Samantha Power's Problem from Hell

Since her arrival in New York last month, Power has become the public face of an administration that has proven reluctant to exercise the full weight of American diplomatic and military might to halt President Bashar al-Assad's slaughter of more than 100,000 people in Syria. President Barack Obama, who was voted into office pledging to get America out of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has resisted pressure to take military action, even after Syria introduced chemical weapons into the battlefield, crossing a "red line" Obama had drawn more than a year ago. But as one of the country's most influential advocates of humanitarian intervention, Power now finds herself burdened with the challenge of practicing what she has long preached: wielding America's power on behalf of the world's human rights victims, in this case Syrians.