Obama’s “Abandonment of Democracy”

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Obama’s “Abandonment of Democracy”

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | Politics |

Wall Street Journal - The Abandonment of Democracy:

[E]ver since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”

If free health care and government cheese are more important than freedom, you can always move to Cuba. Or get arrested and go to prison where you can get three hots and a cot plus a prison dentist. And no, it doesn’t sound good to me, either.

Following his meeting with the Organization of American states in April, Obama told a press conference: “What we showed here is that we can make progress when we’re willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long.” His secretary of state echoed the thought: “Let’s put ideology aside,” she said. “That is so yesterday.”

This begs the question of exactly which ideologies are passé or whether all are equally so. Communism, which so roiled the twentieth century, is certainly on its deathbed. Democracy, on the other hand, has flourished and spread in recent decades as never before, to the point where more than sixty percent of the world’s governments are chosen in bona fide elections. To lump together these “ideologies” is gratuitously to belittle democracy.

Thus for example, Clinton, on a first state visit to China, told reporters she would not say much about human rights or Tibet because “our pressing on those issues can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.” Amnesty International declared it was “shocked and extremely disappointed” by her words. Unfazed, Clinton moved on to Russia, where she glibly presented its dictator, Vladimir Putin, with a toy “reset button” even while the string of unsolved murders of independent journalists that has marked his reign continued to lengthen.

The Kissinger era was marked by realpolitik, a term of art that indicates a surrender to bad governments that had to be negotiated with, particularly if they would form alliances of opportunity with the United States and against the Soviet Union. The catchphrase was that a dictator might be an asshole, but he was our asshole, a cynical attitude that led to the U.S. supporting tinpot dictators as long as they promised to be on our side and not Russia’s side.

Realism was paralleled by detente - a policy that the USSR would never, ever go away and would always be with us - a policy that would be proven wrong in the Reagan-Bush era.

The second Bush era was typified by neoconservatism - the idea that the U.S. should be in the business of spreading democracy rather than suppressing it in the name of expedient political alliances. History will determine if it was succesful or not, but it represents an improvement of ideological commitment over supporting and/or negotiating with some banana republic’s Supreme Dictator for Life du jour in the hope his country wouldn’t go Commie. ETA: or worse, propping up some banana republic’s Supreme Dictator for Life du jour because he is a Commie, which is more Obama’s MO.

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2 Comments to Obama’s “Abandonment of Democracy”

Alcibiades
July 1, 2009

Maybe he’s trying to set a precedent. Illinois’ governor was arrested and so was Honduras’ president. Therefore, Obama wants to reinstall Zelaya and Blago.

Obama throws the Dalai Lama under the bus | Les Jones
October 7, 2009

[...] is consistent with the Obama administration’s policy of ignoring Tibet because China told him to: Thus for example, Clinton, on a first state visit to China, told reporters she would not say much [...]