The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  Once Senator Obama announced his bid for the presidency, his campaign sought to capitalize on the strong support he already had among Armenian Americans. Campaign staff who did voter outreach circulated the letter Obama had sent to Secretary Rice, and I made a video in which I promised Armenian Americans that Obama would not let them down as other presidents had. I framed Obama’s willingness to recognize the genocide as part of his general propensity to “challenge conventional wisdom and conventional Washington,” which he had already demonstrated by speaking out against the Iraq War. In the campaign video, I told viewers that Obama had reached out to me after reading “A Problem from Hell,” which documented the Armenian genocide, and I closed with the most personal endorsement I could offer:

  I know him very well, and he is a person of incredible integrity . . . He is a person who can actually be trusted, which distinguishes him from some in the Washington culture. So I hope you will take him seriously as you have always taken me seriously.

  Although the issue was far from the minds of most voters, Obama’s campaign website posted his pledge that “as President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” On election day, by most accounts, Armenian-American voters had supported him en masse.

  OBAMA’S FIRST OVERSEAS TRIP as President included a two-day stop in Turkey less than three weeks before Armenian Remembrance Day. I knew that virtually the entire national security establishment would dedicate itself to persuading Obama to avoid using the “g-word” on the trip, but I felt I could make a convincing case for why he should.

  To the extent that I had imagined difficult policy debates in government, I had envisaged them as more Technicolor versions of the discussions we had in Obama’s Senate office. President Obama would sit in his chair (which now happened to be in the Oval Office). He would pose questions, and we would each state our case. His trusted advisers would then duke it out in front of him. The President would make the tough decision, and we would rush off to implement it. But since I was no longer spending significant time with Obama, I had no way of knowing whether, next to the matters of life and death that he dealt with daily, the recognition question would even be brought to his attention before he flew to Turkey.

  Foreign policy debates did happen after the President’s daily intelligence briefing in the morning, but only the Vice President, National Security Advisor, and Deputy National Security Advisor regularly took part. The President also convened NSC staff to air disagreements, discuss major problems, and consider time-sensitive issues. But as we approached our two best opportunities for recognizing the genocide during his presidency—his trip to Turkey in early April and his April 24th statement—no such meeting was scheduled.

  I bombarded Denis McDonough and speechwriter Ben Rhodes with emails imploring that we somehow find time to discuss the recognition question with Obama before he left for Turkey. Close aides of Obama’s during the campaign, Denis and Ben both now had roles at the White House that were more senior than mine, and they generally labored to ensure that Obama’s campaign promises were fulfilled.

  I tried to tap the insurgent spirit that had permeated the campaign, arguing that Obama should not only recognize the genocide, but do so in Turkey.

  “That would be classic Obama,” I wrote Denis and Ben, even as I sensed that a more circumspect approach was creeping in.

  When I didn’t hear back, I urged them to at least ensure that Obama would leave open the question of recognition so we could discuss it upon his return. I pointed out that, for a man who prided himself on gathering his “Team of Rivals” before making hard decisions, the group traveling with him to Turkey held a very one-sided view of the matter.5 Of those who would be joining him on Air Force One, Ben was the only person pushing for Obama to fulfill his pledge.

  In the old days, I would have simply emailed Obama my argument, “process foul” be damned. But while he was the first president to regularly use email, I was not yet among the few people who had his address. When he departed for the trip, I had no idea how he would handle the issue when it arose.

  In the President’s first press conference in Ankara, Christi Parsons of the Chicago Tribune unsurprisingly asked about it:

  You said, as president, you would recognize the genocide. And my question for you is, have you changed your view, and did you ask President Gül to recognize the genocide by name?

  Standing beside Turkish president Abdullah Gül, Obama gave a response that had clearly been scripted, and one not dissimilar from the deflections I had heard from US diplomats skirting the issue when testifying on Capitol Hill. He pointed to negotiations then occurring between the Turkish and Armenian governments as offering a channel in which the contested history could be resolved:

  Well, my views are on the record and I have not changed views . . . what I want to do is not focus on my views right now but focus on the views of the Turkish and the Armenian people. If they can move forward and deal with a difficult and tragic history, then I think the entire world should encourage them . . . And the best way forward for the Turkish and Armenian people is a process that works through the past in a way that is honest, open and constructive.

  I flinched when I heard the phrase “difficult and tragic history,” which was the State Department’s preferred euphemistic dodge for genocide. But it was the words “honest” and “open” that really bothered me. How could we urge honesty and openness when we ourselves weren’t being honest and open on the issue?

  Obama was of course correct that it was the Turks and Armenians who needed to resolve questions about the past. But this was irrelevant. The Turkish government had no intention of truthfully delving into Ottoman history. Moreover, gesturing toward what would be ideal and even necessary didn’t absolve our administration of the responsibility to make a clear decision of our own as to whether to recognize the genocide.

  When the President returned to the United States, I renewed my efforts to ensure that we would at least debate what should go into the annual commemorative statement on April 24th, when Armenian Americans expected Obama to deliver on his campaign promise. To put the situation in government-speak, it was the best action-forcing event I would have to push the issue.

  Having worked at the White House three months, I had observed that government habits and processes tended to be institutionalized reflections of human nature. In life, when we feel uncomfortable about something, we often prefer to avoid discussing it. In government, because there is so much going on, it is especially easy to escape unappealing conversations. Indeed, even when people fully intend to make time to debate a vexing issue, they often get consumed by the crises of the day. On the Armenian genocide, the key players had little incentive to schedule a meeting since any White House deliberation would be both unpleasant and jeopardize the status quo. Given Obama’s plan to remove US troops from Iraq, and Turkey’s importance to regional stability, they were extremely reluctant to upset business as usual. The matter was simply treated as decided.

  As Armenian Remembrance Day approached, the National Security Council officials who advised the President on Europe and had organized his trip to Ankara wrote the first draft of the commemorative statement. Because they had “the pen,” they had a significant bureaucratic advantage: deciding which edits from others on the NSC to take and which to ignore.

  When the draft came to me, I used Track Changes to make significant revisions to the initial, formulaic statement—of course writing in the word “genocide.” Each time the original authors circulated a revised draft of the statement, however, they dropped the word. It was a crushingly antiseptic way to realize we were going to dash the hopes of people who had trusted us.

  As time ran out, I decided to offer a formulation that would at least break new ground. I inserted Raphael Lemkin and the fact that the Armenian massacres had motivated him to invent the word “genocide.” But the Senior Director for European Affairs told me that this approach would be “the worst of both worlds—destined to disappoint the Armen
ians and enrage the Turks.” I should stop trying to be “too clever by half.”

  I didn’t give up. That year, the Holocaust Days of Remembrance ceremony fell on April 23rd, and President Obama was slated to join Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and others in the Capitol Rotunda. They would be speaking before a large audience of survivors, American Jewish leaders, members of Congress, and foreign diplomats. When Obama’s remarks for the Holocaust memorial event went around for clearance, I tried to insert references to the Armenian genocide there, and my NSC colleagues again rejected my additions. I fell back to trying to add references to the “slaughter of the Armenians,” reasoning that nobody in our administration denied that, in 1915, 1.5 million Armenians had been killed. Here too I failed. My colleagues argued that Turkey would be upset to see the massacre of Armenians included in a speech about the Holocaust.

  “For them, that would imply that it was genocide,” an NSC coworker explained.

  “Yes, it would imply that,” I said, raising my voice, “because it was genocide!”

  OBAMA’S SPEECHWRITER SARA HURWITZ had integrated some of my other ideas into the Holocaust remembrance remarks, and she kindly secured an invitation for me to attend the event. Just as Sara and I disembarked from the staff van at the Capitol, we saw President Obama exiting his limousine ahead of us, making his way up a set of stairs.

  When he turned to look behind him, he spotted me and gave a friendly wave, shouting “Hey Sam!” In the old days I might not have registered such a greeting as anything special. But I was grateful. I waved back and joined the group of people trailing him up the stairs.

  Since I had not traveled with the President before, I had not yet experienced presidential movement, an epic affair. You go with the flow or you get left outside the fully secure zone that the President inhabits. When Sara and I reached the top of the stairs in the back of the Rotunda, we saw a VIP entrance, through which Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, and the other senior staff were making their way to seats. Sara told me she planned to stand in the back behind the media and encouraged me to follow the VIPs to a seat so I could rest my eight-months’ pregnant body during the event. Unfortunately, as I hesitated, considering whether to follow Sara or sit, security guards sealed off both the staff and VIP entrances. I suddenly found myself alone.

  A Capitol police officer appeared out of nowhere. “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked gruffly, clearly disconcerted by the sight of a displaced person backstage at a presidential event. I had started the day in a sour mood and now I was stranded.

  I resisted the urge to answer, “Yes, sir. You can help me by shouting out ‘Armenian genocide’ in the middle of this ceremony!” But just as I was about to explain my limbo to the officer, I heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey, leave her alone! She’s with me.”

  President Obama had left his holding area to use the bathroom, which happened to be near where I was standing. “Mr. President!” I exclaimed, flustered, but delighted. This was the first time I had seen him alone since he became President. He gave me a warm embrace, sized up my tummy, and asked how soon I was expecting.

  “How are you finding it all?” he asked.

  For a split second I thought, “Don’t ruin this nice moment with a man who never gets a break. He is talking to you as a friend, not as the President to be lobbied.” But I couldn’t help myself, as it was not too late for him to change his mind—Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day was still a day away.

  “I’m really worried about the Armenians,” I said.

  Obama’s eyes flashed—first in surprise, and then, seemingly, in anger.

  I knew I was taking advantage of a chance encounter outside a men’s room to try to sway the President on a question that had already been decided, but it was too late to stop now.

  “They really counted on us,” I continued.

  “You know what,” the President said, “I’m worried about the Armenians too. But I am worried about the living Armenians. Not the ones we can’t bring back. I am living in the present, Samantha, trying to help the Armenians of today.”

  He was referring, I realized, to US efforts to support the normalization talks between Turks and Armenians. If achieved, the reestablishment of diplomatic relations would have profoundly beneficial economic effects for the citizens of Armenia, and Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan had told Obama he wanted to secure an agreement. Obama had clearly been convinced that if he recognized the genocide, the Turks would be so angry that they would abandon the discussions with Armenia.

  I believed he was being misled.

  “Mr. President, the talks are not going to work,” I said. “We know that the Turks are engaging in the normalization process precisely in order to convince you not to recognize the genocide. But they aren’t serious beyond that. As soon as they get through April twenty-fourth, they’ll refuse any compromise.”

  “Well, you know what?” he said sharply, before walking away, “I don’t have the luxury of not trying for peace.”*

  I felt light-headed as the police officer escorted me to a seat. After the event began, I watched Wiesel step up to the podium. He always looked so fragile and small. But as I had witnessed many times before, once he began speaking, the force of his convictions and wisdom made him project like a giant.

  After describing what the Hungarian authorities and the Nazis had done to his family, Wiesel found a way to close out his remarks with a proclamation of faith. “In the final analysis,” he said, “I believe in man in spite of men.” He continued:

  I still cling to words, for it is we who decide whether they become spears or balm, carriers of bigotry or vehicles of understanding, whether they are used to curse or to heal, whether they are here to cause shame or to give comfort.

  The power of words. I wondered how President Obama was hearing what Wiesel was saying, and whether he felt any fresh tug to use a word that mattered to so many who had lost so much. I sensed that for all his seeming conviction that he was making the right choice, he was more conflicted than he wanted to reveal. Even though the question of Armenian genocide recognition was a small one in the scope of his presidency, he knew that his decision would cause pain.

  But he was the President of the United States. No matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to put myself in his shoes, or appreciate the variables he was weighing. He was getting to know Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and had seen how emotional and erratic he could be. Erdoğan might well retaliate against the United States, even if doing so would harm his own people. And with the US economy still losing more than 500,000 jobs each month, and more than 130,000 US troops still stationed in Iraq, Obama must have felt he could not afford to incur the risk.

  I also understood—somewhere deep down—that the debate over US recognition was over. If the President wouldn’t follow through on his promise in 2009, when he had the most leeway and political capital to take a risk, I knew we would not recognize the genocide during his presidency.

  Obama stepped to the podium. The theme of his speech was individual responsibility—how we each must decide whether we stand up or stand by. He talked about the range of factors that made the Holocaust possible, including “the willingness of those who are neither perpetrators nor victims to accept the assigned role of bystander, believing . . . the fiction that we do not have a choice.”

  I was struck by how strained Obama already looked just three months into the job. A key part of his message had always been that one individual could change lives. Now he was the leader of the free world. With a pen-stroke, he could pardon a person on death row, send American soldiers into battle, or right a historic wrong.

  He asked, as one does on such occasions, “How do we ensure that ‘never again’ isn’t an empty slogan or merely an aspiration, but also a call to action?” And he answered, inconveniently in light of the Armenian Remembrance statement that the White House would issue the next day, “I believe we start by doing what we are doing today—by bearing wi
tness, by fighting the silence that is evil’s greatest co-conspirator.”

  The ceremony closed with Cantor Alberto Mizrahi singing “The Song of the Partisans,” aka, “Never Say That You Have Reached the Final Road,” which a Vilna underground fighter wrote in 1943 upon learning of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Several Holocaust survivors in the audience sat weeping.

  AS I GOT UP to leave, emotionally drained, several European ambassadors stopped me to express gratitude for the President’s remarks. Not wanting to be rude, I lingered. But by the time I looked around, I no longer saw any of the White House officials who had been part of Obama’s delegation. I grew frazzled and hurried in the direction of the motorcade.

  When I walked outside into an unseasonably warm April day, I saw a row of armored black SUVs and vans. I knocked on one of the SUV’s windows, which the driver opened. “Is this the White House convoy?” I asked.