Samantha Power recently tweeted:

“Two months ago, Azerbaijan’s military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh forced more than 100k people to leave their homes & move into neighboring Armenia. The U.S. continues to stand with the ethnic Armenians from NK. Today, the U.S. is announcing an additional $4 million to help these displaced people. We’re grateful for the Armenian Government’s generous reception of the displaced & will continue to support them in getting people the help they need. With this new funding, USAID partners WFP, ifrc & PeopleInNeedInc are providing urgently needed humanitarian aid like food assistance, humanitarian protection & emergency shelter to >70k people. US humanitarian assistance for the NK response now totals $28M since 2020. On my recent visit to Armenia, I got to hear directly from many of the displaced people from NK about the tremendous hardship, and heartbreak, of having to flee their homes. We will continue to do all we can to support them and those generously hosting them in Armenia.”

US concern for the Armenians, who left peacefully of their own volition, the region that was illegally occupied for 30 years contrasts strongly with the lack of concern for the people in Gaza, whose hospitals, schools, ambulances, and places of worship have been mercilessly bombed for 6 weeks, resulting in the deaths of 13,000 people, including 4,500 children. 

While there were constant calls for ceasefires and denunciations of “Azeri military aggression” from the US on behalf of the Armenian lobby the Palestinians were not even deserving of a call for a ceasefire, lest Israel’s “right of defence” was impeded by a break in the slaughter of civilians, whose places of habitation were apparently the bases of Hamas. And while there has been little evidence of any restraint on the part of Israel’s military forces in killing anyone that existed the Azerbaijani army took great care in directing its fire solely on the military forces of the enemy.

But people like Samantha Power keep up the barrage of propaganda on behalf of the Christian Armenians while remaining silent on other events, which really do qualify for the term of “humanitarian catastrophe”. 

What does the World outside of the West make of this?

Forbes magazine described Power as someone who “is considered to be the moral compass of American diplomacy. Already widely known for her 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ‘A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,’ she has been a powerful crusader for U.S. foreign policy as well as human rights and democracy.”

Power, who has made a career out of humanitarian causes, is part of the administration of the President the Irish now call “Genocide Joe”. 

Previously she served in the Obama Administration, on the National Security Council, which decided to destroy the Qaddafi’s government in Libya. The U.N. Security Council resolution authorised the taking of “all necessary measures” to “protect” Libyan civilians when Qaddafi was faced with a jihadi insurrection. This resolution was never meant to authorise the destruction of the Libyan state. But a Western coalition, with US backing, decided to do so, creating a decade long “humanitarian disaster” that has opened Europe to tens of thousands of refugees and migrants and brought the slave market to Libya.

This same administration, containing Ms Power, provoked the insurgency in Syria which destroyed the state there too. Power was in favour of a strong US military response to the crossing of Obama’s red line of the use of chemical weapons, which conveniently made an appearance just after the President drew his red line. But Obama, for whatever reason, decided not to act on his red line upon hearing that the Syrian government had crossed it. And Power was terribly let down by the bottling of her President and the letting in of the Russians. 

In a recent autobiographical book Samantha Power absolved herself and the Obama administration of what happened after the Western bombing intervention in Libya:

“We could hardly expect to have a crystal ball when it came to accurately predicting outcomes in places where the culture was not our own.” 

The image of Nero, fiddling while Rome burnt, springs to mind. In the immortal words of Hilary Clinton (who Power called a “monster” in an unguarded moment): “We came we saw, he died” – and we destroyed. 

Armenian military units drove 750,000 people from their homes in Karabakh and surrounding districts between 1991 and 1994 and killed thousands of Azerbaijani civilians, including over 600 in one day at Khojaly in 1992. When Azerbaijani forces recently undid this conquest, defeating the Armenian army in swift order, the number of civilian casualties did not amount to 100. There were more civilian deaths on the Azerbaijani side in 2020 after the launching of Russian-supplied ballistic missiles by the Armenians at towns far away from the battlefield. 

Of course 95 per cent of the 55,000 or so Armenians (not 100k as Power suggests) decided to leave Karabakh despite their security and rights being guaranteed by the Baku government as full citizens of Azerbaijan. Could the events of the past have influenced their decision?

As a result of the complete liberation of Azerbaijan’s territory and full implementation of international law in the 24 hour military operation in September James O’Brien, US Assistant Secretary of State, announced on the 15 November a suspension in normal relations between Washington and Baku. The US Senate then passed the Armenia Protection Act banning all military aid to Azerbaijan, while the French have entered into a substantial arms deal to rebuild the Armenian military, replacing Russia.

The Armenians have suggested that Anthony Blinken warned President Aliyev not to complete the final liberation of Karabakh in a phone call just prior to the operation. However, the operation had been already cleared by President Erdogan with President Putin at Sochi and it went ahead, humiliating Washington – which could hardly complain on the basis of international law, so it played the ethnic cleansing card against Azerbaijan. In response Baku has cancelled scheduled meetings with US officials and begun to clamp down on agents of US influence in Baku.

Samantha Power, for all her hatred of the Turk, is undoubtedly the most despised supporter of the Armenian cause among the Armenian diaspora. While Yerevan is happy to take the money she brings, Armenians consider her to be a careerist bluffer who has made a career out of words and failed entirely in deeds. It is very rare that Armenia detests a Western supporter, but she is an exception. The Armenian view of Power is, apparently also, quite widely shared in Washington circles.

Samantha Power is originally Irish, although a US citizen now – to the full. One wonders whether she would consider it ethnic cleansing if there was a great outflow of Ulster Protestants from the North of Ireland in the event of a United Ireland? Some Unionist leaders have said, like Armenians, that they could not tolerate the rule of those they do not consider their equal. 

If a Palestinian or Arab or Muslim army ever defeated the IDF and there was a great migration of Jews from Israel to the West in response, before any reprisals, would this be ethnic cleansing? You can bet your bottom Dollar it would be, described as such in the West.

It seems that accusations of ethnic cleansing and Genocide are things that are only appropriate for some places and people, and not for others. 

The hypocrisy exposed by events in Palestine since October has shattered the West’s right to accuse anyone of practically anything in the future. International Law has been exposed as a fraud and the famous “Rules Based Order” is a Humpty Dumpty not likely to be put back together again. This is bad for Kyiv and the begging bowl of the man in fatigues. But there is likely to be much more work for Samantha Power and decent recompense.