The New Republic has a remarkable piece today scolding "liberals" -- the people I know as pseudo-liberals -- for abandoning the freedom agenda, the cause of a fully free world.
Leon Wieseltier pulls no punches against those who, out of hatred for President Bush or Republicans in general, decided that some people on this planet really don't want to be free.
There were two reasons for the new liberal diffidence about human rights. The first was the Bush doctrine, the second was the Obama doctrine. The wholesale repudiation of Bush’s foreign policy included the rejection of anything resembling his “freedom agenda,” which looked mainly like an excuse for war.
But whatever one’s views of the Iraq war, it really does not seem too much to ask of American liberals that they think a little less crudely about democratization—not only about its moral significance but also about its strategic significance. One of the early lessons of the rebellion against Mubarak is that American support for democratic dissidents is indeed a strategic matter, and that the absence of such American support can lead to a strategic disaster. Such are the wages of realism.
Happy talk. Wieseltier had the same reaction I had to President Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo, an address acclaimed by Democrats, but condemned by democrats.
He came in friendship, to “restore America’s standing.” He sought to do so with an embrace of differences, an affirmation of religions, a celebration of civilizations. As a matter of principle, such assertions of respect are right and good. But what if the positive tone misses the point—not about the dignity of other peoples, but about their actual circumstances? Of what use is happy talk to unhappy people? Do societies desperately in need of secularization and its blandishments really need the American president to cite their Scripture to them?
In accordance with his warm new priorities, democracy was the fourth of Obama’s five themes is his speech in Cairo in 2009, the one called “A New Beginning.” When he finally got around to it, he introduced it this way: “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by any other.” Or: the United States will no longer bother you about how you are living. He then proceeded to a fine little sermon about the virtues of government “through consent, not coercion,” but said nothing about the political conditions in Egypt.
The Cairo speech did not discomfit the Mubarak regime. I imagine that many of Obama’s listeners in Cairo that day are on the streets of Cairo today, and some of them attacked the American Embassy.
Great expectations. Freedom is a right so fundamental that real liberals never belittle its importance. I recall the silence from those Cairo students when Obama said, "No system of government can or should be imposed on one nation by any other." The air simply left the room -- not because the United States wasn't invading, but because the United States wasn't even standing up for its principles.
Obama was so accustomed to Bush-hating Democrats in America applauding the "can't impose democracy" line that he must have been stunned by the quiet that day in Cairo. He should have learned something then: Unfree people expect an American president to demand their freedom.
So now they're demanding it on their own.
Frank Warner
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