Isn’t It Ironic?

Don’t you think?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to devalue and undermine the U.S. diplomatic tradition of human rights advocacy. On her first foreign trip, to Asia, she was dismissive about raising human rights concerns with China’s communist government, saying “those issues can’t interfere” with economic, security or environmental matters. In last week’s visit to the Middle East and Europe, she undercut the State Department’s own reporting regarding two problematic American allies: Egypt and Turkey.

According to State’s latest report on Egypt, issued Feb. 25, “the government’s respect for human rights remained poor” during 2008 “and serious abuses continued in many areas.” It cited torture by security forces and a decline in freedom of the press, association and religion. Ms. Clinton was asked about those conclusions during an interview she gave to the al-Arabiya satellite network in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Her reply contained no expression of concern about the deteriorating situation. “We issue these reports on every country,” she said. “We hope that it will be taken in the spirit in which it is offered, that we all have room for improvement.”

A little too ironic:

Ms. Clinton was then asked whether there would be any connection between the report and a prospective invitation to President Hosni Mubarak to visit Washington. “It is not in any way connected,” she replied, adding: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.” Ms. Clinton’s words will be treasured by al-Qaeda recruiters and anti-American propagandists throughout the Middle East. She appears oblivious to how offensive such statements are to the millions of Egyptians who loathe Mr. Mubarak’s oppressive government and blame the United States for propping it up.

You think she’s oblivious? How oblivious do you have to be to scold Hillary Clinton for making the work of Al Qaeda recruiters and anti-American propagandists easier while remaining oblivious to the boost given to those recruiters and propagandists by eight years of the most egregious violations of human rights, legal due process, and religious freedom in places like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, and CIA secret prisons all over the globe?

The notion that the United States has any moral credibility with which to condemn torture and arbitrary detention in other countries, or to call for investigations and criminal prosecutions, does not pass the laugh test. And, as Glenn Greenwald has been pointing out since day one of the new administration, and does so again today, the Obama administration is, so far, continuing to uphold and defend some of the previous administration’s worst offenses:

We didn’t magically regain our moral credibility because we elected a new President.  While some Obama supporters uncritically quote official administration documents and statements from Robert Gibbs in order to proclaim: “All hail the U.S. Constitution. It seems to be coming back to life through some vigorous resuscitation,” the reality is quite different.   Despite some very preliminary positive actions, there are many, many steps needed before that celebration is remotely warranted, and there are many actions that have been taken in the last month alone that are squarely at odds with that gushing praise.

Consider a new Report from the U.N. Special Rapporteur (.pdf), submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council.  The Report documents the key events that led to the degradation of human rights conventions around the world over the last decade, with the U.S. as one of the leading catalyzers.  The Report identifies the American programs of rendition and lawless detentions as ones which corrupted huge swaths of the international human rights order because they entailed the active complicity of so many other countries — including Canada and Britain — in our systematic torture regime
[…]
… the U.N. Human Rights Report is identifying as a gross violation of human rights and international obligations exactly that which the Obama administration is doing: namely, invoking claims of “State Secrets” in order to “conceal illegal acts from oversight bodies or judicial authorities” and to deny victims of torture and secret detention a judicial forum in which to seek remedies. We’re not only doing that in our own courts, but also conspiring with and/or pressuring our allies to invoke claims of secrecy to conceal these crimes and prevent accountability. And that’s to say nothing of the emphatic position we are still taking that we can abduct citizens from around the world, ship them off to a black hole at Bagram, and deny them any rights of any kind to challenge their detention.

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Tags: Abu Ghraib, Bagram, CIA, Guantanamo

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