Do we tend to act too soon or too late?

[I]t was the United States—under Bill Clinton, for those of you keeping score at home—that worked hardest to prevent UN intervention or even from saying the word “genocide” in any official documents.

Read Samantha Powers’ prize-winning account of this, A Problem from Hell, if you doubt this. It is just this kind of combination of ignorance and arrogance that gives rise to anti-Americanism, and no wonder. (And by the way, the Rwanda episode is by far the most shameful act undertaken by Clinton and company.

—Eric Alterman, MSNBC