Another Re-election Stunt?

We now have an Atrocity Prevention Board, or so Mr. Obama announced in a talk at the Holocaust Museum on Monday.  And, with typical American chutzpah the board will be charged with preventing atrocities anywhere in the world.  I wonder if the board will be charged with preventing atrocities that may occur in the United States or be committed by Americans.  Or, is that situation even possible in the board's eyes?

Defining an atrocity is not a simple task, as James Gibney of Bloomberg asks, "Is an atrocity the fact that more than 90 percent of Egyptian married women have undergone female genital mutilation? Is it an Israeli missile that goes astray and kills a Palestinian family? Is it an abject Japanese government failure to regulate its nuclear plants, resulting in the deaths of thousands? Just where does one draw the line?"

Preventing an atrocity is also not a simple task.  How would we have prevented the atrocities that have occurred in a number of nations?  Barbara Harff, who has been involved with assessing such risks for almost twenty years, thinks that the following countries are at varying levels of risk: Myanmar, Syria, China, Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Iran, Congo, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, North Korea, Guatemala, Uzbekistan. Will we investigate these countries?  Will we seek input from the beleaguered in those countries?  Sure, we should have acted sooner re Hitler, but would his atrocities have been prevented in any other manner but by our going to war?

I can understand why Mr. Obama would announce this board at the Holocaust Museum.  A cynic would say he chose the place because there are a lot of Jewish voters in this country.