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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Anne-Marie Slaughter tweets call for intervention in Libya

Former State Department Policy Planning Chief Anne-Marie Slaughter used her brand-new Twitter account on Thursday to call for international intervention on behalf of the Libyan people. “The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted,” Slaughter tweeted, in one of her first ever ...

By Josh Rogin

February 24, 2011, 12:57 PM

Former State Department Policy Planning Chief Anne-Marie Slaughter used her brand-new Twitter account on Thursday to call for international intervention on behalf of the Libyan people.

“The international community cannot stand by and watch the massacre of Libyan protesters. In Rwanda we watched. In Kosovo we acted,” Slaughter tweeted, in one of her first ever entries. She confirmed to The Cable that the Twitter account is genuine.

Slaughter seems to be enjoying the freedom to express her opinions openly following her exit from government. Her message goes far beyond what President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said about the Libyan crisis.

Both Clinton and Obama have said that all options are on the table, but no specific decisions have been made on how the international community might respond to the unfolding crisis in Libya. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Wednesday that sanctions and asset freezes are being discussed, but he didn’t mention military intervention.

By invoking Rwandan, Slaughter is comparing the situation in Libya to the 1994 bloodshed that saw 800,000 Rwandans murdered in about 100 days — a clear case of genocide. Likewise in 1999, NATO bombed the Serbian capital of Belgrade following that government’s genocidal actions in Kosovo, although a U.N. court in 2001 decided the situation did not technically constitute genocide.

Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations Ibrahim Dabbashi, who resigned this week in protest of the Libyan government’s brutal crackdown, contended that Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi‘s massacre of civilians constitutes genocide, but no U.S. officials have made such a statement.

Slaughter’s other messages on her first week on Twitter focused on how to use social networks to aid in the Arab uprising spreading throughout the region.

“I think foreign policy has to be quite different in the networked world,” she told The Cable. “To understand it and work within it, I have to join it.”

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin