THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
OCTOBER 19, 2009, 10:34 P.M. ET
Does Obama Believe in Human Rights?
OPINION: GLOBAL VIEW
And the walls came tumbling down. Berlin, 1989
Human rights "interfere" with President Obama's campaign against climate change.
Nobody should get too hung up over President Obama's decision, reported by Der
Spiegel over the weekend, to cancel plans to attend next month's 20th
anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany's reunited
capital has already served his purposes; why should he serve its?
To this day, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, remains
a high-water mark in the march of human freedom. It's a march to which
candidate Obama paid rich (if solipsistic) tribute in last year's big Berlin
speech. "At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others
in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning—his dream—required the
freedom and opportunity promised by the West," waxed Mr. Obama to the assembled
thousands. "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."
Those were the words. What's been the record?
China: In February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Beijing with a
conciliating message about the country's human-rights record. "Our pressing on
those [human-rights] issues can't interfere on the global economic crisis, the
global climate change crisis and the security crisis," she said.
In fact, there has been no pressing whatsoever on human rights. President Obama
refused to meet with the Dalai Lama last month, presumably so as not to ruffle
feathers with the people who will now be financing his debts. In June, Liu
Xiaobo, a leading signatory of the pro-democracy Charter 08 movement, was
charged with "inciting subversion of state power." But as a U.S. Embassy
spokesman in Beijing admitted to the Journal, "neither the White House nor
Secretary Clinton have made any public comments on Liu Xiaobo."
Sudan: In 2008, candidate Obama issued a statement insisting that "there must
be real pressure placed on the Sudanese government. We know from past
experience that it will take a great deal to get them to do the right thing. .
. . The U.N. Security Council should impose tough sanctions on the Khartoum
government immediately."
Exactly right. So what should Mr. Obama do as president? Yesterday, the State
Department rolled out its new policy toward Sudan, based on "a menu of
incentives and disincentives" for the genocidal Sudanese government of Omar
Bashir. It's the kind of menu Mr. Bashir will languidly pick his way through
till he dies comfortably in his bed.
Iran: Mr. Obama's week-long silence on Iran's "internal affairs" following
June's fraudulent re-election was widely noted. Not so widely noted are the
administration's attempts to put maximum distance between itself and
human-rights groups working the Iran beat.
Earlier this year, the State Department denied a grant request for New Haven,
Conn.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. The Center maintains
perhaps the most extensive record anywhere of Iran's 30-year history of
brutality. The grant denial was part of a pattern: The administration also
abruptly ended funding for Freedom House's Gozaar project, an online Farsi- and
English-language forum for discussing political issues.
It's easy to see why Tehran would want these groups de-funded and shut down.
But why should the administration, except as a form of pre-emptive appeasement?
Burma: In July, Mr. Obama renewed sanctions on Burma. In August, he called the
conviction of opposition leader (and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner) Aung San
Suu Kyi a violation of "the universal principle of human rights."
Yet as with Sudan, the administration's new policy is "engagement," on the
theory that sanctions haven't worked. Maybe so. But what evidence is there that
engagement will fare any better? In May 2008, the Burmese junta prevented
delivery of humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. Some 150,000
people died in plain view of "world opinion," in what amounted to a policy of
forced starvation.
Leave aside the nausea factor of dealing with the authors of that policy. The
real question is what good purpose can possibly be served in negotiations that
the junta will pursue only (and exactly) to the extent it believes will
strengthen its grip on power. It takes a remarkable presumption of good faith,
or perhaps stupidity, to imagine that the Burmas or Sudans of the world would
reciprocate Mr. Obama's engagement except to seek their own advantage.
It also takes a remarkable degree of cynicism—or perhaps cowardice—to treat
human rights as something that "interferes" with America's purposes in the
world, rather than as the very thing that ought to define them. Yet that is
exactly the record of Mr. Obama's time thus far in office.
In Massachusetts not long ago, I found myself driving behind a car with "Free
Tibet," "Save Darfur," and "Obama 08" bumper stickers. I wonder if it will ever
dawn on the owner of that car that at least one of those stickers doesn't
belong.
Write to bsteph...@wsj.com
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