As a foreign policy issue, human rights has historically been a no-brainer for both Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives pushed Stalinist regimes on their records of mistreatment all through the Cold War and liberal leaders have usually been comfortable at least talking the talk when it comes to far right nationalist tyrannies. Not so these days. Michael Barone is not overstating the case when he writes:
One arrow in the quiver of American foreign policy has been our pressing — sometimes sotto voce (as in the Helsinki Accords), sometimes in opera buffa (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”) — tyrannical regimes to honor human rights. Hillary Clinton has put that arrow over her knee, broken it in two and thrown it away.
Barone is referring to Clinton’s blunt announcement to the Chinese that the U.S. is not in the Human Rights business at the moment.
What’s most repugnant about the Obama administration’s indifference to human rights abuses is the way this posture was achieved. Obama created a rights-abusing bogeyman in the person of George W. Bush and then, with full executive bravado, slew the monster by way of inaugural rhetoric and a few high-profile (but technically watery) presidential orders. So Barack Obama has supposedly done his share for human rights.
He’s closing (but really just relocating) the Guantanamo facility, so he doesn’t have to mention the wrongfully imprisoned thousands throughout China. He’s ending (but really just discussing the ramifications of ending) tough interrogations, so he doesn’t have to bring up Syrian torture when reaching out to the Assad regime. He’s closed down temporary CIA detention facilities, so when he goes on Arabian TV he’s free to praise the “courage” of a Saudi king whose domestic anti-terrorism program amounts to a secret network of sheer brutality.
We are seeing the real-world impact of equating three cases of American waterboarding with institutionalized international torture. Obama set up Bush’s America as a human rights wasteland in order to play to the netroots and taint his Republican challenger. It worked, as a campaign strategy. But his years-long mission to convince the entire world that America has lost its moral standing worked too. In histrionically declaring America a newly torture-free nation during his congressional address last week, Obama may think he’s let himself off the international hook. But with his administration’s decision to scrap human rights, the period of our nation’s real moral degradation may only just be getting started.
Last summer, when he was still a candidate, Barack Obama promised: “I will send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, ‘You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now.'” Our moment just passed.
