Obama intends to nominate Samantha Power to replace Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Rice is moving up to replace outgoing National Security Advisor Tom Donilon at the White House.
For those who don’t know anything about Samantha Power, allow us to introduce you to her — she’s a fresh-faced, cunning national security expert with a penchant for candor and daring plans.
The U.S. intervention in Libya was her idea
The U.S.-led international intervention that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi and stopped the innocent slaughter of thousands was not the brainchild of a war-hungry general — it was largely Samantha Power. Power believes the U.S. has a responsibility to do everything in its power to prevent human rights atrocities.
She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Power is the author of “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” The book won the general prize for nonfiction in 2003. It examines how the United States has reacted toward genocide throughout history.
She was a war journalist
Power reported on the war in Bosnia in the '90s. She once berated the U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, that the U.S. was not doing enough to stop the war.
She once called Hillary Clinton a monster
Power worked as Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisor during the 2008 campaign. This statement to The Scotsman forced her to resign:
"We f---ed up in Ohio. In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win. She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything ... The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
Power apologized, worked on the State Department transition team, and worked closely with Clinton throughout her tenure as Secretary of State.
She had two children while working in the White House full time
Power is married to Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. They have a boy and a girl, Declan and Rían, born in 2009 and 2012, respectively.
She is a human rights expert
Power’s old job was on the National Security Council staff, where she was a special advisor to the president and ran the office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Prior to that, she served as the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
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