Samantha Power behind Obama's attack on Libya, Israel is NEXT!

[Maimonides]

For those of you who don't remember Samantha Power has called upon the U.S. to INVADE ISRAEL!!



The fact that Obama listened to Power and ignored U.S. Generals, and the Secretary of Defense when he decided to attack Libya should be of concern to us. Also the fact that Obama did not bother to get Congressional authorization should also be of concern to us, because if he ever decides to use military force against Israel don't expect Congress to be able to do anything.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/the_rise_of_samantha_power_and.html

As stories leak out regarding who was responsible for Barack Obama's sudden pivot from passivity regarding Libya towards military engagement (albeit with England and France being in the lead) one name has emerged as playing a key role in persuading him to push the button: Samantha Power.

Her influence might cause qualms among supporters of the American-Israel relationship. As has been covered by American Thinker and others (notably Noah Pollak in Commentary Contentions, among them), Power has been critical of the strength of this friendship and alliance. This concern should be now be heightened. Not only has she emerged as a key player in foreign policy but the rationale that was used to justify American actions towards Libya can be used by other nations - if not the United States - to justify more active involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Power was Barack Obama's most influential foreign policy adviser during the campaign; they go back years and are basketball and Blackberry buddies. Any influence she has would not be good for the American-Israel relationship-for reasons outlined here and here (where she said this regarding problems Barack Obama had during the campaign; "So much of it is about: Is he good for the Jews?").

Power may also have played a role in the granting of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Mary Robinson, a person with a checkered record regarding actions towards Israel.

She now serves on the National Security Council. Foreign-policy making in this administration has been opaque at best. But one dynamic that has been now made clear is that Power has emerged as a key player.[/size]

From John Podhoretz's column in the New York Post:

The Tuesday-evening meeting at the White House at which the president decided to move on Libya was "extremely contentious," according to a report in Josh Rogin's excellent blog, The Cable.

Power and a few others took the position that the United States couldn't stay on the sidelines as Moammar Khadafy murdered his own people and snuffed out the people-power revolt in the Middle East in its infancy.

They were opposed by Power's own boss, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

But apparently, Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton persuaded Barack Obama to act. The rationale they used that led to military can come back to haunt friends of Israel's.[/size]

Again, from Podhoretz:

According to Rogin, the governing doctrine that helped Obama to make his decision to act was not an appeal to the national interest, but rather to a recent concept promulgated at the United Nations called "responsibility to protect," or R2P.

R2P is an effort to create a new international moral standard to prevent violence against civilians.

In her career as a genocide expert, Power was an indefatigable proponent of R2P, and now on the National Security Council has been "trying to figure out how the administration could implement R2P and what doing so would require of the White House going forward." Hillary is her ally in this effort, it appears.

So it was not an appeal to our national interest that led President Obama to act but rather a new concept circulating in international policy circles - and one actively promoted by Power - that prompted his shift.

(By the way, the fact that Power played a key role in persuading Barack Obama to apply military force to protect civilians in Libya is akin to the same advice she counseled regarding Israel: Power also advocated that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians).

But there are other problems inherent in the concept of R2P (how easy that must be to tap out on Blackberrys) and with the precedent that has now been established that allows international intervention.

It is not hard to envision that this R2P concept, swirling through the United Nations and in international foreign policy circles, can one day be applied against Israel when that nation is forced to respond from attacks coming from the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. Terrorists hide behind civilians; Israeli actions to defend themselves often happen in densely populated areas where civilian deaths are almost inevitable - despite all the precautions Israel takes to prevent them.

Power's promotion of the R2P concept is not a surprise. Barack Obama's adoption of the same concept should be cause for concern. A Pandora's Box may have just been opened. Power's emergence as a key playe, and her influence over the President, who already is inclined to outsource American foreign policy to the "international community," should heighten this concern.

Just one more reason to try to keep track of the role and influence that Samantha Power has in the Oval Office. If Hillary Clinton decides to resign as Secretary of State (she has already declared she will not serve in a second term) there will be a reshuffling of positions of power (Susan Rice, Samantha Power, etc) and there is no telling who may end up moving closer to the center of power.
UPDATE:

The always astute Omri Ceren has more regarding the R2P concept over at Commentary Contentions. He notes that there is a bit of history regarding the concept's application to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. There was a group created in 2009, the International Coalition For The Responsibility To Protect, that has spoken out against Israel, notably during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The Coalition released this statement:

 

 

    The recent escalation of violence in Gaza has raised serious questions about the use of the Responsibility to Protect to urge international action to protect civilians in the conflict. The Responsibility to Protect has been referred to, notably by Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but also others who claim that crimes committed in Gaza by Israeli forces have reached the threshold of R2P crimes.

Ceren continues:

    This is part and parcel of the statements that the ICRtoP has been publishing since it was established in the immediate aftermath of Cast Lead. They published a petition absurdly insisting that "the rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas deplorable as they are, do not... amount to an armed attack entitling Israel to rely on self-defence." They passed along Richard Falk's "Israelis could be charged with war crimes" lawfare spin on the Goldstone Report. They reprinted other articles accusing Israelis of war crimes here and here and here and here and here. All of this was under the umbrella of "evaluating" whether R2P should be brought to bear against Israel's self-defense campaigns.

    The Responsibility To Protect, in other words, is an international norm that has been incubated with eyes on Israel at least since Cast Lead.

Now Samantha Power has seemingly slipped this concept into the mind and policies of Barack Obama. Once these international "concepts" are formed and promoted they often transform from mere intellectual ideas into the basis of international policy.

Israel should be worried.

Update II:
One more clue to Power being the promoter of the R2P concept within the Obama administration is her history. She opened a symposium put on the by the International Coalition for The Responsibility To Protect (ICR2P) as recently as November, 2010, with a keynote address. Furthermore, Sergio Vieira, was an international diplomat who pioneered the concept of the "responsibility to protect." Vieira was later killed in a suicide bombing attack in Iraq. Power wrote an admiring biography (if not a hagiography) of Vieira a few years ago that noted his role in developing and promoting that concept.

Concepts become norms and, in the wrong hands, norms can become weapons.

[mord]

she's a well known whore who is married to a Jewish guy who also is one of obama's followers   [Personal life

In January 2008, Power began dating the prominent law professor Cass Sunstein, whom she met while working on the Obama campaign.[9] On July 4, 2008, they married.[10] On April 24, 2009, Sunstein and Power welcomed their first child, Declan Power-Sunstein, born in Washington at seven pounds, eight ounces.]   




[Sunstein was born on September 21, 1954 into a Jewish-American family. He graduated in 1972 from the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975 from Harvard College, where he was a member of the varsity squash team and the Harvard Lampoon. In 1978, Sunstein received a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and part of a winning team of the Ames Moot Court Competition. He served as a law clerk first for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1978–1979) and later for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court (1979–1980).]

[Ithaca-37]

To be honest, I never heard that name before today ...... This woman Power plays a big role in a NYT article linked on Drudgereport.com, featuring this amusing headline:  "Obama follows the women to war."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html?_r=2&hpw

Personally, if asked to lay odds on Ghadafi (or however it's spelled this week) being in power one year from today, I would place the odds at 80/20 that he'll still be around.  Obama will never come to grips with a Muslim nation;  he'll just lob cruise missiles every few days, at a cost of a few million per unit.  And say what you want about Ghadafi, but he's like Castro in terms of surviving.

37

[Zelhar]

To be honest, I never heard that name before today ...... This woman Power plays a big role in a NYT article linked on Drudgereport.com, featuring this amusing headline:  "Obama follows the women to war."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html?_r=2&hpw

Personally, if asked to lay odds on Ghadafi (or however it's spelled this week) being in power one year from today, I would place the odds at 80/20 that he'll still be around.  Obama will never come to grips with a Muslim nation;  he'll just lob cruise missiles every few days, at a cost of a few million per unit.  And say what you want about Ghadafi, but he's like Castro in terms of surviving.

37

I agree with your assessment. Obama was dragged into this assault by France and Italy.

[mord]

I agree with your assessment. Obama was dragged into this assault by France and Italy.

Italy didn't drag him in it was France and England

[Zelhar]

Italy didn't drag him in it was France and England

You are right that France and Britain were the initiators of the action. Italy very quickly jumped on the war wagon and I am not sure if the attacks would be carried without access to Italy's air bases.

I think there is something personal the Europeans are trying to settle with Qaddaffi. He just loved to humiliate them in recent years and show to the world how these countries would suffer any insult for some lucrative business opportunities. For example: The UK agreed to release the terrorist bomber from the Lockerbie disaster in exchange to allow for BP to enter the energy exploration market in Libya. Italy had to sign some sort of "alliance" with Qaddaffi in 2008 and he came to Rome and preached Islam to Italian women and mocked the west. He also came to visit in France with the same mockery and bedouin extravaganza after had agreed to release some European hostages.

[mord]

You are right that France and Britain were the initiators of the action. Italy very quickly jumped on the war wagon and I am not sure if the attacks would be carried without access to Italy's air bases.

Yes that's true Italy gave them access to their Air force Base

[Debbie Shafer]

I do not like the Sound of This!

[mord]

 Lets face actual facts Israel has more then 300 Nuclear bombs each in megatons it also has ICBM's the Shavit the rocket that launches it's satellites has been made into an ICBM.Israel also has variety of ways to deliver the war heads including subs.If any country was to receive 100  1Kilo warheads on it's cities it would cease to be a country.Also Israel has tactical nukes, Sam is speaking hypothetically

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://www.mererhetoric.com/2009/01/30/samantha-we-should-invade-israel-power-appointed-to-nsc/

Samantha “We Should Invade Israel” Power Appointed To NSC.

You know why this is disappointing? It’s not because the appointment is going to be a source of tension in the US-Israel alliance. At this point, whatever. And it’s not because I always thought she’d come back as Secretary of State. Given her role during the transition, I’ll settle for partial credit.

Nope. The real downer is that I was this close to believing the media’s panegyrics about Obama’s vaunted “Team Of Rivals.” Diverse thinking, best of the best, etc. But between Power’s appointment and NSA Chief Jim Jones, I’m getting something less than a heterogeneous vibe from the NSC:

Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a “monster” while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned. Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Power’s position, as well as that of other senior NSC positions, have not yet been announced. One official said the announcements would be made in the near future.
Apparently advocating the invasion of a key US ally doesn’t earn you notoriety on the foreign policy left, provided that the ally is Israel. Nor does talking darkly about “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” that would be troubled by said invasion. But calling someone a mean name and tarnishing The One’s halo of purity – that’s the kind of thing you get tagged with for life.

Now in fairness, Marty Peretz thinks that Power only wants to invade Israel because she’s overflowing with affection for the Jewish State. Which is weird, because promising to pressure Israel is also how Power and her foreign policy colleagues express their affection for the Arab world. I guess Israelis and Arabs really do have the same underlying interests!

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

What a disgustingly hideous dyke.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

I agree with mord and Tempe Brennan fan in this thread 

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

I agree with mord and Tempe Brennan fan in this thread