Yesterday, the Russian Duma ratified Russia’s World Trade Organization (WTO) entry. The Obama administration has supported Russia’s membership from the get-go, and therefore has put is clout behind repeal of the Jackson-Vanik Act, the substance of which the WTO would make illegal. Passed in 1974 at the height of the Cold War, Jackson-Vanik tied trade to the freedom of emigration. While it was targeted mostly toward the Soviet Union’s Jewish community, it provided a broader foundation for Cold War human rights advocacy.
To replace the Jackson-Vanik Act, a bipartisan array of senators supported The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved unanimously on June 26. Named after a Russian anti-corruption lawyer tortured and killed in prison after he uncovered a multimillion-embezzlement scheme, the Magnitsky Act sanctioned Russia’s worst human rights violators by denying them visas and freezing their assets held in the United States. At least, that was the way it was supposed to be. Committee chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) was for the Act before he was against it before he was for it again. Alas, somewhere in the flip-flopping—done at Obama administration behest so as not to antagonize Russia–Kerry got the Act watered down.
Not only does it not single out Russia any longer, but it also gives the State Department discretion to keep the list of human rights violators secret. So much for naming and shaming. Now, for sanctions to occur, the targets of the sanctions must be known to banks and other agencies. If the State Department, for diplomatic reasons, refuses to divulge the list of human rights violators, not only is there no shaming, but also there are also really no sanctions. Anna Borshchevska (full disclosure, my wife) explains.
It is ironic that the Obama administration prides itself on being the standard bearer of human rights protections, but it also has done more than any other administration to protect the guilty at the expense of the innocent.
To answer the question posed by the title of your post: Because he and his administration are unAmerican, don't share American values and fundamentally don't like this country and what it stands for.
The fact is that we need Russia's cooperation on crucial issues ranging from Syria to Iran. Also, because the past few years have seen torture (because it works!) and extraordinary rendition become part of the US arsenal, we don't have the same lofty standing we once had when only segregation and a few other misdemeanors sullied our record.
The same general principle–Russia actively aiding an enemy–is active in Iran. Russia and China will always oppose the US on the Security Council, while both will also be outs for Iran in any sanctions enacted (and both do love Iranian oil). That's to say nothing of where Iran's nuclear program even comes from on the scientist end. The best hope for Russian "cooperation" is, again, to make imminent the demise of their patron, or, in the case of Iran, the contentious nuclear program–or, instead, Russia somehow seeing that a nuclear Iran isn't in their own interests (who knows, they might already see it as such, their current actions being only because they love to see the West riled up). n nAs well, we waterboarded only 3 persons after stringent guidelines (these more fair than your partisan nature) determined it was not torture, while meanwhile, "Obama sends terrorists to sub-Gitmo hell" (look up Contentions post of same name).
HillelA says (in part):
“The fact is that we need Russia’s cooperation on crucial issues ranging from Syria to Iran.”
But despite the Obama Administration’s very favorable treatment of Putin’s Russian dictatorship, we’re not getting Russian cooperation on Syria, Iran, or anything else. And we wouldn’t need it, if we avoided fruitless attempts to work through the United Nations, and instead returned to the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies’ policies, which could fairly be labeled as “Lead from the Front.”
HillelA says that “Also, because the past few years have seen torture (because it works!) and extraordinary rendition become part of the US arsenal, we don’t have the same lofty standing we once had when only segregation and a few other misdemeanors sullied our record.”
Granted that torture and rendition are awful. But they were needed to provide the information that has prevented another 9/11, and enabled the U.S. to kill Bin Laden (although capturing him would have been even better). Incidentally, my understanding is that during the Vietnam war, at least some American troops were subjected to waterboarding as part of their training.
To describe racial segregation (approved by the Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson in 1896) as a “misdemeanor” is appalling. It violated the amended Constitution and saddled the U.S. with legal discrimination and also lynching for roughly 70 years, before it began to end.
Roger Folsom