NOT EXACTLY MR. HUMAN RIGHTS – AT 10:08 A.M. ET:  One of the great myths about Barack Obama is that he's a "human rights activist," that pile of boilerplate mush handed out freely by liberal journalists.  He is not, and neither is his sidekick in hypocrisy, Jimmah ("Ahm the best ex-president evah") Carter, a man whose interest in human rights never seems to extend to such beacons of freedom as Saudi Arabia. 

Now, in a piece that is getting a great deal of play around the internet, Jackson Diehl, of the improving Washington Post, really slams Obama for his abysmal human-rights record.  This is strong language from a friendly newspaper:

In a speech to the UN General Assembly last September, US President Barack Obama suggested that his administration’s notoriously weak defense of human rights around the world would be invigorated...

...Just over two months later, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Bahrain, an important Persian Gulf ally that hosts the US Fifth Fleet. The emirate was in the midst of a major crackdown on its opposition. Two dozen dissidents, including intellectuals, clerics and a prominent blogger, had been rounded up, charged under anti-terrorism laws and allegedly tortured...

...Clinton’s response? Extravagant and virtually unqualified praise for Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family. “I am very impressed by the progress that Bahrain is making on all fronts – economically, politically, socially,” she declared as she opened a town hall meeting. Her paeans to Bahrain’s “commitment to democracy” continued until a member of parliament managed to gain access to the microphone and asked for a response to the fact that “many people are arrested, lawyers and human rights activists.” Clinton’s condescending reply was a pure apology for the regime. “It’s easy to be focused internally and see the glass as half empty. I see the glass as half full,” she said.

Great, huh?  And the reaction from the left wing "anti-war" faction of the Democratic Party?  Silence.  As usual.

SO MUCH for a fresh start on human rights. Clinton’s Bahrain visit reflected what seems to be an intractable piece of the Obama administration’s character: a deeply ingrained resistance to the notion that the United States should publicly shame authoritarian regimes or stand up for the dissidents they persecute.

And...

After Egypt’s terrible elections in November, in which ballot boxes were blatantly stuffed and the opposition brutally suppressed, the administration’s commentary was limited to bland statements issued by “the office of the press secretary” of State and the spokesman of the National Security Council. Three weeks earlier, at a widely watched joint press conference in Washington with Egypt’s foreign minister, Clinton made no mention of the elections, the crackdown or anything else related to human rights.

In Latin America, friends of the United States marvel at its passivity as Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega systematically crush civil society organizations and independent media. “I don’t see a clear policy,” Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez – a good example of the sort of dissident Obama promised to defend – told me.

COMMENT:  This is a stinging indictment, and well worth reading.  One of the tragedies of American liberalism is its abandonment of human rights as a prime issue.  It began to happen in the late 1960s, when the illiberal leftists began to take over the Democratic Party, partly in response to Vietnam.  They wept loudly for the "Vietnamese people," but remained silent when South Vietnam was conquered by the North and turned into a dictatorship.  They were silent again during the Cambodian genocide, and the pattern was clear.

George McGovern's mantra during his disastrous 1972 run for the presidency wasn't "freedom" or "democracy," but "Come home, America."

And many ultra-liberals today show a disturbing indulgence toward Chavez and Hamas. 

Will Obama change?  Only if he is forced to by political circumstance, and I don't see that happening. 

January 4, 2011