Margot Lynn/The Hoya Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power described the foreign policy of the Bush administration as

Samantha Power, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction, said there are obstacles to integrating concern for human rights into U.S. foreign policy, but that the Bush administration can overcome these obstacles by heightened commitment to principles and institutions.

Power delivered a lecture called “Terrorism, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Human Rights: Can the United States Promote an `Age of Liberty’?” Thursday evening in Copley Formal Lounge.

Power started her lecture by quoting a speech President Bush made on Nov. 6, 2003 in Washington, D.C. “Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.'”

While she said some could respond to the speech cynically, seeing the speech only as “rhetoric,” Bush’s speech served to recognize the shortcomings of the U.S. foreign policy.

Power said “the enemy of my enemy can be my friend” attitude in foreign policy must change. She gave the example of U.S. backing of Iraq when “Iran was the enemy in the neighborhood.”

She said at the time Saddam Hussein was violating the rights of the Kurdish minority in Iraq, but the United States overlooked these violations.

“Lines not to cross were moved to keep Iran down,” she said.

When Iraq started threatening not only Iran, but also Kuwait and Israel with its weapons development program, it became clear that the United States could no longer support Hussein, according to Power.

Power outlined many obstacles to integrating concern for human rights into U.S. foreign policy.

The first one, she said, is that “victims of human rights abuses don’t vote in the U.S.” She said even she, “the genocide chick,” did not vote on the 1996 elections on the basis of how the Clinton administration “allowed” genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia.

According to Power, the second obstacle is a structural one. She said unlike domestic politics, foreign policy does not have “checks and balances” to make sure “urgent will not trump the important, and short term will not trump the long term.”

Power said the third obstacle is people’s lack of “moral imagination.” She said even though people know real-time facts, like the number of Rwandans who died in the genocide, they have no real knowledge of the “human stakes,” they do not stop to imagine the struggle of every person.

The main default of foreign policy is that short-term security and economic interests always get in the way of the concern for human rights and that while ethnic lobbies like Albanians and Armenians play a constructive role for policy change, their efforts focus on a particular group and lack universality.

Power called U.S. foreign policy “gratuitous unilateralism,” recalling the resistance of the United States to the International Criminal Court. She said the United States tried to convince its allies not to turn in U.S. soldiers to the international court and cut or suspended military aid to countries that refused.

She said that even though the United Nations itself stands as an obstacle against human rights, it is still important. She recalled the efforts of the U.N. inspectors in Iraq and the World Food Program, which “kept the Iraqis fed while the war was persecuted.”

Power won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction with her book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. In her book she examined U.S. foreign policy toward genocide in 20th century.

Power was the fourth speaker in this year’s Graduate School Distinguished Lecturer Series.