is war. Lemkin noted this tight associa- sapped our energy for Cambodia; Somalia single instance of this tion, in that mass killings assume geno- aborted action in Rwanda; the Serbs were century, the opportu- cidal proportions as wars progress, when always one step ahead of us, in terms of nity has been squan- governments or warring factions begin to tactics and tempo, throughout the wars in dered and overtaken by attack leaders of stigmatized or suspect the former Yugoslavia. The Kosovar Alba- squabbles and claims of groups and then turn on that population nians benefited from our inaction in Sre- domestic politics. This at large. To those who see this killing brenica and Rwanda. is the first and most im- process as part of civil war, or as a legiti- portant lesson of her mate phase in the need to repress rebel- This foreground-background problem book. The problem is lion, those slain masses constitute, in that war imposes on our perception of not information, not genocide scholar Helen Fein’s term, the genocide is necessary to our understand- that we do not know. “implicated victims.” So the Khmer Rouge ing, and it is most carefully drawn in Yet—and here is a cen- went after political enemies, defined—as Power’s book. It serves, however, only to tral and brilliant in- the world saw belatedly—as virtually provide the context for her densely re-

Harvard Magazine 27 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re searched depiction of the policy process street—going where the people direct. within the U.S. government throughout Third, the U.S. policy establishment Are You Managing the years of this past century whenever lacks creativity and confidence in crafting the question of mass killings elsewhere diplomatic and political initiatives. Faced Your Parents’ Life landed on someone’s desk in Washington. with mass killings, ethnic cleansing, or Lemkin, in the first flush of idealism upon potential genocide, the ideas that surface Or his arrival here in the spring of 1941, swing from some vague (or domestically Your Own? sought action from an academic gathering dangerous) economic gesture to full-scale at Duke University: “If women, children, U.S. military intervention. Failure to iden- The sooner you plan, the more and old people would be murdered a hun- tify credible steps along that continuum choices you have. dred miles from here, wouldn’t you run to exhausts interest in doing anything. Call before the crisis…. help? Then why do you stop this decision Fourth, faced with challenges we did 781 455-8588 of your heart when the distance is 3,000 not seek and do not understand, denial miles instead of a hundred?” takes over, deployed in one of three · Assistance with Transitions Why indeed? Power is uncompromising modes. (Here Power explicitly acknowl- · Comprehensive Care Management in showing us four main reasons why U.S. edges the “futility, perversity, jeopardy” · Home Care o∞cials in the executive and legislative paradigm of Albert O. Hirschman, LL.D. · Family Consultation branches have managed, time and again, ’02.) The problem is described as beyond · Home Safety Evaluation not to run the distance. our reach (civil war, ancient hatreds, im- First, the character and history of U.S. possible to intervene in the given time diplomacy make us slow to recognize frame, logistically not feasible). Or the SeniorBridge warning signs. We seek to build relation- action the United States might take Family ships and influence developments in posi- would only make things worse (reprisals, tive directions. Such interests create inertia escalation, untoward consequences we ‘Eldercare along the East Coast’ and resistance to input that requires seri- can only imagine). Or we might expose ous reassessment and potential rupture of our core strategic interests, or those of 100 Crescent Road ties. In this vein, we privilege what we hear our allies, to greater danger (violate the Needham, MA 02494 from governments and tend to dismiss sanctity of national sovereignty, incur the Members of the National Association of views from other sectors of society. wrath of Russia, aggravate relations with Geriatric Care Managers Second, whatever response the U.S. China). government takes in foreign a≠airs de- A great strength of Power’s analysis is pends upon domestic political agendas. that she manages, in each of the genoci- Constituent silence in the face of media dal sagas she recounts, to establish con- reports of atrocities far away is inter- vincingly that one or more of these fea- preted as reluctance to take action; possi- tures of U.S. decision-making was central ble options are weighed in terms only of to the terrible outcomes. It makes for a their domestic risk, not international im- sorrowful and cumulatively enraging pact. Leadership is perceived as a one-way study.

CHAPTER & VERSE A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words

Lewis Robinson asks who wrote of “armies led by idiots, politics ruled by never seeing a man with a large house cowards” (July-August). Lloyd J. Mat- and barn without imagining him carry- thews sent in the precise quotation: ing the house and barn on his back. “The nation that will insist upon draw- ing a broad line of demarcation be- Toni Verso seeks a story that says, “It tween the fighting man and the think- Place your classified takes all kinds to make a world: some to ing man is liable to find its fighting ad on-line! look up and some to look down….” done by fools and its thinking by cow- ards.” The assessment is that of Lt. Gen. www.harvardmagazine.com/classifieds Tony Shaw asks if the statement he saw Sir William E. Butler, K.C.B., in his 1907 posted while serving in Khe Sanh, “For biography Charles George Gordon (page 85). those who fight for it, life has a flavor It’s an easy, secure way to place the protected never know” (as cited in Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter Newsweek, February 12, 1968), originated and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware your vacation rental, personal, there or paraphrased an older source. Street, Cambridge 02138. or real-estate ad.

Harvard Magazine 29 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re Power has many heroes, OPEN BOOK and as the book goes on, one is aware of needing each of them, if only to summon the strength to Abolish the White Race keep reading. These include Lemkin, cer- tainly; and Morgenthau, who resigns; and “The good news is that there are now a host of writers and a growing number of many other government o∞cials, military courses and workshops designed to enlighten white people as to the real benefits o∞cers, journalists, human-rights ac- and the great cost of their property in whiteness,” writes former Harvard Law tivists, and private citizens who through- School professor Derrick Bell in his epilogue to When Race Becomes Real: Black and White out the years discerned the evil in what Writers Confront Their Personal Histories, edited by Bernestine Singley, LL.M. ’76 they saw and struggled to report or act on (Lawrence Hill Books, $26.95). Many of those engaged in this Herculean task are those insights. Through deftly chosen white, Bell notes, among them Noel Ignatiev, Ed.M. ’85, Ph.D. ’94, C.A.S. ’95, author photographs or vignettes, the reader of How the Irish Became White and a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, who writes: meets victims and survivors whose valor and integrity have made them known to n the interests of survival, ness had no meaning learned its rules the world. Power tells the stories well Afro-Americans have always stud- and adapted their behavior to take ad- enough so the reader is fully aware of how ied whiteness. There is a long tra- vantage of them; Race Traitor was an at- important a role luck has played in allow- dition among them that the white tempt to run the film backwards, to ex- ing us to hear from them, among the mil- Irace is a peculiar sort of social for- plore how people who had been brought lions of others deprived of voice. mation, one that depends on its mem- up as white might become unwhite.… Faithful to her key figure, Power tracks bers’ willingness to conform to the in- The goal of abolishing the white race throughout this perceptive political narra- stitutions and behavior patterns that is on its face so desirable that some may tive the major legal debates about the reproduce it. By the early 1900s…it was find it hard to believe that it could incur meaning and application of the term that becoming commonplace in the academy any opposition other than from commit- Lemkin painstakingly constructed. From to speak of race, along with class and ted white supremacists. Of course we his (failed) attempt in 1933 to have the con- gender, as a social construct.… expected bewilderment from people cept of barbarity in collective killing intro- In addition to the notion of race as a who still think of race as biology. We duced as a crime in international law; social construct, [an old friend, John frequently get letters accusing us of through his (failed) e≠ort to insert the Garvey, and I] shared another, which we being “racists,” just like the KKK, and crime of genocide into the legal brief at owed to the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. have even been called a “hate group.” … Nuremberg; to his (successful) exhausting James: that ordinary Americans are Our standard response is to draw an struggle to persuade the United Nations to drawn by the conditions of their lives in analogy with anti-royalism: to oppose adopt the 1948 Genocide Convention; and two opposite directions, monarchy does not mean finally to his (successful) work to have 20 one that mirrors and re- killing the king; it means nation states ratify it into law by 1950, we produces the present soci- getting rid of crowns, see how Lemkin’s endeavor exemplifies the ety of competition and ex- thrones, royal titles, etc.… honorable yet tortuous mission of the law. ploitation, and another Every group within The law both drives and reflects con- that points toward a new white America has at one sciousness; it both influences and defers to society based on freely as- time or another advanced politics. This dialectic is deftly traced in the sociated activity. We be- its particular and narrowly book. We see how Senator William Prox- lieved that this internal an- defined interests at the ex- mire, Democrat of Wisconsin, taking up tagonism played itself out pense of black people as a the cause and giving 3,211 floor speeches on as a civil war within the race. That applies to labor the issue, one per day for 19 years, and aided white mind, between the unionists, ethnic groups, at the final stages by Senator Bob Dole, Re- desire of whites to wall college students, school- publican from Kansas, brought the U.S. themselves o≠ from black teachers, taxpayers, and Senate, recalcitrant and querulous, finally Americans and their desire to overcome white women. Race Traitor will not aban- to ratify Lemkin’s convention, after 97 other the boundaries that kept them apart. don its focus on whiteness, no matter countries in the world had seen fit to do so, John and I decided that it was time to how vehement the pleas and how virtu- in 1986. High and low politics figure to the launch a journal to document that civil ously oppressed those doing the plead- end—this victory would not have occurred war. The result was Race Traitor, whose ing. The editors meant it when they had Ronald Reagan not decided that sign- first issue appeared in the fall of 1992 replied to a reader, “Make no mistake ing on to the Genocide Convention was a with the slogan “Treason to whiteness is about it: we intend to keep bashing the good way to mollify a wide constituency loyalty to humanity” on its cover. The dead white males, and the live ones, and infuriated by his visit to the German mili- aim was to chronicle and analyze the the females too, until the social con- tary cemetery at Bitburg. making, remaking, and unmaking of struct known as ‘the white race’ is de- Power brings us up almost to the present, whiteness. My book on the Irish was the stroyed—not ‘deconstructed’ but de- with a discussion of the two ad hoc war story of how people for whom white- stroyed.” crimes tribunals, one for Yugoslavia and one for Rwanda, now underway and the new

30 September - October 2002 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re International Criminal Muslim prisoners, Court, established by the Serbian internment Rome Treaty of 1998 and camp, 1992 entered into force as of 2002. In these chapters, where she reviews the problems of bringing war criminals to trial, she makes a point that needs even more empha- sis than she gives it: the challenge of establishing the evidentiary trail is enormous. Data on indi- viduals and on a popula- tion basis must be col- lected, contemporane- ously as well as retroac- tively; witnesses must be identified and deposed; documentary material must be gathered and assessed; forensic and other technical investi- gations must be un-

dertaken; and trained AP PHOTO/INDEPENDENT TELEVISION NETWORK lawyers, judges, and legal sta≠ must be as- Perhaps the twenty-first century will over this past hundred years lights up signed and supported in adequate numbers. usher in the phase of prevention. If so, it many paths we might have taken, many Securing the funds and sta∞ng for these ju- will be up to us. Power speaks of political good people who could have been helped, dicial processes is just one of the issues of will and accountability. Behind that, many opportunities lost. In the gap, we political will required to keep that flame lit however, is this ineluctable conclusion: If see the possibility, and at her urging, face by Lemkin still flickering. we are ever to prevent genocide, we re- the future with resolve. Power’s book should be read cover to quire leaders. These individuals come in cover, literally, because of the responsible many forms and guises. They must, to- Jennifer Leaning ’67, S.M.H. ’70, is professor of in- and fascinating endnotes, the excellent gether at one time or in one person, have ternational health at the Harvard School of Public index, the robust bibliography. By its end, the courage to call it genocide when they Health, where she researches human rights, hu- the reader has the answers to why the see it; the strength to persist in marshal- manitarian crises, and medical ethics. A physician, Genocide Convention took so long to ing evidence to confront denial; and the she attends in the emergency department at Brig- come into force; why we still are strug- political vision to enlist others into tak- ham and Women’s Hospital. Leaning was a found- gling with its terms and implementation; ing action, even when the risks seem ing board member of Physicians for Human Rights, why we still confront the grave risk of fu- high. on whose behalf she recently visited Afghanistan, ture murderous assaults against people In Power’s book we have both history where she helped identify and document a recent “for who they are, not for what they have and argument. Her account of genocide mass grave in the northern part of the country. done”—as Harvard’s Cabot research pro- fessor of social ethics, Herbert Kelman, put it in his 1973 essay, “Violence without School of Design. For a premier profes- moral restraint: Reflections on the dehu- Recovered Memory sional school, the GSD had maintained a manization of victims and victimizers.” markedly low profile during its years in The age of genocide can be seen as hav- by jane canter loeffler the historic 1902 structure designed by ing two phases. The first, the phase of McKim, Mead & White. recognition, we have lived through and Campus turmoil tumbled into Robin- But Robinson’s class- shaped. Human beings are capable of son Hall during the 1969 strike, when stu- rooms and its o∞ces The Struggle for Mod- killing large numbers of other people, dents turned the building into a factory seethed with inner tur- ernism: Architecture, given a wide range of observed circum- for the production of T-shirts bearing the moil long before the Landscape Architec- stances; we will resist knowing this ten- memorable clenched-red-fist logo. Until strike—turf wars and ture, and City Plan- dency in ourselves; and judicial processes, then, many in the Harvard community personality clashes ning at Harvard, by based on law and supported by documen- probably never noticed the building among faculty mem- Anthony Alofsin tation, may well force upon us this fear- tucked into a far corner of Harvard Yard, bers in landscape archi- (Norton, $60). some recognition. nor realized that it housed the Graduate tecture, architecture,

Harvard Magazine 31 95-5746. print information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-4 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and re