BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//InvisionCommunity Events 5.0.18//EN METHOD:PUBLISH CALSCALE:GREGORIAN REFRESH-INTERVAL:PT15M X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT15M X-WR-CALNAME:RMCommunityCalendar NAME:RMCommunityCalendar BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London TZURL:https://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST DTSTART:20250330T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=-1SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:+0100 TZOFFSETTO:+0000 TZNAME:GMT DTSTART:20251026T020000Z RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=-1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:corridors of power pbs 04252025 DTSTAMP:20250426T005734Z SEQUENCE:0 UID:258-7-c3fe8195a3dde498d013e477e2142422@aalbc.com ORGANIZER;CN="richardmurray":noreply@aalbc.com DESCRIPTION:\n corridors of power pbs 04252025\n\n VIDEO\n\n https://www .pbs.org/video/the-corridors-of-power-k8hoys/\n\n REFERRAL\n\n https://www .pbs.org/show/the-corridors-of-power/\n\n TRANSCRIPT\n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\ n ♪ ♪ ♪ [Radio chatter] ♪ [Airplane engine] [Explosions] ♪ [Foot steps] [Indistinct conversation] Paul Wolfowitz\, voice-over: When I think about the Holocaust and what came after World War II ended and how many t imes people said\, \"Never again\, never again\,\" and it happens over and over again\, after a while\, you wonder\, \"Is this just hot air?\n\nAre these just words?\"\n\n♪ I can tell you for sure\, too often there are c ases where we make a mockery of this idea of \"never again.\"\n\n♪ Henry Kissinger: If you look at human history\, you have to say that genocide h as occurred much too frequently.\n\nYes\, we should oppose it\, but you ca nnot simply say the United States has an obligation by military force to o ppose evil wherever it exists in the world.\n\nAre we then willing to stay involved in getting an outcome that we... Anthony Lake\, voice-over: With power comes responsibility\, and if you have huge power and there are pro blems in the world that you could fix and you don't fix them\, then you're being irresponsible.\n\nLake: Conflicting impulses out of this phenomenon from abroad... Colin Powell\, voice-over: We can't go everywhere.\n\nWe a re not the world policeman\, although\, as has been famously said\, guess who the world calls for whenever there's a mugging.\n\nBush: We will have a continuing responsibility... James Baker\, voice-over: When the body bag s start coming home\, if you don't have a significant national interest at stake\, you will lose the policy\, and you won't be able to sustain it.\n \nThe human toll shows... Albright\, voice-over: There are always people i n the room that will argue and say\, \"Oh\, well\, you know\, why should w e care?\n\nWhat does it matter to us?\"\n\nI believe in peace\, but I'm no t a pacifist\, and I believe that there are times when using force can act ually bring stability in the long run and save a lot of people.\n\nBarack Obama: Change doesn't come from on high.\n\nIf you're waiting for Congress ... Sandy Berger\, voice-over: \"Never again\" is a moral statement\, but is it a guiding operational principle?\n\nDoes it help answer whether to g o into Bosnia or not\, whether to go into Syria or not\, whether to go int o Rwanda or not?\n\n♪ I don't think so.\n\nI think it is a moral stateme nt by the world that it should not stand by and watch mass atrocities.\n\n It is not neither legally binding or politically binding.\n\n[People cheer ing] ♪ Good evening.\n\nThese are the sights and sounds of the continuin g celebration.\n\nThe Berlin Wall\, once it divided East from West\, now o n its way to becoming an artifact of history.\n\n♪ Woman\, voice-over: I n the last few months\, the reign of communism ended in Poland\, Hungary\, East Germany\, Czechoslovakia\, Bulgaria\, and Romania.\n\nThe U.S.S.R. t hat controlled Eastern Europe with an iron fist for 4 decades is now disso lved by Mr. Gorbachev.\n\nAt the end of the Cold War\, the U.S. stands as the only global superpower.\n\nPowell\, voice-over: My whole adult life to that point was participating in the Cold War.\n\nEverything that I had tr ained for\, every tactic that I had mastered was now gone because they're gone\, you know\, and Gorbachev said to me one day at one of the summit me etings-- and his eyes were twinkling-- he said\, \"Ah\, Generale\, General e\, \"I'm so very\, very sorry.\n\nYou will have to find a new enemy.\"\n\ n♪ Bush: A new world order can emerge\, a new era\, an era in which the nations of the world-- East and West\, North and South-- can prosper and l ive in harmony\, a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the j ungle\, a world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for f reedom and justice.\n\n[Chanting] [Explosion] [Artillery fire] Woman\, voi ce-over: Fighting raged anew in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Her zegovina today.\n\nAlbright\, voice-over: With the end of the Cold War\, a ll the different kind of worms started crawling around in terms of the eth nic dislikes that people had of each other\, and that was true in the Balk ans.\n\n♪ People wanted a new world order\, but I think instead\, it bec ame a new world disorder.\n\nMan\, voice-over: The Serbs are trying to rev erse the decision to establish the independent Muslim state of Bosnia-Herz egovina.\n\n[Speaking Serbian] Woman\, voice-over: The Serb logic of the c onflict is to create areas that are ethnically cleansed from Muslims.\n\nM an: [Speaking Serbian] [Explosion] ♪ [Explosion] ♪ [Dog barking] ♪ S amantha Power: When I graduated from college\, I actually moved to Berlin first.\n\nWhile I was living there\, thousands of refugees were pouring in from the former Yugoslavia\, and\, I mean\, they were the picture of desp eration\, and here I\, a sentient 20-something\, I'm seeing these people\, and all I wanted to do was run away.\n\nIn other words\, you know\, I jus t was sad for them in the abstract\, but it was not my problem.\n\n♪ [Ch ild crying] ♪ I think for a lot of people\, the sense of what one ought to do derives a lot from what one feels one can do\, and when you think th at you're a 22-year-old liberal arts graduate who has nothing to offer the se people\, your internal reflexive mechanisms almost seem to say to you\, \"Then don't bother learning more \"because it's going to break your hear t \"and you won't be able to do anything about it\, so\, you know\, just g o check out the soccer game.\"\n\n♪ Man\, voice-over: While shelling con tinues today in Sarajevo\, the news focused on reports of Nazilike detenti on camps being run by Serbs.\n\nPower\, voice-over: I moved back to Washin gton\, and I was an intern working for a man named Mort Abramowitz\, who h ad been in government for 35 years.\n\nHe was consumed with what was happe ning in Bosnia\, and my job as his intern just was to basically prepare hi m for his speeches\, his op-eds\, edit what he did\, and then\, because it was my job\, I began learning\, and\, honestly\, I don't know if it was m y head or my heart that nearly exploded\, but I just could not believe wha t was being done.\n\n♪ Once I'd had this inconvenient knowledge\, then I was off to the ra-- then I had to figure out-- oh\, my gosh-- what was I going to do to help\, so I went to Bosnia to cover the conflict.\n\n[Explo sions] Arriving for the first time in Sarajevo\, I was most struck by a se nse of claustrophobia just by this topography.\n\nThe hills all around wer e just lined with gun positions\, and\, whether that was snipers or actual artillery positions where they were just raining artillery and shell fire onto the city\, you just had a sense of vulnerability.\n\n[Gunfire and ex plosions] [People screaming] [Gunfire continues] [People shouting] Aah!\n\ nAah!\n\nBush\, voice-over: I am very concerned about it\, and I'm concern ed about ethnic cleansing.\n\nI'm concerned about attacks on Muslims\, but it isn't gonna be solved by sending in the 82nd Airborne.\n\n[Applause] G overnor Clinton\, you have one minute.\n\nWe can't get involved in the qua gmire\, but we must do what we can.\n\nIt's enormous responsibility to ste p into the White House\, to take over the world in terms of your responsib ility.\n\nIn Clinton's case\, we were running against George H.W.\n\nBush\ , who'd spent his life in foreign policy.\n\nClinton: There are things tha t can be done... Berger\, voice-over: Here's this governor from Arkansas\, and our goal was to make sure that Clinton lost no votes because of forei gn policy.\n\nWe weren't going to beat Bush on foreign policy.\n\nClinton: I would begin with air power against the Serbs to try to restore the basi c conditions of humanity.\n\nHistory has shown us that you can't allow the mass extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen.\n\n♪ Man: Ladies and gentlemen\, let us all join together in welcoming the next President of the United States of America.\n\n[Cheering and applause] Cli nton: On this day\, the American people have voted to make a new beginning .\n\n[Cheering] ♪ Leon Panetta: Every president goes through a learning process.\n\nYou suddenly walk in the Oval Office\, and you're having to de al with national security issues\, and you suddenly get a group from the J oint Chiefs of Staff-- all in uniform\, all with their medals-- all tellin g you something that should or should not be done\, and\, very frankly\, i t's intimidating because\, you know\, you may have been a senator\, you ma y have been a governor\, but you never had to make decisions that involve life and death.\n\nGore: Or at least that's what all the managers believe. \n\nLeon Fuerth\, voice-over: There was a peculiar situation as the Clinto n administration took over.\n\nIt inherited the possibility for a differen t world order because the old world order was gone\, and so the question w as what the Clinton administration's attitude going to be about the use of force as an instrument of national policy.\n\nYes\, you were trying to co me up with a policy solution for a given country\, like Bosnia\, but at th e same time\, it had to somehow fit into another equation that related to American power almost anywhere in the world.\n\n[Explosions] [Siren] Power \, voice-over: At the beginning of the war\, the Bosnian people had such h ope with President Clinton that we were going to act\, and that's their se nse of curiosity\, and\, I mean\, they knew everything.\n\nThey knew McCai n\, Biden\, you know\, who was up\, who was down\, who's up for re-electio n.\n\nI mean\, when your life depends on it-- And I was struck in the most remote parts of Bosnia how knowledgeable people were who were just desper ate for salvation.\n\n[Indistinct conversation] Berger: There remain areas of fundamental difference.\n\nBerger\, voice-over: Beginning of '93\, the re are a series of meetings in the White House\, and there were sharp disa greements\, particularly about the use of force.\n\nThe military was stron gly against it.\n\nThe chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that point \, General Powell\, national hero\, was adamantly opposed to it.\n\nAlbrig ht: We were all new\, and Colin Powell had just won the Gulf War.\n\nHe wa s the hero of the Western world\, big\, handsome man with medals all over. ..\n\nMinimum loss of life... Albright\, voice-over: and he was the best b riefer ever.\n\nWe would ask him\, \"So what can we do?\"\n\nand he would always say\, \"Well\, we can take this mountain\, and we can do this\,\" a nd ultimately\, he would say\, \"But it would take several hundred thousan d troops and then many billions of dollars\,\" so he would walk us up a hi ll and say we could do it and then drop us off the other side\, but he was the expert.\n\nPowell: I never intended to intimidate anyone.\n\nI always intended to give them straightforward military advice as to how force cou ld be used\, and it was theirs to make the political decision.\n\nWhat Mad eleine overlooks in that is that\, even though my uniform is very lovely a nd I know how to brief a group\, there was no enthusiasm within that group to send military force into the former Yugoslavia because it looked like it was coming apart.\n\nAlbright: I have to admit in my case\, that I was deeply moved by what I had seen of people being killed or ethnically clean sed not for anything that they had done\, but who they were\, and I though t\, we \"We have to do something.\"\n\nI actually got into an argument wit h him over this\, and I finally said to him\, \"Colin\, what are you savin g this military for?\"\n\nand he got really mad at me\, and he said\, \"Ou r soldiers are not toy soldiers.\"\n\n\"Why can't we use this wonderful ar my you're always talking about?\"\n\nand I just made the point to her\, \" We can use it anytime you ask if you have a clear purpose of what you're t rying to achieve\"...\n\nI want to have a strategic force capability that still preserves... Powell\, voice-over: and I don't know what objectives w ould have been set or what political goals the president might have articu lated at that time.\n\nHe didn't articulate any.\n\nLook.\n\nYou know as m uch about this as I do right now.\n\nWe'll just have to look into it\, and we'll see\, but meanwhile... Lake\, voice-over: I think the president's i nstincts were always for stronger action\, but I think by temperament\, wh ile he was always prepared to act\, he also always wanted consensus\, and that\, I think\, for the first year\, certainly\, of the administration wa s a particular problem because then he was always looking for the compromi se\, the consensus.\n\nHe wasn't making the hard decisions and saying\, \" Sorry.\n\nI'm going with this and this.\"\n\n♪ [Indistinct conversation] [Dog barking] ♪ Power\, voice-over: When you would go into so-called Re publika Srpska\, you knew you were entering the heart of darkness.\n\nYou would drive down a road in this little ethnically cleansed statelet run by Bosnian Serb nationalists\, and you would see the home lights.\n\nYou cou ld imagine the hearth inside\, windows intact\, and then the very next hou se would have on it graffiti that would say\, you know\, \"Muslims go home \"... [Dog barking] and then 4 houses down\, you'd see another bright\, wa rm house where people were just going on with their lives.\n\n♪ The sens e in the air that evil had transpired is-- I mean\, the air felt thick wit h that recent history somehow.\n\n[Whimpers] [Insects buzzing] ♪ Weixion g Chen: Excellencies\, distinguished colleagues\, I thank you for giving C TED the opportunity to brief the Council on the 14th report... Albright\, voice-over: As U.N. ambassador\, I saw on a daily basis other members of t he Security Council\, as well as the representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina\ , [Indistinct]\, would come to me every day and say\, \"Your president sai d he was gonna do something.\n\nYou're not doing anything.\n\nDo something \"... ♪ and I could judge what was going on in Sarajevo because I went a number of times... [Explosion] and driving through Sarajevo\, I was just stunned that this kind of a thing could possibly happen.\n\nWe're talking about the 1990s.\n\n♪ Then the question is\, how do you go back and not sound like a blithering idiot\, emotional?\n\nAnd I went back to the White House\, and I said\, \"I was in Sarajevo\, where buildings had been bombe d\, \"where there were fires still burning \"and smoke coming still from a variety of buildings and people huddled on the street.\"\n\n[Gunfire] Man : This--if this-- ♪ Albright\, voice-over: \"Why should we not help peop le \"that also were living in a war zone that didn't need to be a war zone ?\"\n\nand I said something like\, \"Gentlemen\, history will judge us on this.\"\n\nThey would say\, \"Don't be so emotional\, Madeleine.\"\n\n[Gun fire] Woman: [Wailing] ♪ [Gunfire and wailing continue] ♪ [Gunshot] Ma n: [Speaking Serbian] Girl: [Crying] Woman: [Speaks Serbian] Girl: [Speaks Serbian] Elie Wiesel: Treblinka\, Birkenau\, Auschwitz-- these names and others were known to officials in Washington.\n\nThe Pentagon knew.\n\nThe White House knew.\n\nMost governments knew.\n\nMr. President\, indifferen ce is a sin\, and I cannot not tell you something.\n\nI have been in the f ormer Yugoslavia.\n\nI cannot sleep since.\n\nWe must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country.\n\n[Applause] Man: In response to the bloo dshed in Bosnia\, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel asked you yesterday to do something to stop the fighting.\n\nIs the United States considering takin g unilateral action such as airstrikes against Serb artillery sites?\n\nWe ll\, first\, let me say\, as you know\, for more than a week now\, we have been seriously reviewing our options for further action\, and\, to be fai r\, our allies in Europe have been willing to do their part.\n\nI do not t hink we should act alone unilaterally\, nor do I think we will have to.\n\ nBerger: We finally agreed to a position that we would use NATO air power to strike Serb positions if they continued to shell indiscriminately.\n\nW e took that to the Europeans\, and they wanted nothing to do with it.\n\nW e discovered how boxed in we were by the Europeans.\n\n♪ The Europeans s aid\, \"That's not acceptable because \"our troops are on the ground \"try ing to keep the peace \"and you can't start a war \"with our troops in the middle of this.\n\n\"You Yanks\, you just don't understand.\n\n\"You're n ot willing to pay the price\, \"you're not willing to come in here on the ground\, \"don't talk about lift and strike.\n\nYou don't get it\"... [Gun fire] so there was friction between us.\n\nThey were taking losses.\n\nSol diers did die.\n\nMan on television: [Speaking French] ♪ [Gunfire] [Men shouting] Lake\, voice-over: Being a superpower does not mean you can put up a little sign on your desk saying\, \"We are the superpower\,\" and the n there are buttons you can push and you push a NATO button and the NATO w ill do what you want\, et cetera.\n\nYou know\, superpower means that you have leadership\, and that leadership involves bringing along coalitions\, bringing along your allies and others\, or you're gonna fail.\n\nMan: For 22 months\, the world has watched and often tried to ignore the bloody ci vil war in Bosnia.\n\nIt is hard to watch and impossible to ignore what ha ppened there today.\n\nAt least 60 civilians-- men\, women\, and children- - were killed\, at least 200 injured when a market full of Saturday shoppe rs was shelled.\n\nMan: Very concerned about the efforts by some elements. ..\n\nDifferent man: In Africa today\, a plane carrying the presidents of two African nations has apparently been shot down in the capital of Rwanda \, where a civil war formally ended a few months ago.\n\nWoman\, voice-ove r: After the death of the two presidents\, the racial tensions between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority might spark again into an ugly ethni c war.\n\n[Birds chirping] Nancy Soderberg: I was sitting in my office\, w hich was just off the Situation Room\, and the Situation Room brought me a alert\, which back then\, a really serious alert had two red dots on it\, literally two red dots\, and that was like\, \"Pay attention to this righ t away\,\" so I read it\, and I had the CIA brief\, and I said\, \"Well\, what's the worst-case scenario with these two presidents gone?\"\n\nand th ey said\, \"Another round of violence\, maybe 20\,000 killed\,\" and I tho ught\, \"Well\, what should we do to stop that?\"\n\nand they didn't reall y have an answer.\n\nThat's not the CIA's job.\n\nPrudence Bushnell: When the airplane went down\, I sent the memo up saying that the peace agreemen t is at risk.\n\nYou know\, there's chaos in the streets\, and worst-case scenario\, if we don't do anything\, hundreds of thousands of people could be killed.\n\nMan on radio: [Speaking Kinyarwanda] ♪ [Indistinct conver sation] ♪ Man\, voice-over: Massacres continue in the Central African na tion of Rwanda.\n\nThe killing is a calculated attempt to exterminate the minority Tutsi that makes up 10% of Rwanda's 7 million people.\n\n♪ Lake : I can recall the first time this really came to my attention\, and I rem ember explicitly asking afterwards one of the people there from the Defens e Intelligence Agency\, \"What's going on?\n\nWho's killing whom?\n\nWhy?\ "\n\nand his basically saying\, \"Don't know\,\" and I should have when I got back to my office said\, \"I want to know more\,\" and insisted on get ting more involved\, and I was at the time arguing about whether to interv ene in Haiti and Bosnia and all kinds of stuff\, and I didn't\, and that w as-- that's on me\, and I'll regret it forever.\n\nClinton: There are abou t 250 Americans there\, and I'm very concerned about their safety.\n\nMan: ...is clearly part of the threat that we have to deal with.\n\nGeorge Moo se\, voice-over: I think it's fair to say that Africa tends to fall to the bottom of the list in terms of our American priorities.\n\nYou're talking about a lot of factors that lead to that.\n\nSome of them have to do with how we calculate our national interests.\n\nSome of those are\, I would s ay\, racial and racist.\n\nAll of those things\, though\, result in the fa ct that Africa and Africa's concerns and African interests and needs tend to fall to the bottom of that list of priorities.\n\n♪ [Indistinct conve rsation] ♪ Bushnell\, voice-over: Within 24 hours\, there were two thing s that I learned almost simultaneously.\n\nOne was Madame Agathe\, the pri me minister.\n\n[Cheering] I cannot tell you how she was slaughtered\, but she was slaughtered-- she was pregnant-- in front of her husband and her children.\n\nAt the same time\, we were learning that the Belgian peacekee pers who had been there to provide protection for her had been kidnaped an d taken to the airport and killed.\n\nOh\, my gosh\, we knew if they start ed killing white people\, it would be over.\n\nWe in African Affairs did n ot have the rose-colored glasses and thinking that\, yes\, this is a conti nent like any others and we look upon African people as we look upon Europ ean people.\n\nJohn Shattuck\, voice-over: The fact that they decapitated the Belgian peacekeepers so gruesomely and that the killings were so viole nt in that sense\, one has to assume that the genocide planners very caref ully said\, \"Let's really kill \"some representatives of the internationa l community early in this process to get them to withdraw\,\" and they suc ceeded.\n\nClinton: I have had extended conversations about the situation in Rwanda\, and I just want to assure the families of those who are there that we are doing everything we possibly can to be on top of the situation \, to take all appropriate steps to try to ensure the safety of our citize ns there.\n\n♪ Laura Lane\, voice-over: I remember when the order came t hat we were gonna start evacuating nonessential personnel and then move ev entually to closing down the embassy.\n\n♪ We were focused on how we wou ld get Americans to centers and then move them overland to Burundi and neg otiate the ceasefires so that those convoys wouldn't be fired on.\n\n[Radi o chatter] ♪ Bushnell\, voice-over: The deal we made was that in return for safe passage of diplomats-- not only Americans\, but diplomats of othe r embassies-- we would not take any Rwandan citizens with us\, and we left our U.S. government employees\, colleagues\, to fend for themselves.\n\ n♪ Lane\, voice-over: We could have\, you know\, any host of other natio nalities join our convoy\, just not the Rwandans\, and I remember thinking at that moment\, \"How can that be?\n\n\"The orders that I'm being given\ , \"I get to live because I was born in Evanston\, Illinois\, \"but that w oman that just brought her child \"to the embassy begging that someone tak e that child\, we're going to condemn that child to death?\"\n\n[Radio cha tter] ♪ You saw images.\n\n♪ The bodies that I saw\, I couldn't make s ense of it\, right?\n\nAs you're driving along\, you just think how out of place it is to see the bodies laying by the roadside.\n\nYou didn't know how to-- Like\, conceptually\, I knew that someone had been killed\, and I guess I tried to just keep moving on and focus on the task at hand.\n\n ♪ Bushnell\, voice-over: As soon as the Americans were out of Rwanda\, t he interest of the White House evaporated.\n\nPoint of fact\, the presiden t had come to State Department for an official dinner and stopped by the c risis group to say thank you and congratulations for getting Americans out \, and that was the last I heard about Bill Clinton's interest in Rwanda.\ n\nMan: They authorized war crimes.\n\nRichard A. Clarke\, voice-over: It' s very easy in hindsight to say that the United States should have dropped the 82nd Airborne into Kigali\, but remember the time.\n\nThe Clinton adm inistration had just suffered enormous political problems by the American people waking up one day and finding out that we had troops in Somalia and that some of those troops got killed\, and the American people\, the Amer ican media\, the American Congress asked\, \"What the hell are you doing i n Somalia?\"\n\n[Helicopter whirring] Man\, voice-over: What started as a humanitarian intervention to feed starving people turned into a nightmare. \n\n18 U.S. servicemen were killed today when two Blackhawk helicopters we re shot down.\n\nThey were dragging him by ropes\, and they paused every o nce in a while to allow people in the crowd to abuse the body by kicking i t or stomping on it and spitting on it.\n\nBerger\, voice-over: A horrible thing to watch because they kept running the film of our soldiers being d ragged through the streets.\n\nIt was horrifying to watch\, horrible\, hor rible day.\n\nIt was one of the worst days for me in the White House.\n\nC larke: After that experience\, everybody in Washington and everybody aroun d the country said\, \"Let's not do that again.\n\n\"When American interes ts are not at stake\, \"Let's not put American forces in a situation where they can be killed.\"\n\n♪ Bushmill: We saw the United States governmen t take the lead in removing peacekeepers in the face of a genocide.\n\nI w ill never ever forget the look on the face of team members\, including our desk officer from Rwanda\, when I was notified that we were going to remo ve the peacekeepers.\n\nHe looked at me and he said\, \"Do you know what's going to happen?\"\n\nIt was a look of utter horror because both of us kn ew what was going to happen\, and it did happen.\n\n[Distant siren] Clarke : Rwanda was discussed.\n\nPresident knew about it.\n\nThe senior leaders of the government all knew about it.\n\nPeople were aware.\n\nWhat I'm say ing is that no one of all the senior leadership in the Pentagon\, the Stat e Department\, the White House-- no one ever said\, \"Gee\, let's drop in the 82nd Airborne.\"\n\nNobody cared.\n\nThat it was the only way I can--I can put it.\n\nNobody wanted to hear about it.\n\nNobody wanted to do any thing about it because the decision had been made we would not.\n\n[Helico pter whirring] [Radio chatter] ♪ Shattuck\, voice-over: I wanted to actu ally go and see for myself what was happening.\n\nI was the first person i n the government to actually fly over Rwanda.\n\nI had the plane fly as lo w as possible\, and the most vivid example of what I saw was on the border area between Tanzania and Rwanda\, where there was a river.\n\nFrom sever al thousand feet\, it looked as if there were these little logs that were flowing in the river down toward Lake Victoria.\n\nI said\, \"I don't unde rstand this.\n\nLet's go down.\"\n\n♪ These were not logs.\n\nThese were bodies\, and there were many of them.\n\nThey were flowing down the river \, and that's why they looked like logs\, there were so many.\n\n♪ The p hysical elements of the genocide\, it's just something that stays with you that you can't ever get out of you.\n\n♪ Sometimes when I'm in a small river\, I think I see bodies floating in the river.\n\n♪ I went from thi s trip to Geneva\, and in Geneva\, I gave a press conference in which I sa id\, \"Genocide is going on in Rwanda\,\" and then I was told by Washingto n\, particularly by the Legal Advisor's Office of the State Department\, t hat that was not the policy.\n\nWe don't call this genocide.\n\nIt was aga inst policy.\n\nHa ha!\n\nThe U.S. policy was that we haven't determined y et that this is a genocide.\n\nIt was unbelievable.\n\n♪ Frankly\, a lot of us\, especially after John Shattuck's visit out there\, that question was answered.\n\nIf anything could be called genocide\, this was it\, and the next step was\, \"OK. \"If you acknowledge \"it's genocide\, \"then wh at are you going to do about it?\"\n\nright?\n\nIf you say it's genocide a nd we have a genocide convention\, what's your obligation?\n\n♪ Alan Els ner: Does the State Department have a view as to whether or not what is ha ppening could be genocide?\n\nWell\, as I think you know\, the use of the term \"genocide\" has a very precise legal meaning\, although it's not str ictly a legal determination.\n\nThere are there are other factors in there \, as well.\n\nBefore we begin to use that term\, we have to know as much as possible about the facts of the situation.\n\nHow many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?\n\nAlan\, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer.\n\n♪ Moose: The case of Rwanda revealed our bureaucracy at its very worst.\n\n♪ It took us forever to get a paper u p to Secretary Christopher that would make the case that this was genocide and we had to declare it as such\, even if it meant we did not know what the next step was.\n\n♪ Clinton: I have come today to pay the respects o f my nation to all who suffered and all who perished in the Rwanda genocid e.\n\nDuring the 90 days that began on April 6 in 1994\, Rwanda experience d the most intensive slaughter in this blood-filled century we are about t o leave.\n\nIt may seem strange to you here\, especially the many of you w ho lost members of your family\, but all over the world\, there were peopl e like me sitting in offices day after day after day who did not fully app reciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.\n\nI did feel\, even though I think his apology was genuine\, that it was a very hollow moment.\n\nIt was hollow because\, heh \, 800\,000 people had perished and nothing had been done.\n\nThe fact is\ , where there is a political will\, there is a political way.\n\nI cannot imagine that the President of the United States could not have influenced the policy process\, and he did not\, and to say later on it was because o f ignorance is\, to me\, unbecoming of the leader of the free world and th e American foreign policy\, unbecoming.\n\n♪ Power: Walter Laqueur\, the Holocaust historian\, had a line that I will never forget.\n\nHe wrote\, \"By 1943\, the vast majority of Americans \"knew that more than a million Jews were no longer alive\, \"but that did not necessarily mean that they knew that they were dead\,\" and\, to me\, this horror of a concept reall y speaks to the two kinds of knowledge that people can have\, you know-- a sort of surface knowledge where you're processing clinically\, cognitivel y\, but nothing is really reaching you and then a different kind where you 're\, you know\, \"They've been killed.\n\nThey're--\" and this idea of no longer alive versus dead\, I feel\, really speaks to a lot of the numbing that bureaucracy can facilitate.\n\nMan: Good evening.\n\nMore than 3 yea rs after the beginnings of the hostilities\, the war in Bosnia is still ch arging a bloody toll on the civilian population.\n\nThe Serb army is reinf orcing its forces positioned around the Muslim enclaves of Zepa\, Gorazde\ , and Srebrenica and is slowly closing in.\n\n♪ The town of Srebrenica w as the first of 6 areas in Bosnia that the United Nations Protection Force vowed to actually protect.\n\n♪ Power\, voice-over: In the summer of 19 95\, we began to get word that the Serbs were moving toward what had been declared a safe area.\n\nThousands of civilians did what civilians all aro und the world do in times of crises when the U.N. is around.\n\nThey see t hat blue flag\, and they go toward it.\n\nThat's all they got.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: From positions less than a mile south of Srebrenica\, Bosnian Serb tanks and several thousand soldiers overran a battalion of 400 Dutch peacekeepers.\n\n[Speaking Serbian] Power\, voice-over: Srebrenica was spe cial to the Serbs\, special in the sense that it was atop the list of plac es where it wasn't just territory they wanted.\n\nThey wanted to inflict a degree of harm that made it impossible for these people ever to live in t his territory again\, and the way you do that is genocide.\n\n[Indistinct conversation] Power\, voice-over: I watched from Sarajevo on Serb TV as Ra tko Mladic went\, was patting the heads of children\, offering them candy. \n\n\"Nobody will be harmed.\n\nWomen and children this way\, men this way \,\" and you just saw the faces of these people.\n\nThey knew.\n\nLike\, w e didn't know\, but they knew.\n\nMladic: [Speaking Serbian] Peter Galbrai th\, voice-over: Ratko Mladic was just-- He was a psychopathic murderer.\n \nI think that's the only way to describe him\, a man of extraordinary cru elty who directed the ethnic cleansing.\n\n[Speaking Serbian] Shattuck\, v oice-over: General Ratko Mladic and his Bosnian Serb forces basically roun ded up all of the people of the town\, separated men from boys and women a nd children and old people\, sent the women and children and old people on busses out of the town\, and basically began to go after the men.\n\n♪ Man: [Speaking Serbian] ♪ Galbraith\, voice-over: At this point\, everyb ody is focused on the women and girls who were being bused out and the fac t that\, you know\, the women are being robbed and a few of the girls are being taken off the busses and raped\, and so that's the human rights stor y\, and I'm trying to get people to focus on the missing men and boys.\n\n [Speaks Serbian] ♪ [Distant machine gun fire] Man: [Speaks Serbian] [Spe aks Serbian] [Speaking Serbian] [Distant machine gun fire] [Birds chirping ] ♪ [Speaks Serbian] Man: [Speaks Serbian] [Cocks rifle] [Gunshots] [Gun shot] Man: [Speaks Serbian] [Machine gun fire] [Machine gun fire] [Gunshot s] [Gunshots] [Gunshot] [Distant gunshot] [Machine gun fire] [Indistinct c onversation] ♪ [Gunshot] [Gunshots] ♪ Shattuck\, voice-over: Nobody kn ew quite what had happened to these missing men\, and at that stage\, I sa id\, \"I've got to go.\"\n\n♪ I went to Tuzla\, and I was able\, with th e help of the local U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Office\, to identi fy half a dozen men who had escaped from Srebrenica\, and we interviewed t hem... ♪ and they told this extraordinary story about how they were forc ed out and marched to these open pits\, and there\, 7\,000 of them were ex ecuted\, and later on\, two young CIA officers came up with the actual pho tographs of the sites with mass graves before the graves were dug\, and th en afterwards\, men standing in a field\, and then they were shot.\n\n♪ You know\, I said\, \"It's-- This is genocide again.\"\n\n[Distant siren] Shattuck: Let me tell you\, from the perspective of my participation in th e trip... Shattuck\, voice-over: When I came back from Srebrenica\, I was asked to describe literally what I had seen and heard\, and there was deat hly silence.\n\nYou could almost hear a pin drop.\n\n♪ Panetta: Now you have another massacre taking place.\n\nIt's happening today\, not 40 years ago.\n\nIt's happening now\, and in many ways\, the blood of those who ar e dying is on your hands\, and you've got to deal with it.\n\nIt's the thi rd year of his presidency\, and he's finally saying\, \"Excuse me.\n\n\"Th is is my presidency.\n\n\"It's my legacy\, and history will say \"whether or not Bill Clinton did the right thing \"in this situation\, and\, you kn ow\, I'm prepared to take that risk.\"\n\n♪ Lake: I think\, frankly\, wh at changed him was\, one\, he was moved by what he saw happening\, and sec ondly\, the political calculus changed also because we got closer to the p residential election in 1996\, and the president's political advisors\, I think\, changed from\, \"Be careful.\n\nLet's not get too involved\,\" to\ , \"You really need to resolve this before 1996.\"\n\n♪ Clinton: My fell ow Americans\, in this new era\, there are still times when America and Am erica alone can and should make the difference for peace.\n\n♪ The Unite d States led NATO's heavy and continuous airstrikes.\n\nThose airstrikes\, together with the renewed determination of our European partners\, convin ced the Serbs finally to start thinking about making peace.\n\n♪ Warren Christopher: The agreement saved countless thousands of lives by ending th e fighting between the communities in the Republic.\n\nSerious obstacles r emained... Lake\, voice-over: When we got the signing of Dayton\, it was j ust-- I just felt sad at all the bloodshed\, all that had gone before this .\n\nThey were all so somber.\n\nIt was\, uh-- Bosnia was just sad\, I'm a fraid.\n\nI would love to say that it was a moment of euphoria\, but it ha d been so painful.\n\n[Helicopter whirring] ♪ Power\, voice-over: When I left Bosnia\, being a young correspondent\, I felt part of a world that h adn't done enough.\n\n♪ You know\, I just had a sense of how many lives could have been saved sooner\, you know\, had the decision that was belate dly made been made before\, and that was a question that long ago as a muc h younger person I had asked myself about the Holocaust.\n\n♪ My high-sc hool understanding of the Holocaust could be reduced to\, \"Hitler was ext erminating the Jews\, and\, therefore\, we went to war\,\" and I would lat er learn that the issue of the extermination of the Jews just didn't rise within the system in the way that you would have expected-- or that I woul d have expected.\n\nThe idea that the fate of an imperiled people when it came to refugee admissions\, bombing the train tracks to just make it a li ttle bit harder\, it just was striking to me that those issues in and of t hemselves just didn't rise.\n\n♪ As somebody who believed in America and the idea of \"never again\,\" I just was struck by that because that wasn 't ever part of kind of the history lessons that I got in this country.\n\ n♪ What I was struck by when I came back from Bosnia was the extent to w hich our culture was having a surge of commemoration and remembrance relat ed to the Holocaust... ♪ and yet I had just come from this experience wh ere the Bosnian Serbs had attempted to wipe out a people in Europe 50 year s after the Holocaust\, and the connections weren't really drawn.\n\n♪ I t was at that point\, then\, that I go to the library and\, you know\, thi nking maybe there would be books on the decision makers\, on the bystander s.\n\nI'll never forget being at Harvard's huge library and it just being very\, very clear that question\, at least as I was understanding it\, had not been posed and the question had not been answered\, so initially for a paper for a class\, because I was in law school\, I began sort of explor ing\, going back over the cases that I didn't know a lot about-- like the Armenian Genocide\, Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge\, what Saddam Hussein had done to the Kurds-- and then coming up to the present and my own recent experi ences... ♪ and so that paper\, then\, it became clear there was kind of something there\, that this fulsome consensus about applying the lessons o f the Holocaust\, that was living in great tension with what policymakers were doing\, and yet the tension seemed one that was not being grappled wi th.\n\n[Typing] ♪ [Mouse click] ♪ [Typing] ♪ When I was working on m y book\, \"Problem from Hell\,\" what was clear was that there is a sense in many circles that promoting your values is somehow discordant with your interests.\n\nMy own view is that more often than not that that's a false dichotomy.\n\n♪ The most powerful rendition of this\, I think\, came wh en I looked at the Iraq-related cables from the eighties where the cable a ctually read\, \"Human rights and chemical weapons use aside\, comma\,\" o ur interests run parallel to those of Iraq\"... ♪ and so it's right ther e.\n\nYou know\, they're just saying that really crummy things are happeni ng through chemical weapons use and horrible human rights abuses\, but our interests are divorced from all of that.\n\n♪ Traditionally\, our conce ption of our national interest would include preventing chemical weapons u se\, and yet here it was\, \"Chemical weapons use aside\, we're good.\n\nY ou know\, we've got trade to do.\"\n\nReagan: Our countries share common i nterests in developing practical solutions to the problems... Clarke: We c ertainly knew to some degree what was going on\, and we knew that Saddam w as using chemical weapons inside his country against Kurds and others.\n\n I don't think the Reagan administration\, or later the Bush administration \, could ever claim that they were unaware of it.\n\nThey were aware of it ... and two administrations were willing to put up with a fair amount of o bnoxious activity by Iraq in order to contain Iran.\n\n...our instructions to our ambassador to give him some negotiating room.\n\nDror Moreh: Doesn 't it undermine America's credibility when you have relationship with some one like Saddam Hussein while you know that he is engaging in a chemical w arfare against the Kurds?\n\nYou're acting as though anytime you see somet hing you don't like\, you pick up and leave\, and basically\, that would l eave you outside of most parts of the United States and in no place in the world.\n\nI don't know where you would hold up.\n\nIt would certainly not be Washington\, D.C. Maybe it would be Santa Barbara\, California\, but t here are hardly any places where there's nothing-- where there's nothing w rong... ♪ so problems are everywhere.\n\nYou got to deal with them.\n\nI t's the ultimate alibi\, right?\n\nIt's\, the interests are just an infini tely elastic concept\, so if you want to do something\, you say it's in yo ur interests.\n\nI can make an argument for why cutting off aid to Saddam Hussein after he gasses his people is in our interests.\n\nIt's in the int erest of U.S. soldiers for chemical weapons not to be used in the battlefi eld... [Explosions] ♪ and in this instance\, this ally ended up invading Kuwait\, and the same individuals who thought it had been in our interest to work with him were in a position of having to mobilize vast expenditur es\, put a huge number of U.S. lives on the line in order to counter his a ggression.\n\n♪ [Indistinct conversation] Man\, voice-over: Saddam Husse in's tanks and soldiers poured over the Kuwaiti border.\n\nWithin 24 hours \, Saddam came in control of 1/5 of the world's oil reserves\, and the Ira qi army is within reach of the Saudi oil fields.\n\n♪ Bush: We see in Sa ddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors.\n\nSummary executions\, routine torture\, Hitler revisited.\n\n♪ Moreh: How come al l of a sudden\, your ally Saddam Hussein turns into \"Hitler revisited\"?\ n\nBaker: Well\, the occupation was extraordinarily brutal\, so if we do h ave informing our foreign policy\, which we do\, the concept that we're ag ainst human rights violations and war crimes and ethnic cleansing and so f orth\, then when it happens\, that's another justification for doing what we did\, and so we reversed it\, but I'm also here to tell you\, one of th e reasons we reversed it was because of the threat to our secure access to the energy reserves of the Gulf.\n\nThat was a fairly serious national in terest.\n\nPeople didn't want to talk about it.\n\n\"Ooh\, you're just fig hting over filthy oil.\n\nThat's so because of money\, money\, money\, mon ey.\"\n\nWell\, money's-- money's worth fighting over\, in my views.\n\nSa nctions were tried\, and we included the sanctions.\n\nCharlie Rose: Saman tha Power is here.\n\nShe is a lecturer in U.S. foreign policy.\n\nHer new book\, \"A Problem from Hell\" examines America's response to genocide in the 20th century.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: In her Pulitzer-winning work\, S amantha Power outlines how all administrations throughout the century have shied away from action.\n\nDifferent woman: Her book is a passionate\, no rmative judgment about what U.S. foreign policy should be\, in her view.\n \nThe system is broken\, and we all have to put our heads together to try to fix it.\n\nInstead\, I'm going to try to inspire you to become\, shall we say\, upstanders in a world that is sadly crowded with bystanders.\n\ n♪ Power: When I first met Barack Obama\, it was my book \"A Problem fro m Hell\,\" I guess\, that had caused him to reach out.\n\nI met him at som e steakhouse up on Capitol Hill\, you know\, should have been an hour-long meal\, but it was\, like\, 4 or 5 hours or something\, was just a great m eeting of the minds.\n\nThe fact that there was an American politician who had read a 600-page book on genocide\, it seemed\, who came away from tha t book wanting to understand how we could do better at integrating human c onsequences into our decision making\, wanting to understand what is it ab out all these people of good faith who go into public service to try to ma ke the world better and then somehow this conception of national interests -- this stoic\, kind of cold and clinical conception of what we are in gov ernment to do--takes over and we forget about the people who might have dr awn us into this enterprise in the first place.\n\nForeseeable replacement forces coming in.\n\nPower\, voice-over: By the end of the dinner\, I kin d of found myself volunteering to go and work with him in a more official capacity\, and I moved down very soon thereafter to Washington\, and I adv ised him day to day.\n\n♪ People of the world\, will we stand for the hu man rights of the dissident in Burma\, the blogger in Iran\, or the voter in Zimbabwe?\n\nWill we give meaning to the words \"never again\" in Darfu r?\n\n[Cheering and applause] People of Berlin\, people of the world\, thi s is our moment.\n\nThis is our time.\n\nWe needed a new infusion of energ y into our politics.\n\nWe needed somebody with a different message and a different story who can turn over a new page and bring something new and d ifferent to American politics.\n\n[Cheering and applause] Obama: This mome nt-- this moment\, this election\, is our chance to keep in the 21st centu ry the American promise alive.\n\n[Cheering and applause] Crowd: Yes\, we can.\n\nYes\, we can.\n\nYes\, we can.\n\nYes\, we can.\n\nJake Sullivan\, voice-over: Barack Obama and Michelle Obama become the President and Firs t Lady of the United States in my lifetime\, it said that our country has a special capacity to redeem its highest values.\n\nEven though we screw u p\, even though we're imperfect\, we can also reach very high and very far in service of our highest ideals\, and that's what it said to me.\n\n[Peo ple shouting] Woman\, voice-over: December 17 in Tunisia\, a street vendor \, Mohamed Bouazizi\, sets himself on fire in a protest against government policies\, becoming the catalyst for a Tunisian revolution and the Arab S pring.\n\nWithin months\, demonstrations arise in Egypt\, Yemen\, Bahrain\ , and Syria.\n\nMan\, voice-over: Anger erupted onto the streets\, riot po lice rushing a crowd carrying banners reading\, \"Yes\, we can.\"\n\nWoman : The regional experts say the process will remain a challenge for U.S. pr esidents.\n\n[Shouting continues] Man\, voice-over: In Libya\, after almos t 4 decades of ruthless dictatorship\, huge crowds demonstrated in the str eets of Benghazi.\n\n[Gunfire] It's been a wild 24 hours in Libya.\n\nMuam mar Gaddafi has made it clear he's not going without a fight.\n\nMan: ♪ Man\, voice-over: If it's an internal or an external conspiracy\, we'll er ase it.\n\nSullivan\, voice-over: We began to get reports of protests in m any different cities in Libya\, including Tripoli and Benghazi\, and then we began to get reports that those protests were being fired upon.\n\n[Gun fire] Sullivan\, voice-over: As soon as that happened\, it was added to wh at became the daily agenda of events in the region.\n\n\"OK. Now we got to talk Libya.\"\n\n[People shouting] ♪ [Gunshot] Gaddafi: [Speaking Arabi c] Anderson Cooper\, voice-over: What is happening there is a massacre?\n\ nAlex Crawford\, voice-over: There are large-scale deaths.\n\nThey are wom en.\n\nThey are children.\n\nThey're old people.\n\nThey're not fighters.\ n\nPower\, voice-over: I remember the feeling we had Gaddafi's own words\, just very explicit-- \"I'm gonna hunt them down\,\" so it was really more just\, \"Whoa.\"\n\nThis is just one of those moments that you're on the front end of something.\n\nYou can't predict it.\n\n[People shouting] ♪ Very frankly... ♪ Sullivan\, voice-over: Secretary Clinton went to the E lysee Palace and sat down one on one with Nicolas Sarkozy\, and he was ext remely agitated about what might happen in Benghazi and about the absolute \, unshakable\, undeniable need for France and the United States and the U nited Kingdom to go do something about it right away.\n\nThe French and th e British viewed Libya as a direct threat to them-- chaos\, genocide liter ally on their doorstep.\n\n♪ Sullivan\, voice-over: The time pressure wa s enormous.\n\nWe started that process thinking we've got some time\, and then town after town fell fast\, really fast.\n\nWithin days\, Gaddafi's f orces were knocking on the doorstep of Benghazi.\n\n[Shouting] Man\, voice -over: Colonel Gaddafi's forces are pushing east.\n\nThey seem unstoppable .\n\nDifferent man\, voice-over: The regime claims that within two days\, these troops would be in Benghazi.\n\n[Gunfire] We are still recovering fr om our involvement in Iraq.\n\nPower\, voice-over: On March 15\, the presi dent convenes his national security cabinet and a few backbenchers like my self.\n\nThe president opens up the meeting\, and he's not in a good mood. \n\nDavid Petraeus: The fact is that... Rhodes\, voice-over: The meeting b egins with a briefing from the intelligence community\, and there's a map in front of everybody\, and there's a dot on the map--Benghazi\, a city of several hundred thousand people\, and then you can see the progression of Gaddafi's forces\, and they're in a town called Ajdabiya\, and it is expl ained to us that this is kind of the last stop on the way to Benghazi\, an d from this position\, they can move in and just-- Gaddafi'd said they wer e gonna go door to door and kill people like rats\, and I remember\, you k now\, going around the table\, and Obama is literally asking people\, \"Sh ould I take action \"to save these people in this city \"that we all know are going to be killed\, or should I not?\"\n\nClinton\, voice-over: I lai d out all of the factors\, including the Arab support\, not just rhetoric\ , but commitments for military assets and action\, and our major allies in Europe\, you know\, we historically are always asking them to support us\ , but now they were asking us to support them.\n\nI don't see why that's.. . Denis McDonough\, voice-over: I argued against intervening.\n\nThe main concern was that it was a set of responsibilities that were beyond what I thought was prudent\, given the other demands on the United States at the time.\n\nI thought we should avoid another military conflict.\n\nRhodes: B iden says\, \"No.\n\nYou'd be crazy to get another war in the Middle East. \"\n\nBob Gates says no.\n\nThe military is saying\, \"We have too much to do \"in Iraq and Afghanistan\, and we can't afford to move all these reso urces over here\,\" and I remember I could feel it working its way around to me\, and my argument was essentially\, \"If you don't do this \"and the se people all get massacred\, \"how will you explain this?\n\n\"I mean\, h ow can we tell the world \"everybody was ready to act\, and what would it say if we don't act in this circumstance?\"\n\nAntony Blinken: It really w ent to the fact that we had a unique situation\, that there was a responsi bility but also an opportunity to demonstrate that the international commu nity could act effectively to stop atrocities\, could do it in a way that was grounded in international law\, and the failure to take action would c ontribute potentially to the further unraveling of the international syste m.\n\nRhodes: Obama described this decision to me as kind of a 51/49 call in his mind.\n\nHe had to weigh both sets of arguments\, and he decided to do it.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: The question looming over the Security Coun cil today is how Russia or China will vote.\n\nIn the past\, the two super powers constantly vetoed interventions inside the sovereign state.\n\nMan\ , voice-over: We see China abstaining\, Russia abstaining\, and here comes the vote total\, all necessary measures to protect the civilian populatio n as Gaddafi's forces move in on Benghazi.\n\nObama: The United States\, t he United Kingdom\, France\, and Arab states agree that a ceasefire must b e implemented immediately.\n\nIf Gaddafi does not comply with the resoluti on\, the international community will impose consequences.\n\n♪ [Beeping ] ♪ Woman\, voice-over: U.S. F-15 and F-16 fighter jets have flown dozen s of sorties alongside British\, French\, and Danish jets.\n\nThe Italians and Spanish are providing... Man\, voice-over: France and Britain going t o be taking the lead on the airstrikes\, with the U.S. playing a key role. \n\n♪ [Explosion] [Man shouts] [Siren] Moreh: Basically\, you manage in two weeks to stop him marching to Benghazi\, so why did it continue afterw ards?\n\nThese things\, they have-- they have a momentum and an inertia an d a scale of size and weight.\n\nIt was very clear that was the main missi on\, stop Gaddafi\, and then the evolution of what happens after that wasn 't overly clear.\n\nSo you didn't debate what will be the next steps after the war?\n\nYou didn't debate that?\n\nNo.\n\nExperienced men-- Gates\, y ou--how?\n\nIt wasn't like we didn't put it on the table.\n\nThey weren't interested.\n\n[Shouting] ♪ Panetta\, voice-over: Underneath it all is a recognition that ultimately\, you're not going to change things without r egime change and that\, while you don't say it\, the reality is that you k now the only way you're going to achieve some kind of end here is to end t he regime.\n\n[Shouting] ♪ [Machine gun fire] [Shouting continues] ♪ [ Indistinct conversation] [Shouting] Man: [Shouts in Arabic] [Call to praye r on P.A.]\n\nSullivan\, voice-over: Libya's only hope was to have some ki nd of stabilization force that could tamp down violence and engage in some kind of demobilization of the militias.\n\nSecretary Clinton posed the qu estion very directly to the Europeans-- \"You know\, this is on your doors tep.\n\n\"What are you gonna do about this?\n\nWhat role are you prepared to play?\"\n\nand European leaders from France and the U.K.\, from Italy a ll said\, \"We intend to have a significant hand in the shaping of the aft ermath of any military action.\"\n\n[People chanting] ♪ McDonough\, voic e-over: President Obama negotiated with Prime Minister Cameron\, President Sarkozy his view that steps post action will be as important to the succe ssful outcome in Libya\, and he sought their assurance\, and they gave it to him\, that they would take the lead on post-action efforts in Libya.\n\ nUnfortunately\, they just were not in a position to deliver.\n\n[Gunfire] Man\, voice-over: Libya has become increasingly unstable\, with rival mil itias engaged in some of the fiercest fights.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: Some say it's the worst violence in Libya since the revolution in 2011.\n\n[Men shouting] [Gunfire] Rhodes: Obama would call me in and\, you know\, get f rustrated because Cameron and Sarkozy just couldn't do that.\n\nHe express ed increasing frustration that anybody who says that the United States is not gonna have to end up doing all this ourselves is not acknowledging wha t we're learning from history but also from Libya\, which is that everyone will say\, \"Sure\, we'll do all these things\,\" but on the back end\, i t was like\, \"OK. \"What is the U.S. gonna do to put this place back toge ther again?\"\n\n[Distant gunfire] Mullen\, voice-over: We'd invaded\, if you will.\n\nWe'd intervened\, and then we all left\, not just the U.S. Ev erybody left\, and--Colin Powell said this\, you know-- if you break it\, you own it\, and we broke it\, and we didn't own it.\n\nWhat stunned me is \, having learned some version of that lesson in Iraq\, we didn't do it in Libya.\n\nI mean\, it stuns me to this day.\n\nBiden: Tell me what happen s.\n\nHe's gone\, what happens?\n\nDoesn't the country disintegrate?\n\nSu llivan\, voice-over: The minute that you walk into the White House Situati on Room\, you immediately recognize that you've got a collection of imperf ect people with imperfect information about what's going on facing imperfe ct choices and in an imperfect process where it's hard to actually draw in all the right people to contribute to the decision\, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that you end up getting imperfect results.\n\nBiden: 200\ ,000 300\,000 or 150\,000 troops... Sullivan\, voice-over: Every solution you propose or present or pursue almost necessarily creates new problems\, so\, even when you think you've done the right thing\, you have generated a whole set of additional decisions that themselves put you back in this loop of imperfection.\n\nObama: The United States can't get in the middle of somebody else's civil war.\n\n[Chanting in Arabic] Man: [Rapping in Ara bic] Man\, voice-over: Huge demonstrations today throughout Syria calling for more freedom and dignity.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: The Syrian government made it very clear today that it will tolerate no dissent.\n\n[People sho uting and whistling] [Machine gun fire] Man: [Shouting in Arabic] [Shoutin g continues] [Machine gun fire] Power\, voice-over: In Syria\, it was so c lear that Assad was employing a how-to manual of how to basically be the m ost savage leader in the Arab world\, the most savage responder to peacefu l protests.\n\nYou're seeing him use incendiary weapons.\n\nInto 2012\, he 's using napalm.\n\nWe're already hearing the reports of what snipers are doing and how people are being tortured with acid and electric shock in th e prisons.\n\n♪ I got the sense that Syria was going to be a problem fro m hell in early 2012\, when the Russian Perm Rep to the U.N.\, Vitaly Chur kin\, told Susan Rice\, who was our ambassador to the United Nations\, tha t the Russians would go along with the resolution.\n\nThey called for a ha lt to the violence\, and then Secretary Clinton had a meeting with Sergey Lavrov to talk about the resolution before the vote\, and Lavrov basically told her\, \"It ain't happening.\n\nWe're not supporting it.\n\nWe're bac king Assad\,\" and at that moment\, it became clear to me that you now had great powers pitted against each other in Syria and with that\, the confl ict was going to be very difficult to manage and Assad was going to be emp owered to slaughter even more of his own people.\n\n♪ [People wailing] ♪ Derek Chollet\, voice-over: We saw the situation in Syria unraveling. \n\nIt looked that either Assad was going to do something to use the chemi cal weapons or there would be a loss of control of some kind\, and so the question would always come back to\, \"Well\, what happens with the chemic al weapons?\n\nAround one of those moments with the president\, he's asked a question-- \"Well\, what would happen if these chemical weapons were on the loose?\"\n\nChuck Todd.\n\nDo you envision using U.S. military\, if s imply for nothing else the safe keeping of the chemical weapons?\n\nWe hav e been very clear to the Assad regime but also to other players on the gro und that a red line for us is\, we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized\, that's a red line for us\, and t hat there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on th e chemical weapons.\n\nObama violated one of the core tenets of press conf erences\, which is\, you never answer a hypothetical question\, so he answ ered a hypothetical question.\n\nThat would change my calculus.\n\nThat wo uld change my equation\, all right?\n\nThank you\, everybody.\n\nAt that m oment\, it became this kind of line in the sand.\n\nIf chemical weapons we re used\, the full force and fury of U.S. military power would be used aga inst Assad.\n\n♪ Woman\, voice-over: The images you are about to see are so important because they're being held up tonight by Syrian rebels as ev idence of what may be the worst chemical weapons attack anywhere since Sad dam Hussein gassed the Iraqi Kurds in 1988.\n\nThe United States governmen t now knows that at least 1\,429 Syrians were killed in this attack\, incl uding at least 426 children.\n\nWe know where the rockets were launched fr om and at what time.\n\nPower\, voice-over: You have these families who we re just sleeping\, minding their own business.\n\nThe gas comes in.\n\nIt' s very clear from where the regime fired it into opposition villages.\n\nI mean\, the question of who did it is a nonissue.\n\nWith our own eyes\, w e have seen the thousands of reports.\n\nAll of them show and report victi ms with breathing difficulties\, people twitching with spasms\, coughing\, rapid heartbeats\, foaming at the mouth\, unconsciousness\, and death.\n\ n♪ Power\, voice-over: Looking at those photographs of those kids lined up\, those little kids\, you just see the size of them\, the size of my ow n kids at that time\, and just lines\, just rows of them.\n\nYou know\, I mean-- Man: Oh... [Crying] [Speaking Arabic] So the primary question is re ally no longer what do we know.\n\nThe question is\, what are we-- we coll ectively-- what are we in the world gonna do about it?\n\nMan: The composi tion of... Power\, voice-over: I went into the first meeting with the pres ident after the strike with my arguments lined up\, ready to make the case for how this is an existential threat in the sense that it's a chemical w eapon that can kill so many\, and I didn't need to make any argument.\n\nP resident Obama knew exactly what he was going to do.\n\n10 days ago\, the world watched in horror as men\, women\, and children were massacred in Sy ria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century\, and after c areful deliberation\, I have decided that the United States should take mi litary action against Syrian regime targets.\n\n...ban against the use of chemical weapons and prohibitions against other weapons of mass destructio n.\n\nChuck Hagel\, voice-over: We wanted to do something that was meaning ful\, that would hurt him\, that would affect his ability to continue what he was doing.\n\nThe military options were discussed.\n\nIt was the Natio nal Security Council.\n\nWe gave the president those options.\n\nHe chose one.\n\nWe had it all set.\n\nIt was ready to go.\n\nWe had all agreed on it.\n\nWe have options to deal with chemicals\, long-range rockets and mis siles... We must come together as... Rhodes\, voice-over: The first time I saw Obama have second thoughts was the middle of the week\, and he's call ing Angela Merkel asking her not for troops or planes\, just political sup port\, Just a statement in support of bombing Syria.\n\nObama said\, \"Ang ela\, I need you on this.\"\n\nI mean\, you know\, he made\, like\, a forc eful plea\, how it was a moral case\, there's a strategic case\, and she s aid\, \"Barack\"-- she said it with some feeling because they were very cl ose\, you know--\"Barack\, you want to go through this process.\n\n\"I'm t elling you this as a friend.\n\n\"If you go in now\, Putin's going to say\ , \"you know\, you made this up.\n\nSupport's not gonna be there\,\" and I remember him hanging up the phone\, and it was the first time I saw some doubt creep in\, and he said to me\, you know\, something along the lines of\, like\, \"People really-- Nobody wants to do this\, you know?\"\n\nSul livan: The Russians did not want us to attack\, and they basically said\, \"You have no basis or right \"to do this because it wasn't the Assad regi me.\n\nIt was the opposition.\"\n\nWe asked them for any evidence that the y could put forward to justify their claim\, and they had nothing.\n\nKerr y: ...chemical weapons to the international community.\n\nStep by step ove r the course of that week\, events begin to intrude.\n\nThe British Parlia ment votes to prevent Cameron from joining this...\n\nIt is clear to me th at the British Parliament\, reflecting the views of the British people\, d oes not want to see British military action.\n\nI get that\, and the gover nment will act accordingly.\n\nWhile we're in a meeting with the leadershi p of the U.S. Congress that is telling us that they will only support it w ith congressional authorization...\n\nThe bloodshed is gonna end.\n\nRhode s\, voice-over: and so this question became\, \"What do we do?\"\n\nI reme mber I was in a meeting in Denis' office on Friday afternoon\, and Denis g ets kind of a tap on the shoulder\, you know\, \"Boss wants to see you\,\" ...and we've wrestled with this issue very... McDonough\, voice-over: Aft er several hours of meetings with his National Security Council that day\, we took a long walk on the South Lawn.\n\nI have a view on these matters\ , which is that Congress has a responsibility to have a role.\n\nThe Found ing Fathers had a view that Congress declares wars and raises armies.\n\nT hat's my view\, that the American people have the confidence that the inst itutions of the government\, including the Congress\, are involved in that decision.\n\n♪ Rhodes: Dennis comes back\, and then I get a tap on the shoulder saying\, \"You need to go to the Oval Office.\"\n\n♪ I get in\, and Obama stands up from behind the Oval Office\, and there's nobody else there\, and he says\, \"I've got a big idea\,\" and I knew that whatever decision he'd made\, he had made that decision just before he even told me what it was by his demeanor\, his appearance... Obama: Think that on issu es like this\, it's important... Rhodes\, voice-over: and he said\, \"I be lieve I need to seek \"congressional authorization \"because I don't belie ve that this will be a one-off.\n\n\"Like\, if we bomb Syria\, \"this is s omething we're gonna be doing for a long time\, \"and I can't sustain this politically without congressional authorization\,\" and then he's getting into the fact that the same dysfunction in the U.S. Congress is present i nternationally\, which is\, \"All the Europeans say\, \"We got to do somet hing about this\,\" \"but are they gonna be there in a year or two years o r 3 years if this thing goes like I think it's going to go?\"\n\nand then he said\, \"You know\, if it's Syria now\, It'll be Iran next\, and where does this all end?\"\n\nand I remember there's a picture of this meeting\, and I look like a balloon that has been deflated because I was accepting something I didn't want to accept\, which is\, I'd operated under the beli ef that-- for two years that we could do something in Syria\, and then I h ad the President of United States\, who happens to be my boss and someone who I know very well\, kind of laying out for me why that's not gonna work unless we get congressional authorization.\n\nI mean\, it was kind of obv ious that he was\, in some respects\, pulling back the throttle.\n\n♪ Ke rry: ...because a lot of other countries whose policies challenged these i nternational norms are watching.\n\nThey are watching.\n\nThey want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say.\n\nIt is dire ctly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the Un ited States when it says something.\n\nThey are watching to see if Syria c an get away with it because then maybe they too can put the world at great er risk.\n\nIt's about choices that will directly affect our role in the w orld and our interests in the world.\n\nIt is also profoundly about who we are.\n\nWe are the United States of America.\n\n♪ Robert Malley: How do you make decisions\, and are you thinking about an action today or its co nsequences in the next year?\n\nHow much weight do you put on an issue lik e credibility?\n\nIf you believe that issuing that red line was a mistake\ , do you then have to compound that mistake with another mistake in order not to lose credibility?\n\n♪ I think for President Obama\, the credibil ity was the reason the U.S. had made more mistakes in its history than vir tually anything else\, Vietnam being one of them\, and continuing with wro ng policy\, so human factor\, what kind of person are you when you confron t those decisions\, I think that's what it's all about.\n\nPanetta: The on e thing you have as president is credibility\, and once you give your word \, once you say you're gonna do something\, then people expect that you wi ll follow through on your word\, and if you don't--if you don't\, then tha t will be read as weakness\, and people then will think they can take adva ntage of you because\, regardless of what you say\, they don't really beli eve you're going to act on your word\, and that\, more than anything\, can weaken your ability to deal with crisis.\n\nThis week\, when I addressed the nation on Syria\, I said that\, in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military force\, there is the possibility of a diplomatic solutio n.\n\nRussia has indicated a new willingness to join with the internationa l community in pushing Syria to give up its chemical weapons.\n\nIf there' s any chance of achieving that goal without resorting to force\, then I be lieve we have a responsibility to pursue that path.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: Some say the agreement emboldens Russia.\n\nMan\, voice-over: This is a R ussian plan for Russian interests.\n\nWoman\, voice-over: President Obama tried to downplay the notion that this is a win for America's historic geo political foe.\n\n♪ Power: It was a mistake to go to Congress\, and\, wh ile we made the best of a bad situation in negotiating the end of Syria's chemical weapons program\, it was clear they were always gonna keep some f or a rainy day\, and it was clear that after that\, the threat of the use of force inevitably was gonna mean less than it had meant before.\n\n♪ M an\, voice-over: The situation in Syria continued to grow worse by the day .\n\nJohn McCain: Thousands and thousands and thousands\, 192\,000 dead\, 3 million refugees\, and we're not gonna do anything about Assad?\n\n[Peop le shouting] Power\, voice-over: 2014\, we were fighting ISIS.\n\nWe were dealing with U.S. embassies under siege\, U.S. journalists being beheaded. \n\nThe emphasis was on the lives of Americans\, but at the same time\, to be just reminded again and again of the inadequacy of what we were doing commensurate to our stated objectives\, our stated objectives were allevia tion of suffering-- not happening\; sufferings getting worse-- preventing the rise of terrorist groups\, stemming refugee flow\, refugee flow gettin g worse\, I mean\, on every axis... ♪ but the suffering is one that make s you feel potentially-- certainly\, I felt this way at a different level- - but guilty.\n\nIt makes you feel like you're not-- you know\, that you'r e letting innocents down\, and you're the only-- and Obama would be very c lear-eyed.\n\nHe'd have no alibi for himself.\n\nHe knows that the only ho pe they have is America.\n\nAcross the globe\, lot of people think somethi ng should be done\, but nobody wants to do it\, and that's not an unusual. .. Malley\, voice-over: Once in the White House\, there was a discussion o n Syria\, and Samantha was pushing back on what we needed to do\, and she was getting frustrated\, and the president was getting frustrated.\n\nAfte r the meeting\, he goes up\, and he turns around and says\, \"Samantha\, c ome with me to the Oval.\n\nIt's not gonna be something that the United St ates... Malley\, voice-over: I don't know what they said\, but to me\, as I read it\, she was always his bad conscience.\n\nShe was the person who r eminded him of the side of him who was idealistic.\n\n...hitting hospitals \, hitting refugee... Malley\, voice-over: There are very few people that he would have a back-and-forth with in the Situation Room.\n\nHe would hav e back-and-forth with her because he respected her views\, because he knew she disagreed.\n\nWe had rules in place dealing with... Power\, voice-ove r: There were a lot of layers in the dynamic between President Obama and m yself on Syria.\n\nYou know\, he wouldn't let a Syria meeting end without saying\, \"Sam\, what you got?\"\n\nyou know.\n\nBecause I'd often be on t he screen\, he'd say\, \"I see that look of skepticism\,\" and I could-- Y ou know\, sometimes I would speak\, and I could just see him getting impat ient and not liking the message.\n\nYou know\, one time it was\, \"We've a ll read your book\, Samantha.\n\n\"In other words\, we don't need to be re minded \"of the human consequences \"of bystanding in the face of mass atr oc--\" like\, \"We get it\,\" like\, \"Spare us\,\" kind of... ♪ and my view to this day is that he heard moral judgment because that was the voic e in his head.\n\nNo matter how I articulated what I was saying\, he heard me saying\, \"You're a bystander.\"\n\nGeir O. Pedersen: Let me express t he gravest concern that the violence is\, so far\, not abating.\n\nNo one. .. Stephanie Ruhle: Realistically\, how close are we to any sort of real r esolution to stop this?\n\nWe've got to get a political solution not just for Syria.\n\nIt's because of a failed policy which has allowed this situa tion in Syria to deteriorate to the point where people just have to leave. \n\nPower\, voice-over: I'd had a warm relationship with Senator McCain\, so when Tony Blinken\, a colleague of mine and friend of mine\, was up for being deputy secretary of state and McCain was placing what's called a ho ld on his nomination\, I said\, \"Tony\, I got this\,\" so I called.\n\nSe nator McCain took the call.\n\nI basically got about two sentences into my pitch just to vouch that Tony was very concerned about the Syrians\, but McCain\, he just cut me off\, and he just says\, \"How can you live with y ourself?\n\nHow?\"\n\nyou know\, \"You're gonna make the policy better?\n\ n\"This policy is a disaster.\n\n\"Hundreds of thousands of people are bei ng killed\, \"and you\, the author of \"A Problem from Hell\,\" \"are part of this administration.\n\nYou're complicit in this\,\" and he just went on and on.\n\nMcCain: ...strategy\, there is no success.\n\nPower\, voice- over: You know\, I had the phone initially here\, and then it was so loud\ , but I kept trying to kind of reroute it to Tony and saying\, \"Look.\n\n I think if he's in the room\, there will be another voice\,\" and he's lik e\, \"Please.\n\nAnother voice.\n\nLike yours was a voice?\"\n\nbecause he had thought\, you know\, when I got confirmed\, I'd be in the cabinet.\n\ nI'd be a voice.\n\n\"You know\, this president is not-- \"He's feckless\, \" you know\, and he would go on\, and he said\, \"Look.\n\nYou know\, not only should Tony Blinken not be confirmed\, but you should resign\,\" and then the line went dead.\n\n♪ A number of newspapers were calling on me to resign.\n\nEven close friends from Bosnia would say\, \"Have you thoug ht about--\" so I did think about it.\n\n♪ I could have expressed the so rt of searing mark that Syria left on me by leaving\, but who would that h ave helped\, and-- Who?\n\nTell me one person it would have helped other t han me in this interview.\n\nI'm in the room with the president.\n\nBarack Obama is not cold to what is happening to the Syrian people.\n\nWhat was very challenging was figuring out what is the pathway that is going to do more good than harm\, and he made a judgment\, not one I agreed with\, but a reasonable one.\n\nAt the same time\, he gave me power to try to get mo re refugees into the country\, getting political prisoners out of jail\, t o ending an Ebola crisis\, even though everyone in America wanted nothing to do with West Africa.\n\nThose are consequences\, and to go back to teac hing and writing and hoping somebody reads my op-ed compared to the abilit y to do something for someone on a given day\, it just wasn't a close call .\n\nMan\, voice-over: Dramatic new drone video tells the tale of destruct ion.\n\nAnti-Assad government rebels held in East Aleppo were hit hard.\n\ nSecurity Council resolution calling for a new pause to the fighting was v etoed\, and so the Russian-led airstrikes continue.\n\nPower\, voice-over: Here is what is happening right now in Eastern Aleppo.\n\nSyrians trapped by the fighting are sending out their final appeals for help.\n\n[Indisti nct conversation] ♪ Power\, voice-over: This is what is being done by me mber states of the United Nations who are sitting around this horseshoe ta ble today to the people of Eastern Aleppo.\n\n♪ Aleppo will join the ran ks of those events that define modern evil-- [Coughs] Power\, voice-over: Halabja\, Rwanda\, Srebrenica\, and now Aleppo.\n\n[Shouting] Woman: [Shou ting in Arabic] ♪ Are you truly incapable of shame?\n\nIs there literall y nothing that can shame you?\n\n♪ This is not leading from behind.\n\nT his is hiding from behind.\n\nI mean\, we have Samantha Powers\, you know\ , attacking Iran\, Assad\, Russia\, saying\, \"Have you no shame?\"\n\nWha t about the administration?\n\nThe thing about Syria and the Obama policy is that this tiny country has caused so much destabilization not only for its neighbors\, but for Europe and so forth.\n\n♪ Power: How can somethi ng so clear in retrospect become so muddled at the time by rationalization s\, institutional constraints\, and\, above all\, a lack of imagination?\n \nHow can it be that those who fight on behalf of these principles are the ones deemed unreasonable?\n\nGeorge Bernard Shaw once wrote\, \"The reaso nable man adapts himself to the world.\n\n\"The unreasonable one persists \"in trying to adapt the world to himself.\n\nTherefore\, all progress dep ends on the unreasonable man.\"\n\n♪ What's happened in Syria is absolut ely heartbreaking\, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it.\n\n♪ It's natural to want to blame someone for a terrible outc ome\, and I get that.\n\nI think the president gets that.\n\nYou know\, I wish there were an available alternative to us to fix that situation in Sy ria\, but we looked at all the alternatives\, and there was not one that w orked.\n\n♪ I'll be honest with you sitting here today.\n\nLike\, I don' t know how much of that I had to rationalize the inaction\, you know\, bec ause I knew after 2013 that I was going to be living with this inaction\, and so to this day\, I'm torn by-- It's a complicated thing.\n\nThis gets back to your tugging at your conscience.\n\nDo you do you construct argume nts to rationalize something that you used to feel passionately differentl y about\, you know?\n\nI think there's something like that that's been goi ng on with me.\n\nTo be a liberal and to deal with these questions\, you k now\, probably inevitably leads to that.\n\nAnyone who had any responsibil ity for Syria and for our policy there has to look themselves in the mirro r and see failure staring back at you.\n\nOn one level\, it's as simple as that.\n\nWe didn't stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. \n\nWe didn't prevent millions of people being forcibly displaced from the ir homes.\n\nWe look at that bottom line\, and you can't but conclude that we failed.\n\n♪ Mark Lowcock: You in this Security Council have ignored all the previous pleas you have heard.\n\nYou know what is happening\, an d you have done nothing.\n\n♪ Malley: Syria is a core example of that in ability of the international community to come together to try to stop mas s atrocities\, and this is one of the worst mass atrocities\, but they the y existed before Syria.\n\nThey've existed after\, and we haven't been abl e to answer that question.\n\nThe whole theory of responsibility to protec t\, which has never really been implemented\, you know\, it's not the inte rnational consensus today.\n\n♪ Sullivan: I believe that the United Stat es bears responsibility to try to rally action in response to genocide\, m ass killings\, mass atrocities so that the world does not descend into dar kness and madness.\n\nWe have an obligation to play a central role\, but n ot a singular role.\n\nMurray McCully: The draft resolution has not been a dopted owing to the negative vote of a permanent member of... Power\, voic e-over: Great power politics don't go away just because of the responsibil ity to protect.\n\nThe Security Council gave 5 permanent members a veto\, and for any of the permanent 5 to be a sole arbiter of whether you can kil l your people or not\, that's not what the founders\, you know\, had in mi nd.\n\n♪ Man: Mr. President\, the General Assembly by unanimous vote aff irmed that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are punishable.\n\n[Applause] ♪ Lake\, voice-over: There will always be genocides or war crimes because human nature hasn't changed.\n\nIf you lo ok around the world\, you can see how the forces of selfishness and of bar riers and of denial of rights are growing\, and they are growing\, I belie ve\, because the democratic institutions that were put in place 70 years a go are all under assault and in too many countries\, they are losing\, inc luding the values themselves.\n\nMan: World peace\, world justice... Lake\ , voice-over: Every nation in the world agreed that the international comm unity has a responsibility to protect people against genocide and war crim es\, et cetera\, and then find practical ways not to implement it\, and so the lesson that wasn't implemented is a lesson not taken.\n\nGeorge Cloon ey: We were brought up to believe that the U.N. was formed to ensure that the Holocaust could never happen again.\n\nThis genocide will be on your w atch.\n\nHow you deal with it will be your legacy-- your Rwanda\, your Cam bodia\, your Auschwitz.\n\n♪ ♪ ♪\n\n\n\n COVER IMAGE REFERRAL\n\n ht tps://www.pbs.org/video/obamas-cabinet-and-libya-pldhu2/\n\n DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20250425 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;INTERVAL=1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR