Power point

Sarah Baxter profiles Samantha Power author of A Problem from Hell and a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama:

Power shocked some friends by opposing the invasion of Iraq. "Some people said, 'How could you write about genocide and not support the war?' It felt like one was sentencing the Iraqi people to life imprisonment under a brutal regime."

She decided, however, that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was planning a new round of slaughter and the costs and benefits of war were not worth the risk. Now she admits the question is: "If we leave, could it get worse?"

Power believes that Obama would do all he could to prevent large-scale civilian deaths by a meticulously planned withdrawal from Iraq. "If a systematic campaign of genocide were to unfold, he would try to get other countries to join the US to go back in order to stave it off. What you are talking about is a massive crime against humanity and the hope would be that humanity would step forward."

She knows, however, that "with the record of stepping forward in Rwanda or Darfur or in the Holocaust, it is going to be very difficult".

Somebody, then, for whom there can be competing considerations and difficult choices.