Obama and Human Rights: Wasted Opportunities and Diplomatic Incontinence
Be that as it may, diplomatic incontinence seems to be the tenet of the hour at the State Department. Consider the administration’s Sudan policy. In his Nobel speech, Obama alluded to the genocide in Darfur as an example where some as-yet-unnamed form of nonviolent global intervention is called for. Obama has elsewhere used muscular language to describe the humanitarian catastrophe that has been ongoing in Darfur since 2003, for instance, full-throatedly endorsing the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet his special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, told the Washington Post in September: “We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” referring to his self-described “pragmatic” mediation with the Khartoum regime, a set of policies that have been widely assailed by Darfuris and human rights activist as inhabiting a realm somewhere between self-delusion and stooging. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”
Never mind the 300,000 murdered and the 2 million displaced that this horrifying glib formulation discards. The cupcake containment school of foreign policy has its most vociferous defenders in the genocidaires themselves. Bashir’s foreign minister described Gration as “even-handed” and, again according to the Washington Post, “[d]uring a stop in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, Gration was greeted like a rock star by hundreds of cheering Bashir supporters in a conference hall plastered with posters of Bashir and Obama, poorly photo-shopped together.” As our man in Sudan, Gration seems to think that because there aren’t too many black African Muslims left to rape, slaughter and dispossess, it’s wiser to just let bygone be bygones. One wonders what dark nights of the soul Samantha Power, Obama’s foreign policy adviser and the author of A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, has experienced lately.
On Iran, Obama’s position has also been depressingly lax. That country’s Green Revolution, waged in response to its fraudulent June 12 presidential election, literally begged for a strong display of American solidarity. A theocracy fed on every kind of conspiracy theory — from the anti-Semitic to the anti-American — and intent on acquiring nuclear weapons declared war on its own people, whom it regards as slaves. Obama’s first response to this historic event was to master the self-evident by avowing that the “world is watching.” When this was deemed paltry and insufficient an indictment even by “dignity doctrine” standards, he made a slight adjustment: the United States, the president said on June 21, just as the Iranian civil protests were being beaten into submission, would “bear witness” to the mullahs’ atrocities. Finally, two days later, Obama was “appalled and outraged,” insisting that the Islamic Republic do what it has never done and is ideologically committed never to do, “govern through consent and not coercion.”
The concern, as it was expressed by all the president’s Iran experts, notably Ray Takeyh, the most pro-engagement theorist in Foggy Bottom, was of U.S. “meddling” in the internal affairs of a country that has made a convenient rallying point out of alleging U.S. meddling in its internal affairs, which it did even as the U.S. held its tongue and “bore witness” to the harvest of quiescence. As the scholar Abbas Milani has argued in the New Republic, our self-designated role as a mere “bystander” to Iranian democratic revolt was no sensible alternative to acting the part of moral second. The ayatollahs have an intractable and hysterical view of American involvement in Persian history, which is actually more pro-democratic than the conventional wisdom would suggest. As a result, Milani wrote, “No matter what the United States does — even if it maintains a studied silence — the regime will describe its opponents as U.S. tools. This accusation is a political necessity for the mullahs and deeply embedded in their worldview. Besides, no matter how much the regime denounces the Great Satan, Iranians, on the whole, remain positively disposed to the United States, at least relative to the rest of the Muslim world.”
Obama thus wasted a golden opportunity and unintentionally transformed Iranian protesters against him. Milani reported that as they filled the streets of Tehran on November 4 to oppose the regime’s 30th anniversary celebration of the taking of U.S. embassy hostages, demonstrators took a common play on Obama’s name — “ou, ba, ma” means “he is with us” in written Persian — and, while tearing down posters of Ayatollah Khomeini, chanted, “Obama, Obama, ya ba oona, ya ba ma” (“Obama, Obama, either with them, or with us”). Thus the smallest price of maintaining a pseudo-prudent neutrality in human rights crises: even the victims, sounding like so many “cowboy” statesmen of yore, demand to know which side the United States is really on.
No surprise here. Obama is a man of the Left. Leftists and Liberals have always, without exception, supported the worst tyrants and human-rights violators as long as they can perceive some benefit to themselves by doing so. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Sandanistas, Kaddafi, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Al Qaida, the Mullahs of Iran – all have their defenders and supporters on the left. There is literally nothing whatsoever that Leftists will not support as long as it bashes the US and they can benefit.
since when self centered arrogant pompous patronizing narcissists care about the others?
How many days till January 20, 2013?
Interesting piece. There are things about Obama that are really puzzling me when I spend some time pondering his reaction to Ft Hood, amongst other things. I hate it that the Ft Hood episode has virtually been thrown under the bus. To me this is bothersome. It seems to me he could show a bit more interest in a satisfying result and some truth instead of all this PC blarney. It bothers me that it seems like the US is not showing enough solidarity for the protesters in Iran, meaning these folks are trying for some human rights. Obama doesn’t have to go into some huge discourse about it, he could simply say our thoughts and prayers are with you. Sure it’s sappy, but at least it’s something. I do not get why he got the Nobel prize. Sometimes I don’t get why whoever won an Oscar or Grammy either.
And note what Obama did with Honduras, siding with Zelaya, who was violating the Honduran Constitution, its legislature and its supreme court.
And what about in the US, where Obama was insisting that Congress pass bills without reading or debating them (eg, the stimulus) thus rendering the voice of the people (Congress) irrelevant.
Obama is a pathological narcissist. He has no interest in anyone whom he cannot control, people must be focused on and in a state of adulation, of Obama. This explains his insults to foreign leaders of the West who are focused on their own country, not Obama.
If you are not an ardent follower of Obama, then for Obama, you simply don’t exist. The demonstrators in Iran weren’t focused on Obama but on democracy and freedom. Obama was therefore not interested in them.
Obama can only accept adulation; he can’t accept criticism, and will either become insulting (Limbaugh, Hannity, FOX, the Tea Parties, the Town Halls) or will simply deny your existence..and your right to exist.
We need a new Constitutional amendment….that only Americans can be elected president. Oh….with an adjective: only ADULT Americans can be elected. If only he were an adult. If only he were an American at heart. Oh, well. Our bad.
You’re forgetting the unforgivable move of Obama getting his stooge in the UN side with the OIC to happy-stamp the banning freedom of conscience on religion and the right to speak your mind on the matter. In doing so, he drove a knife in the back of every free thinker living under the rule of a whichdoctor (or any thug who wants to hide behind a witchdoctor if it makes it possible to shut down the opposition — you know, the divine right of kings, tyrants and presidents for life and all that sanctimonious jazz).
http://www.iheu.org/files/Speaking%20Freely%20about%20Religion.pdf
Even the naivest moron among us knows that he did that to curry favor with Islamic states, and even the naivest moron among us knows that it got him, and will continue to give him, nothing.
President Obama supports dictators and tyrants everywhere and rejects democracies, e.g., he supports Vladimir Putin in Russia but opposes Poland and the Czech Republic, he attacks Honduras and is friendly to Hugo Chavez. His return of the bust of Winston Churchill when he met with the Prime Minister of the U.K. shows that he opposes Churchill and would have supported Nazi Germany in World War II. His present snubbing of the U.K. but friendliness to China shows his views.
What the President says he intends to do and what he intends to do are two different things. He is in a perpetual campaign mood, saying whatever he thinks at the moment is appropriate from his personal point of view. Everything he says is ad hoc. It has no relation with the truth.
The more powerful organizations and people become, the more they realize how much they must compromise to protect their power. The Dalai Lama, Pope, Presidents and Prime Ministers and others know the truth when it comes to what they enjoy. They know the price and gladly pay it. Its only those, like us, at the bottom rungs that cling to our orphaned idealism like a young mother when it comes to real values. Only because we have no power gives us that gives the right to judge from high. Do those in power care if we do? I dont think so…they are much to busy basking in their own glory.
they respect it when someone is standing his ground, when someone is not afraid of them. When someone soils his pants prematurely, then they do not respect you more for it.”
this about sums it up. at lest the trolls will try and wipe.
diplomatic incontinence . . . Right Wing Scat Alert (in spades!)
Michael Weiss: listen to me simpleton, look around your house hold and see many god damn items you own that is made in China? when you stop buying them then spew out your hatred toward Obama.
300,000 killed and 2 million displaced? no kidding Dick Tracey I thouhgt this all went down on President Bush’s watch did it not? and What did he do? I dont’t remmeber him sending our mighty Air Force to bomb the hell out of them… so stop your bull s…
Green Revolution: you are so god damn offensive and dumb to that matter.. I have not seen a site like this with hatred of muslims and you included.. all of a sudden you care for Muslims? or are just trying to do our president in? look simpleton: I am from Iran and 8 years of confrontation by Bush as you can see did jack!!! I was out in the sreet during the 1979 revolution and I know the Iranian people like the back of my hand.. what Obama is doing is the perfect strategy. By him willing to talk to those a…holes he has created a huge rift in the Iranian leader ship I just got back from there… The last thing the Iranian people now is meddeling by a sitting US president now who that is, Obama or Bush… The Iranian leadership is going to say ” see we told you so. it is the Americans”. and that the last thing our brave people need. they will be crushed to a point of no return. also simpleton: where did you go to school or did you not? why do you think the movement in Iran is not moving as fast as any likes it to move? if you give me the right answer I will then know you have some level of education.. for now shut the f…. up and stay out of foreign policy
You miss the point. All politics is personal. Progressives are not in power to to change them, they’re in power to change us. See, for example, this AP story:
SAN FRANCISCO – After suffering 10 years of horrific abuse at the hands of her husband, Rody Alvarado fled her native Guatemala in 1995 and applied for asylum in the U.S.
Last week, in a one-page decision, an immigration judge finally granted her request. It was the culmination of a long personal odyssey for Alvarado and of a thorny legal case that inflamed passions on both sides of the immigration debate.
The Obama administration now says it is crafting regulations to allow entry by other victims of domestic violence who feel they have no choice but to flee their homelands to protect themselves.
If adopted, the regulations would mark the first time the federal government formally recognized domestic abuse victims as qualifying for political asylum.
So, the paradigm is simple, the borders are wide open; Islam, give us your poor, your down trodden, the wretched of the earth, which is at least half of their civilization. Truly ,all politics is personal. Now that is slick. I suppose it is more humane than going Roman and killing all their males.