What made President Pantywaist go from chicken to chickenhawk last week and decide to enter into a war, err, excuuuse me, Kinetic Military Action, against Libya? Speculation is running wild that it is all because of Samantha Power.

Who?, you ask.

Samantha Power was first heard of nationally during her tenure on Obama’s Presidential Campaign, when she called the future president’s then-opponent Hillary Clinton “a monster”.

She must know Bill.

Anyway, Power is Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs of the National Security Council (since January 2009) and an advisor to President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm). She also just happens to be married to Cass Sustein, Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in his 1993 book The Partial Constitution that:

A restriction on access to abortion turns women’s reproductive capacities into something to be used by fetuses. … Legal and social control of women’s sexual and reproductive capacities has been a principal historical source of sexual inequality.

…Restrictions on abortion, surrogacy and free availability of pornography are troublesome.

…I do not mean to oppose equality to liberty. … Liberty does not entail respect for all ‘choices.

But, I digress…

It has been reported in the New York Post and elsewhere that Power was extremely instrumental in convincing Obama to authorize the Kinetic Military Action against Libya.

Power and others in last Tuesday night’s meeting told the president that the United States couldn’t stay on the sidelines as Kadhafi committed genocide while putting an end to his people’s revolt.

Power joined now-Secretary of State Clinton in that view.

In opposition to the ill-planned WAR were strange bedfellows National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Power’s boss and a staunch Liberal, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush Administration.

What seems to have pushed Obama to, in his mind, man up, was not some heartfelt concern for our national interest, but, was instead, being the president of the world that he is, an allegiance to a concept put forth at the United Nations euphemistically titled “responsibility to protect,” or R2P.

This is a wonderful decree from the hypocrites at the UN, calling for the creation of a new international moral standard to prevent violence against civilians.

There’s been one for thousands of years already, you international idiots. It’s called Christianity.

Where Power fits in to this moral crusade comes from the fact that she has a background in genocidal studies.

Per whorunsgov.com:

The journalist, activist and former Harvard professor burst onto the foreign-policy scene in 2003 with her book “A Problem from Hell”, which accused the United States of intentionally ignoring genocides. The work helped make her one of the foremost thinkers on human rights.

Of course, her book held America responsible for the world’s genocidal tragedies, including the 1915 attempt by the Turkish government to kill off the Armenians.  Here are a couple of quotes:

The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred. – Preface, xv

America’s lack of response to the Turkish horrors established patterns that would be repeated. Time and again the U.S. government would be reluctant to cast aside its neutrality and formally denounce a fellow state for its atrocities. Time and again though U.S. officials would learn that huge numbers of civilians were being slaughtered, the impact of this knowledge would be blunted by their uncertainty about the facts and their rationalization that a firmer U.S. stand would make little difference.

The Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Ethnic Education in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University offers this summary of Power’s book:

Ms. Power starts by elaborating upon history and etymology of the term “genocide” and then examining several genocides starting with the Armenian genocide at the beginning of the twentieth century and ending with the atrocity in Kosovo in 1999. Chapters are devoted to the Holocaust, the fate of the Armenians, the Genocidal Convention, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Kosovo. Final chapters carefully examine the failures of American foreign policy.

Power is a huge advocate of R2P. As a member of the National Security Council, she has been

trying to figure out how the administration could implement R2P and what doing so would require of the White House going forward.

Evidently, Hil has jumped on the bandwagon.

And, since Scooter is her boss, she may not have had any choice in the matter.

However, the question remains: Why did Obama dither around so long in making his decision, as he did in sending troops to Afghanistan?

I guess, going on vacation on the American public’s dime is easy. Actually doing your job as the President of the United States is hard.