Ben Smith reports:
Human Rights advocates have been deeply disappointed — more than many will say publicly — by elements of Obama’s first year, as the White House has appeared to make the cause secondary in relationships from Turkey to Sudan and has avoided casting even conflicts, like Afghanistan, in the human rights terms George W. Bush often used.
China was an early red flag for some, as Secretary Clinton said in February that human rights wouldn’t be allowed to “interfere” with other issues, a remark she subsequently walked back. But human rights groups have been watching President Obama’s visit to China closely for a sense of how, and whether, he’ll publicly broach the question.
He notes that Amnesty International was pleased by Obama’s comments on censorship and religious freedom in Shanghai but says that the group’s director of international advocacy does “want him to speak more forcefully during the press conference [with President Hu] itself and also set some benchmarks.”
This raises the question of why these groups are saying one thing in private and another (or nothing much at all) in public. Are they in the business of blocking and tackling for Obama because they think he’s a swell liberal, or are they in the business of advocacy for human rights and democracy? Well, more the former, it seems. Given the administration’s rather putrid record on human rights over the past 10 months, one would expect these groups to be apoplectic, as certainly they would be if a Republican administration had shunned the Dalai Lama and downgraded human rights at every turn.
Maybe, like so many others, human-rights groups will begin to evaluate Obama both on what he does and what he says. And in that regard, they should have plenty to complain about.
When are you morons learn to differenciate between radicals and moslems.
Somalia is a moslem country. From all this war on terror, has any one really get caught or killed that was accused to be a terrorist ?
Why is it OK for Saudi Arabia not to have election and led my moslem fundamentals but not Somalia.
Stop this bulshit and get the fuck out of Africa.
The only attempt that can questionably pass as “significant” of the USA in Africa was the fiasco in Mogadishu in 1993. No American president has ever dared do anything anywhere in Africa before or after this, and no one will. Suffice it to say that the Rwanda carnage passed with no intervention by anyone. least of all the USA. So this takes care of the humanitarian/moral expectations anyone should develop from the 1st world, specifically the USA.
Regarding anti western forces, not until a direct, imminent, tangible, and substantial threat is posed and felt by the American leadership will anything be done. As long as Somalia barely manages to exist and is buried under its own violence and poverty, no one will get up and do anything.
In this sense, the humanitarian crisis may be seen as a “blessing in disguise” of sorts by some of the more cynical western leaders.
Because in Saudi Arabia; the most likely victor would be the Ilkwan Wahhab party; not unlike Hamas’s Moslem Brotherhood roots. Richard Clark’s dystopian “Scorpions Gate”
posits a nation called Islamiya rising out an Ilkwan/Ulema coup. More likely it would the
Wahhabiyan Islamic Republic. (Jamhuriyat Wahhabiya Islamia)Sadly Saudi liberals would only poll as high as high as Dennis Kucinich would poll here. Self identified nationalists of a Baath/Nasserist variety might poll a little better.
I think the earlier poster is rather harsh on the United States and its diplomatic policies in Africa. The blame for the Darfur genocide should be placed on the United Nations, an organization seeming intent on the diplomacy of ignorance, especially when concerned with Africa and Israel. The problem with the Somalia situation is that the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has made a most ineffective partner in the fight against terrorism in Somalia. In order to win over the trust of the Somalians, the order established by the SCIC needed to be continued by an intervention, unrelated to extremist leadership. Instead, Zenawi has led a disorganized military campaign, creating political and social confusion, and causing resentment among many Somalians at a large foreign troop presence that seems unable to keep order.
And to the first poster, the use of offensive language does not further the effectiveness of your cause. Such words are absurd and inappropriate in a debate. The editors should discourage such postings.
Eric Price, there’s always someone else who can be blamed (UN, Zenawi, France or whoever), especially in Africa. The question is whether the US should in such cases do something about it or not. I wasn’t saying she should. Merely that she hasn’t so far.
A clear message has been repeatedly sent to all nations: no one really cares if any of you is mass-murdered, and don’t expect anyone to save you.
Which is interesting to observe almost 70 years after Auschwitz.
But this thread is really about the Islamist threat in Somalia, not genocides.
Eric, Meles Zenawi has not made an ineffective partner in the fight against terrorism in Somalia, but the Americans have again blundered by appointing an ineffective puppet or puppets rather, including the warlords appointed as government.
Meles can never win the support of the Somalis. A much deeper sense of enmity for the emaciated is still smouldering inside the breasts of many Somalis and the Ethiopians are known to have an implacable hatred for Somalis. So how can I, a Somali, support someone willing to invade my country and rape her population?
America, with the help of Ethiopia, has started a life-long cycle of massacres, looting, kidnap, rape and indiscriminate murders. This not only recruits many enemies for America and its policies but it also encourages many more rather apathetic and unaffected Somalis to take up arms against Ethiopia and against any American/white person they see in Somalia. It will never end…