Yesterday, the White House’s Atrocities Prevention Board held its first meeting. Chaired by NSC staffer Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the board will “coordinate action across the entire government on stopping genocide and liaise with the NGO community.”

But even with the best of intentions, boards and committees—and NGOs—do not stop men with guns determined to slaughter. This much should be obvious, even to an administration that thinks there is some purpose to Arab League or U.N. monitors giving witness to the bloodshed in Syria. Surely the White House knows that testimony is not going to slow down Bashar al-Assad’s killing machine. No, it seems that more bureaucracy—the Atrocities Prevention Board—is simply how this administration institutionalizes indifference in the face of mass murder.