The UN sponsored Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan announced today that it is ordering a partial recount of votes cast during the August 20 presidential elections.  The Commission based its decision on ”clear and convincing fraud” in a number of polling stations, even though election officials have declared that President Hamid Karzai had won a plurality of the votes.

The results are likely to be delayed well beyond the original September 19 deadline.  According to the latest count with 91.6 percent of the polling stations tallied, Karzai has 54.1 percent of the vote, while Dr. Abdullah Abdullah has dropped to 28.3 percent.  If avoiding a run-off election.

These fraud reports break new ground, and not in a good way:  unnamed Western officials indicate that supporters of President Hamid Karzai set up approximately 800 fake polling sites that garnered thousands of fraudulent votes.  Investigations also report that Karzai supporters took over another 800 polling stations and used them to cast thousands of ineligible votes for the incumbent.

This is beyond anything I’ve observed.  Indeed, it even beats anything I observed in the Balkans, including fifteen to twenty busloads of Serbian voters pulling up at polling stations just inside Bosnia in 1996.  We also recorded more voters than people registered in that discredited election.  In Nepal I witnessed this gentleman “assisting” every woman in his village to vote for his preferred party, akin to reports of families voting together in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately these reports only add to the pressure that the Obama Administration has to be feeling about its policy in Afghanistan.  But what is more disturbing is the the fact that American soldiers are dying to sustain the rule of a man who increasingly appears to be uninterested in free and fair elections.

The real numbers are anyone’s guess. Karzai’s supporters have stuffed so many ballot boxes that in some cases, there are more voters than people.  Such fraudulent activities do not bode well for a successful democracy or another Karzai led government.  Obama and his advisors have plenty to do in Afghanistan, but waiting for the Independent Election Commission to sort out this troubling situation is just another burden the administration doesn’t need.

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Daniel Larison compares and contrasts events in Honduras and Iran:

[L]et’s try a thought experiment about this question anyway. We are appropriately wary of people who invoke a political crisis to justify extraordinary and extra-legal measures. This sort of rhetoric can be so easily abused for the sake of augmenting and consolidating the power of those in government that we should normally be skeptical of such claims. That said, isn’t it the case that the response of Honduran political and military institutions to presidential illegalities is exactly the one that most of the Western world has been openly desiring in Iran?

Isn’t one of the main problems in Iran that the military and interior ministry colluded with Ahmadinejad in his crime? Suppose they had grabbed him on June 12, the day of the election, and thus prevented him from carrying out his fraudulent power-grab. Would we take seriously for a moment anyone gravely intoning about the need for proper procedure and rejecting the result as an illegal action against the democratically-elected president? (Obviously not, because very few, even the most ardent Mousavi cheerleaders, genuinely think of Iran as having anything like a real democratic process.) One way to look at the Honduran situation is that the political and military institutions removed Zelaya early on rather than permitting him to continue to abuse his office. They did what their counterparts in Iran could not or would not do. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that they were able to take such action because Honduras is a constitutional democracy in many important respects that Iran simply isn’t. . . .

Despite the serious inconsistency on one level, there is a common thread connecting the overzealous pro-Mousavi Westerners to the overreacting international condemnation of the Micheletti government in Honduras. What really irks Westerners who have invested so much energy into Mousavi’s cause is not that Iranian laws were broken or its constitution violated, but that the will of the majority was presumably thwarted and in any case the people were denied their voice. Mousavi believes he is fighting for the integrity of the Islamic republican system and its rules; his Western admirers embrace him (however absurdly) as a symbol of majoritarian democracy. Even though the whole of Honduras’ political class was in agreement that Zelaya had to go because they believe he threatened the Honduran constitution, this does not matter to the rest of the world. Zelaya is a populist demagogue who apparently still has considerable mass support, and it is his democratic support that counts for far more in the view of the rest of the world than his lack of respect for constitutional limits.

I find this to be a fairly disingenous argument.  Zelaya was democratically elected in what absolutely everyone (even his opponents) agrees was a free and fair election.  Zelaya’s undemocratic moves took place after he assumed office.  The case in Iran is vastly different — the ruling elite (including Ahmadinejad) apparently* stole an election, claiming that they had a popular mandate.

The key is not whether Zelaya and Ahmadinejad had a popular mandate, but rather whether they acted in the best interests of sustaining a healthy democratic system.  The answer in both cases is no.  But it’s equally accurate to say that the opposition in Honduras also failed to meet this standard.

It’s been decades since advocates of democratic governance (even in the Bush Administration) have thought that elections are the be-all and end-all of democracy. The reality is that “democracy” means much more than elections, and that both Zelaya’s attempts to hold on to power and the parliamentary-military coup against him were undemocratic.  To suggest that this is about populist majoritarianism fails to recognize the reality that neither side in Honduras has acted in the long-term interests of a stable democracy.

The problem, of course, is that the international community (or, for that matter, individual states) cannot merely say “a pox on both your houses.”  Someone has to be in charge.  The question is not who is right and who is wrong but rather who will do more damage to the prospect for continued democratic governance in Honduras (and beyond).

The real solution is some sort of compromise.

Adopt new constitutional measures that a) explicitly outlaws the use of a majority vote in a referendum to amend the constitution and b) provides for some sort of process to remove a President acting extra-constitutionally in a manner that does not require the military to grab him/her while still in his/her pajamas.

Then turn the government over to a caretaker, preferably someone not embroiled in the current dispute.

Allow Zelaya to return.   Hold a new election, preferably within the next few months, in which Zelaya is allowed to stand as a candidate.  Invite international observers and the UN.  And then accept the results as the mandate of the Honduran people.

Is it a perfect solution?  Absolutely not.  But somebody has to come up with something that addresses the reality that neither side is acting in the best interests of the country.

_____

*I say apparently because we never really will know.  The reality is that Ahmadinejad may have won a majority of votes, but not 65 percent as claimed.  Then again, he may not have.

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So in case you didn’t hear, there was a coup in Honduras yesterday.  President Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Hugo Chavez, was hustled out of the country (while still wearing his pajamas, apparently) by the military.  Shortly thereafter, the Honduran Congress voted unanimously to remove Zelaya from office and replace him with Roberto Micheletti, the president of Congress.

This is the result of an extended constitutional crisis, during which Zelaya attempted to extend his rule through a referendum (that was scheduled to take place on Sunday) that would have eliminated presidential term limits.  Both Honduras’s Supreme Court and Congress had called the referendum unconstitutional.

Earlier today Venezulan blogger Francisco Toro offered his perspective over at TNR:

Seen in context, Sunday’s military powerplay was different in important ways from the traditional Latin American putsch. The generals move came at the unanimous–yes unanimous–behest of a congress outraged by Zelaya’s not-particularly-subtle attempts to extend his hold on power indefinitely. It followed a series of clearly unconstitutional moves on Zelaya’s part, including his attempt to unilaterally remove the chief of the army, which, according to Honduras’s Constitution, can only be done by a congressional super-majority.

And congress’s request had been seconded by the nation’s Supreme Court, which is sworn to uphold a constitution that explicitly makes the act of “inciting, promoting or backing the continuation in power or re-election of the President of the Republic” punishable with the loss of Honduran citizenship.

So while we wince at the image of soldiers kidnapping a president, it’s important to recognize that the move against Zelaya was, if not strictly speaking constitutional, certainly institutional.

If anything, the hemisphere’s unanimous, outraged reaction to events in Tegucigalpa–which, for once, saw Washington and Caracas in strong agreement against the coup–underlines the region’s pathologically imbalanced veneration of presidential power. After all, in 1999, when Hugo Chávez, with the agreement of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, moved to shut down Venezuela’s democratically elected congress, we heard nary a peep from the OAS. And in 2007, when Ecuador’s own neoauthoritarian president Rafael Correa moved to shut down congress with the Supreme Court’s approval, nobody cried coup. In neither case were those closures allowed by the existing constitution, yet nobody would’ve taken cries of a “coup” seriously.

Somehow, though, when the Honduran Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, moves against the president, the continent’s foreign affairs ministries fly into deep crisis mode.

This underscores a harsh reality for Latin American believers in liberal constitutionalism.  Deep down, only Presidential Power is considered real power in Latin America, which is why only moves against the president are considered actual coups. Our constitutions generally define all branches of government as equal, but it seems some are more equal than others.

Toro is suggesting that efforts by Latin American leaders to undermine other branches of government are not regarded as coups in the same way that those toppling Presidents are.  But that’s simply not true — the term for such a move, at least in Latin America, is autogolpe, or self-coup:

A self-coup or autocoup is a form of coup d’état that occurs when a country’s leader dissolves or renders powerless the national legislature and assumes extraordinary powers not granted under normal circumstances. Other measures taken may include annulling the nation’s constitution and suspending civil courts. In most cases the head of state is granted dictatorial powers.

One of the modern examples of the self-coup is elected Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s takeover of the government on April 5, 1992, ostensibly to exercise absolute authority in annihilating Maoist Shining Path insurgents, though political opponents and journalists were arrested by the military.

In addition, I think Toro is on a pretty slippery slope here.  Saying a coup against a sitting President is okay because Congress authorized it is hardly that different than saying that a coup against a sitting Congress is okay because the President authorized it.

As my mother taught me, two wrongs don’t make a right.  Zelaya’s efforts to pull a Chavez in Honduras certainly were unacceptable and most likely unconstitutional.  But the military’s decision to toss Zelaya out of the country — even if subsequently sanctioned by a unanimous vote of the Honduran Congress — is just as unconstitutional (if not more so).  If the people of Honduras wanted  to oust Zelaya, there were much better ways than sticking him on the next plane out of the country.

Related posts

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I had hoped to provide some analysis on Iran’s election, but I’m pretty late to the game and there’s already a lot of good commentary out there.  In fact, I think Michael Tomasky hits many of the points I would have made, particularly that what Ahmadinejad (and others running the country) did is tantamount to a coup:

The way the customs and normal practices were broken; the way the results were announced so prematurely; the way the internet and cell-phone capabilities were shut down; the way dissent is being shut down. These are anti-democratic practices to put it mildly, and they are hallmarks of coup-like behavior. In any case “coup” isn’t a legal term and there’s a bit of subjectivity in it.

And as to the results themselves. I mean, honestly, people. A guy who was polling at 39 percent a few days earlier got 64 percent?  Fine, fine, polls may be unreliable, but that is a new definition of unreliable.

Or consider this. According to figures, 11.2 million more Iranians voted this year than in 2005. And Ahmadinejad allegedly received 7.2 million more votes than he did in 2005. That would mean that the incumbent got about 65 percent of all new voters.  Really? In a country with double-digit unemployment, inflation near 25 percent, and the bulk of his populist promises from four years ago not only not delivered on but crashing to failure?

. . .If you’ve managed the economy that badly and the electorate bulges by about 28 percent (roughly speaking, 40 million to 29 million), I don’t care how adept you are at religious demagoguery, you are not getting 65 percent of that 28 percent.  If you can demonstrate to me that anything like this has ever happened anywhere, I will look into it and report back fairly. But I doubt you can. Remember, we’re talking 25 percent inflation.

I would likely have bought it, as would’ve most people, if they’d followed procedures and announced on Sunday morning that Ahmadinejad got 52 or 53 percent. So it’s not that I (and others) don’t imagine he could have won. It’s about the circumstances, and to some extent the highly improbable 64 percent number.

That was my first reaction as well:  64 percent?  Really?  You’d think that authoritarians would have figured out by now that if you’re going to steal an election you should at the very least look credible.

I’d find it interesting to see another number here:  what percentage of the electorate is in Tehran as opposed to other parts of the country?  If Iran is like many countries outside the West, a huge percentage of its population is in its largest city.  This is important for one simple reason:  Mousavi’s strength is primarily in Tehran.  If the population in the outlying regions is larger, then an Ahmadinejad victory is slightly more plausible.

The best way I can make this point is to pass on two photos from The Big Picture blog.  First, a voter in Tehran:

Next, a line of voters in Qom:

I want to be careful not to oversimplify this.  The Big Picture also has photos of a woman in full hijab voting in Iran.  And clearly Ahmadinejad had significant support in Tehran, particularly among older and male voters.   But as Tomasky noted, the notion that 65 percent of those who did not vote in the last election chose Ahmadinejad stretches credulity, particularly given the fact that his campaign never demonstrated any Obama-esque organizational capacity.

As I write this, the situation remains in flux.  Mousavi’s supporters continue to demonstrate, in defiance of a ban and despite beatings over the weekend, and Mousavi himself appeared at a major rally in downtown Tehran.  And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has urged an review of reports of irregularities (which may be a tacit recognition of the absurd outcome or may be merely a stalling tactic designed to slow down or stop the street demonstrations).

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall wonders whether Khameni’s call for a review of the results is the first crack:

On the face of it, Khamenei could call for a review and then decide that it all checks out and that’s the end of it. But it’s my experience that that’s not how these things play out. When regimes ride these crises out successfully they almost always do so with a united phalanx. You simply do not grant the premise of the critics. Force, much as we like to think otherwise, is often quite efective. (See Tienanmen [sic] Square.) Once you do, once you legitimize the premise of the protests, which can quickly shift the momentum of the drama, it’s a very slippery slope for the regime.

Perhaps more fundamentally, the people running the regimes aren’t idiots. They know the pattern too. And the decision to break the united front, to get into a discussion of the legitimacy of claims against the regime, usually signals internal dissension that is making that united stance unsustainable. In other words, this sort of development is perhaps not a cause of regime weakness but a symptom.

There’s some merit to his point, but as he himself notes, this might be a pro forma move designed to add further legitimacy to the results.

The other big unknown, of course, is the response of the Obama Administration.  To date, it’s been pretty muted, which some on the right have regarded as an abandonment of Iran’s pro-democratic forces.  But as Spencer Ackerman has noted, the Iranian-American community doesn’t want the Administration to say much right now, recognizing that anything other than a call for respect for human rights would in all likelihood be counterproductive.

UPDATE:  Via Andrew Sullivan, who has done extraordinary work tracking the events in Iran, raw video of today’s demonstration:

Photos:  Qom — AP/Kamran Jebreili; Tehran — REUTERS/Caren Firouz, both via The Big Picture and used under the principle of fair use.

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David Brooks shares my concern over the Administration’s disinclination to embrace stronger rhetoric on democracy promotion:

The big retreat to realism concerns democracy promotion. The Bush administration tried to promote democracy, even at the expense of stability. That proved unworkable.

But many of us hoped that Obama would put a gradual, bottom-up democracy-building initiative at the heart of his approach. This effort would begin with projects to create honest cops and independent judges so local citizens could get justice. It would make space for civic organizations and democratic activists. It would include clear statements so the world understands that the U.S. is not in bed with the tired old Arab autocrats.

There was a democracy-promotion section to the speech, and given the struggle behind it, maybe we should be grateful it was there at all. But it was stilted and abstract — the sort of prose you get after an unresolved internal debate. The president didn’t really champion democratic institutions. He said that governments “should reflect the will of the people” and that citizens should “have a say” in how they are governed.

Obama didn’t describe how a democratic Iraq could influence the region. He seems to have largely given up on democracy promotion in Egypt.

Larry Diamond of Stanford liked the Cairo speech but pointed out that Obama delivered it in a country where an aging dictator is passing power to his son, where the country is crumbling to dust because of autocracy and stagnation. The administration seems to accept this. Meanwhile, as The Washington Post noted, it’s slashing aid to Egypt’s democratic activists.

All true.  I would add, however, that it’s not yet clear whether this is a product of unbalanced staff work, Obama’s personal convictions, or both.  Certainly Obama’s comments to Muslim journalists were a more rigorous assertion of the importance of democracy and human rights.  But I also would note that Obama hasn’t hesitated to rework remarks if he doesn’t like what he’s been given.

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Yesterday, after his speech, Obama did a presser (h/t Marc Lynch via his Facebook feed) with journalists from Muslim-majority countries (and not just those from the Arab world).  The whole thing is worth reading, but I was particularly struck by the following exchange with an Indonesian journalist:

Q . . .I read your book, “The Audacity of Hope,” and I had a very great hope that you can reach the Muslim community because it seemed to me your understanding of a relationship between faith and politics, especially in black churches is very much — I can imagine someone who is a Hamas or, you know, maybe radical Islamist would probably, if you take away the word “Islam” and change it with, you know, “black Christian,” it’s exactly the same.  Do you feel that way also?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, you know, I think it’s interesting — obviously I’m a person of faith, and as a Christian, but also as somebody who believes very strongly in democracy and human rights and I’m a constitutional law professor, so I have some very strong ideas about how a pluralistic society lives together — these are things that I do spend time thinking about.

What I tried to communicate in the speech and what I believe very strongly is that in an interdependent world like ours, where the world has shrunk and different peoples with different faiths and different ideas are constantly having to coexist, that we have to have a mature faith that says “I believe with all my heart and all my soul in what I believe, but I respect the fact that somebody else believes their beliefs just as strongly.”  And so the only way that we are going to live together, or operate in a political system that can work for everybody is if we have certain rules about how we relate to each other.

I can’t force my religion on you.  I can’t try to organize a majority to discriminate against you because you’re a religious minority.  I can’t simply take what’s in my religious beliefs and say you have to believe and abide by these same things.  Now, that doesn’t mean that I can’t make arguments that are based on my belief and my faith — right?  If I’m a Christian, I believe in the Ten Commandments.  And it says, Thou Shalt Not Kill.  If I’m a politician and I say I’m going to pass a law against murdering somebody, that’s not me practicing my religious faith; that’s me practicing morality that may be based in religious faith, but that’s a universal principle — or at least one that can translate into a principle that people of various faiths can agree on.

I think it’s very important for Islam to wrestle with these issues.  Now, I recognize that not all religious beliefs are going to be exactly the same in how they think about politics.  And so in Islam there’s a debate about sharia and how strict an interpretation or how moderate an interpretation of that should be; or should that be something that is not part of the secular law.  I don’t presume to make that decision for any country or any groups of people.  But I do think that if you start having rules that guarantee other faiths and other groups, or in the case of the United States, people with no faith at all, are somehow forced to abide by somebody else’s faith, I think that is a violation of the spirit of democracy and I think that over the long term, that’s going to breed conflict in some way.  It will lead to some sort of instability and destructiveness in that society.

But, as I said, I think this is a important debate that has to take place inside Islam.  I think in the meantime, the one thing I can say for certain is that people who justify killing other people based on faith are misreading their sacred texts.  And I think they are out of alignment with God.  Now, that’s my belief.  And that, I think, is a debate that I think is settled for the vast majority of Muslims, but we have a very small minority that can be very destructive, and that’s part of what I tried to discuss in my speech.

Obama’s answer reinforces the three themes in his speech that I highlighted in one of my posts yesterday:  pragmatic globalism (”in an interdependent world like ours. . .different peoples with different faiths and different ideas are constantly having to coexist”); hard-headed realism (”the only way that we are going. . .operate in a political system. . .is if we have certain rules about how we relate to each other”); and democracy advocate (”as somebody who believes very strongly in democracy and human rights and I’m a constitutional law professor, so I have some very strong ideas about how a pluralistic society lives together”).

I’m going to assume that you didn’t just go back to read my previous post, so I’ll acknowledge that I’ve dropped the word “cautious” in my description of Obama’s support for human rights and democracy.  That’s because this answer is a far more forceful statement of his belief in the value of these ideals than anything in his speech.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Obama’s answer is his passing reference to debates over sharia law in the Muslim world.  But it also highlights a missed opportunity:  had he used his speech to cite those Islamic scholars who have rejected the fundamentalist interpretations of sharia (including the precise meaning of jihad), it would have reinforced the case those who have rejected extremist interpretations of Islam’s most important texts.

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Some additional (brief) observations on Obama’s speech today.

1.  Obama the Pragmatic Globalist. On several occasions throughout his speech, Obama highlighted his belief in an interconnected world:

Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task.  Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people.  These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.

For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere.  When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk.  When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations.  When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean.  When innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience.  (Applause.)  That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century.  That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings. . . .

Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.  (Applause.)  Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said:  “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

That’s a pretty strong endorsement of the idea that global problems require global solutions, and that we live in an interconnected world.  But Obama isn’t a starry-eyed Kumbayah-singing dreamer; he sees globalism as the most pragmatic approach to solving the huge array of challenges that the U.S. faces today.

2.  Obama the Hard-Headed Realist. The usual suspects on the right have been screeching about what they call Obama’s “apology tour” ever since the Summit of the Americas, but the reality is that what they call apologies are in fact truth-telling sessions.  Take, for example, the first sentence of the section on Iraq:

Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world.

That’s not making an apology — it’s acknowledging a reality.   Obama sees little or no value in rhetoric that obscures the truth.  It’s a refreshing change from what we came to expect from the last Administration (and what we continue to hear from Dick Cheney, among others).

3.  Obama the Cautious Democracy Advocate. The section on democratic governance wasn’t the most soaring rhetoric of Obama’s career.  In fact, it was almost ambivalent:

I know — 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 by one nation by any other.

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people.  Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people.  America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.  But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things:  the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose.  These are not just American ideas; they are human rights.  And that is why we will support them everywhere.

That’s pretty underwhelming boilerplate.  And human rights is mentioned only in passing.  I think this is in part a function of the Administration’s clear distaste for the Bush Administration’s grandiose vision of democracy promotion at the end of a gun, and part a product of having no strong democracy (or human rights) advocate in a prominent position within the Administration.

That said, it is striking that, as Daniel Levy notes, Obama failed to mention Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak anywhere in his speech.  That represents not only a breach of standard protocol in such speeches, but also a pretty clear signal to those in opposition (including the Muslim Brotherhood) that the United States isn’t about to endorse their country’s authoritarian ruler.

I’m late to this story, so I’ll end there.  I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Related posts

• Some Thoughts on Obama’s Speech
• Obama’s Cairo Presser
• Brooks on Obama’s Speech
• While We Were Putting Lipstick on That Pig. . .
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When I announced two weeks ago that I would not be blogging as much thanks to my new full-time job status, little did I know just how accurate that would be.  I’ve been dealing with a very important and urgent deadline, which has now passed.  Now that I’ve resurfaced, I can go back to posting, albeit with greater irregularity.

As I’m sure you know, Obama is speaking at Cairo University tomorrow, fulfilling a campaign promise to give a major speech in a Muslim-majority country within his first few months of office.  Washington Post:

More than any other president in a generation, Obama enjoys a reservoir of goodwill in the region. His father was Muslim. His outreach in an interview with an Arabic satellite channel, a speech to Turkey’s parliament and an address to Iranians on the Persian New Year have inclined many to listen. Just as important, he is not George W. Bush.

But Obama will still encounter a landscape in which two realities often seem to be at work, shaped by those symbols. There is America’s version of its policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Islamist movements such as Hamas and Hezbollah, defined in recent years by the legacy of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. There is another reality, from hardscrabble quarters of Beirut and Cairo to war-wrecked neighborhoods of Baghdad, where distrust of the United States runs so deep that almost anything it pronounces, however eloquent, lacks credibility, imposing a burden on Obama to deliver something far more than the unfulfilled pledges of Bush’s speeches.

Former Bush Speechwriter Michael Gerson suggests that it’s not just about Iraq and Israel:

President Obama is entering a nation and a region where [persecution by the government] is the normal price of political courage. His Cairo University speech will send a large diplomatic signal: Does Obama honor and support such courage, or de-emphasize and dismiss it in the “realist” pursuit of other ends?

One hopes that Obama and his speechwriters have consulted “The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East,” an important new book by Joshua Muravchik. The book profiles seven men and women — six Arab, one Iranian — taking impossible risks in the cause of human rights and self-government. They include a Saudi woman protesting the treatment of women as chattel and an Egyptian publisher trying to bring a free, responsible press to an authoritarian society. Most of these reformers have suffered imprisonment or faced threats to their lives and families.

Many of these dissidents, Muravchik told me in an interview, felt “betrayed” during the last few years of the Bush administration, when the containment of Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process seemed to take precedence over democracy promotion (except in Iraq). Reformers in the region generally greeted Obama’s election with enthusiasm. But Muravchik says dissidents are becoming “disquieted about the administration’s apparent indifference to democracy and human rights abuses.”

They should be, in the Middle East and elsewhere. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has bluntly admitted that concern about Chinese human rights abuses “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis” — meaning we can’t afford to offend dictators who buy our bonds. The administration talks of reviewing sanctions on Burma’s junta. And Egypt’s ambassador to the United States enthuses that America has stopped making “human rights, democracy and religious and general freedoms” conditions for better relations.

In this environment, the message of Obama’s Cairo speech will be amplified. His Middle East advisers have probably urged him to focus (as they always do) on Israeli-Palestinian peace — the “real” concern of the region — instead of discredited democratic idealism. In fact, this sort of realism both reflects and strengthens the strategy that Middle Eastern dictators have pursued for decades — the strategy of heaping attention on Israel and the Palestinians to draw attention away from their own oppression and economic failure. There is no reason Obama cannot emphasize both a two-state solution and the need for responsible and representative states across the Middle East.

It is also likely that Obama has been counseled to avoid the “d” word — “democracy” — in his Cairo remarks. Middle East experts sometimes contend that promoting “justice” and “good governance” is more culturally sensitive than employing such Westernized concepts as “democracy” and “freedom.” The argument is common — and uninformed. “Justice,” in this context, implies human rights as the gift of a wise emir or enlightened dictator. But, as Nour and others have discovered, such gifts can be withdrawn on a whim. The next founders in the Middle East are not merely begging for more rights from autocrats; they are seeking freedom from autocracy. They want more than for tyrants to open the door of reform a crack; they want to open the door themselves.

Any presidential speech abroad has multiple audiences. One of them, in this case, is the Egyptian government, whose cooperation is needed on issues that range from proliferation to peace. But another audience will be dissidents and reformers in Egypt and beyond. And a president who does not speak boldly for their political rights — their democratic rights — has little useful to say to them.

I don’t often agree with Gerson, or with prominent neoconservative and Iraq war defender Joshua Muravchik (though I am interested in reading the latter’s new book), but I think they get it about right here.

The sad reality is that, as both Gerson and Muravchik acknowledge, the Bush Administration failed to live up to its promises on democracy and human rights, particularly in Egypt.  What they fail to acknowledge is that the war in Iraq was a major factor not only in weaking Bush’s commitment to promoting democracy elsewhere, but also in discrediting broader U.S. efforts to promote democratic governance and human rights.

That said, we are more than four months into an Obama Administration, and as of today, not one of the key democracy and human rights positions is occupied by someone the President appointed.  It’s not entirely the Administration’s fault:  Samantha Power is at the NSC, but she’s currently on maternity leave, and troglo-conservatives in the Senate are holding up Harold Koh’s nomination to be legal advisor.  But other key posts — most notably the position of Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor — remain vacant.  The reality is that neither Obama or Hillary currently have anyone who can argue that human rights and democracy should be given prominent attention in Obama’s speech.

I continue to believe, perhaps naively, that statements by Hillary about human rights not playing as central a role in U.S. foreign policy as in past Administrations reflects not her opinion as much as a tilt in favor of those in the Department of State who do not like to talk about democracy and human rights (which, for those unfamiliar with the Department, means those line officers whose main responsibility is maintaining good relations with the country in question).   And I will reserve final judgment about the Administration’s human rights policies until Power, Koh, and others are in a position to balance those who suggest that promoting human rights and democracy is neither convenient nor realistic.

It’s also worth noting that, according to rumors I’ve heard, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has pushed State and USAID to cut back their funding of democracy- and human rights-oriented projects, particularly those that have earned the disfavor of the Mubarak regime.

About a year ago, I was asked by Freedom House to go to Cairo to give a speech to a group of younger democracy activists, including some of those who had used Facebook to organize a general strike against the Mubarak regime.  Most were determined to continue their work to open up Egyptian civil society and promote democratic reform, but some were discouraged by constant government harassment.  In fact, when the government found out about the meeting at which I was scheduled to speak, they prevented it from happening.  So I spent most of the next few days talking to the activists, going to their offices, and learning more about their work.

It was, needless to say, inspiring.  I hope that the President meets with these folks, and that he acknowledges their courageous work.  Somehow, however — particularly given the fact that one of the programs to be cut is Freedom House’s efforts to help these young activists — I doubt that he will.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

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First shock:  Axl Rose finally got around to releasing “Chinese Democracy,” the new Guns-n-Roses album.  For those unaware of the saga, just know that it took something like twenty years and evry other member of the band quit in frustration over a decage ago — it was, until now, the most famous failed rock album since the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.”

Second shock:  “Chinese Democracy,” the first single, is surprisingly not-half-bad.  Trust me — I hated GN’R.  This is tantamount to me saying I spend my evenings listening to “Tammy Faye Baker Sings PTL Club Favorites.”

Granted, the guitar solo on the bridge is so old-school awful that it sounds like the dude-that-replaced-Slash is consciously channeling David St. Hubbins, but other than that, there’s not much to complain about.  For me it sounded more like Blue Oyster Cült’s “Godzilla” or The Move’s “Brontosaurus”  than “Welcome to the Jungle” or any other GN’R late 80s metal cliché.

Third shock:  Axl doesn’t scream.  Not once. Well, sorta at the beginning, but it’s not part of the lyrics.

Fourth shock:  the song is about. . .wait for it. . .the future of democracy in China.  That’s right — Axl Rose is really, really pissed at the ChiComs.

Really.

Granted, the lyrics aren’t that sophisticated.  Okay, they’re lame.  He rhymes Falun Gong with, uh, now.

CHINESE DEMOCRACY
It don’t really matter
You’ll find out for yourself
No, it don’t really matter
I’m gonna leave this thing to somebody else

If they were missionaries
Real time visionaries
Sitting in a chinese stew
To view my disinfatuation

I know that I’m a classic case
Watch my disenchanted face
Blame it on the Falun Gong
They see the hand and you can’t hold on now

Cause it would take a lot more hate than you
To stop the fascination
Even with an iron fist
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time

It don’t really matter
Guess I’ll keep it to myself
No, it don’t really matter
I guess you’ll leave this thing to somebody else

Cause it would take a lot more time than you
Have got for masturbation
Even with your iron fist
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time
All they’ve got to rule the nation
But all I got is precious time

It don’t really matter
I guess you’ll find out for yourself
No, it don’t really matter
So you can hear it now from somebody else

You think you’ve got it all locked up inside
And if you beat ‘em enough they’ll die
It’s like a walk in a park from a cell
And now you’re keeping your own kind in hell
And if you’re Great Wall rocks blame your self
While they all reach out for you hand/help?
And we’re out of time…

But hey — who’da thunk Axl Rose could be political?  Now we know why he wasn’t invited to perform during the Olympics Opening Ceremony.

But dude — masturbation with an iron fist?   Ouch.  And ewwww.

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With all due respect to Martti Ahtisaari, who has played an outstanding role over the years in mediating conflicts, I cannot believe that he was the best choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, especially given the speculation that the Nobel Committee was considering giving it to Hu Jia and/or other Chinese activists.

Honoring another European bureaucrat-politician at a time when China’s human rights activists labor in anonymity, largely forgotten around the world (or worse, willfully ignored in order to appease the ChiComs) is both a travesty and a farce.

I once heard a story, perhaps apocryphal, that upon learning that he had been nominated for the Peace prize, Vaclav Havel urged the committee to consider instead a then-little-known human rights and democracy activist from the other side of the world.  The result was the awarding of the Prize in 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, an act that has helped maintain public awareness of and support for the cause of human rights and democracy in Burma.

It is a shame that Mr. Ahtisaari did not do the same when he was nominated.

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This didn’t get much coverage in the American press:

Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who was laid low by a stroke hours before he was due to lead a band of African leaders in condemnation of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, died on Tuesday at a Paris hospital aged 59.

”I would like to inform the nation that our president, his Excellency Dr Levy Mwanawasa, died this morning at 10.30am at Percy Military Hospital,” Rupiah Banda, his deputy who has been acting president since Mr Mwanawasa suffered a stroke in late June, told the nation in a televised address. . . .

This is a double blow.  Mwanawasa had emerged as a force for stability both in Zambia and the region.  His country has rarely been more stable, and thanks to his leadership, it has the chance to become another Botswana.  The big question now is whether Banda can sustain his legacy.

In addition, Mwanawasa was one of the few African leaders ready and willing to challenge Mugabe.  He was expected to “stiffen the spine” of other African leaders at last month’s African Union meeting.  Tragically, he was felled by a stroke hours before the meeting started.

The death of Mr Mwanawasa, whose health has been poor since a near-fatal car crash in the early 1990s, robs the continent of one of the few leaders prepared to pierce the veil of deference long afforded to Mr Mugabe. Along with his counterparts in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Liberia, the Zambian leader was forthright in his condemnation of the abuses that saw the Zimbabwean strongman claim a new mandate after a one-man election in June.

In the weeks leading up to the June 27 run-off Mugabe said that “only God could remove him” as President.  I’m sure he’s gloating right now, convinced that divine intervention struck down one of his most vocal critics.

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From an exchange between a determined British reporter and a craven IOC official:

Question: Hi, I’m Alex Thompson from Channel Four News. My question’s mercifully short, and it’s for Giselle. Given that China got these games largely on making promises on human rights and press freedom, and given that the Chinese government has lied through its teeth about keeping those promises, is the IOC in any way embarrassed?

Giselle Davies, spokeswoman for the International Olympic Committee: Good morning, Alex.

Thompson: Good morning.

Davies: There were certainly some hopes and aspirations outlayed in 2001 as to how the games could have a positive impact on the wider social framework. And I think we have to note that there have been enormous steps forward in a number of areas. You’re here reporting on the games. The world is watching. And there will be commentaries made appraising how the games have had an impact, wider through bringing sports, athletes and the world’s attention.

Interestingly, I saw that the Associated Press did a survey whereby their readers say that 55 percent of the respondents of the United States believe the choice was the right choice to come to Beijing, China …

Thompson: Yes, but I’m not asking that. I’m asking the IOC if they are in any way embarrassed about the manifest failure on behalf of the Chinese government to keep their promises. It’s a very straightforward question: Are you embarrassed?

Davies: We are very proud of the fact that these games are progressing with spectacular sports, spectacular sports venues, operationally running very smoothly, and that’s what we’re here focusing on.

Thompson: I’m asking whether you’re embarrassed. I’m not asking about how well the games have been run or how wonderful the venues are. Are you embarrassed?

Davies: I think I’ve answered your question by explaining…

Thompson: I don’t think anyone in this room, if I may speak, I may be stepping out of line, but I don’t think anybody thinks you’ve answered the question. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government not keeping those promises?

Davies: We’re very pleased with how the organizers are putting on a good sporting event. That’s what this is. The IOC’s role and remit is to bring sport and the Olympic values to this country. That is what is happening, and the organizers have put on an operationally sound games for the athletes. This is an event, first and foremost, for the athletes, and the athletes are giving us extremely positive feedback about how they see these games being held for them.

Thompson: Well, Giselle, we’re certainly not getting anywhere are we? Let’s try it once more time. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government’s not keeping promises on both press freedom and human rights? One more chance.

Davies: Well, I think probably your colleagues in the room would like to have a chance at questions as well. I think I’ve answered your question.

I’m tempted to award Davies Dillweed of the Day, but since the IOC and the USOC both already have won the thing in the past two weeks, perhaps it’s time to elect Olympics officials to the Dillweed Hall of Shame.

Congratulations to Alex Thompson for demanding an answer and refusing to tolerate spin.

Hat tip:  China Media Blog

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I know I’m a little behind on this, but I just read in the papertubes that Dubya gave a speech about human rights in China .  And that the ChiComs are not happy about it.

My first instinct was to applaud him for speaking out.  After his appearance before the foreign press last week, during which he set a new personal record for inanity, obsequiousness, and malapropisms,  I was sure that he would be so busy begging Hu “Is Lying Now” Jintao not to liquidate China’s dollar holdings that he wouldn’t dare talk about human rights or democracy.  So reports that he did, and that the Chinese got mad as a result, came as a pleasant surprise.

Then I read the speech.

The first thing I noticed was that he gave it in Thailand.  Not at the Embassy dedication in Beijing, not during his visit to the Olympics, but in Bangkok.  He might as well have given it in Timbuktu.

The second I noticed was that he does not mention human rights in China until the twenty-sixth paragraph — out of twenty-nine total.  It comes only after he’s praised the Chinese for their economic achievements, highlighted their role in the six-party talks on North Korea, begged them not to foreclose on our economy, and reiterated America’s belief in a “one China” policy.

It also comes after he wishes the Queen of Thailand a happy birthday, praises the economic achievments of Thailand and other countries in the region, invokes the threat of terrorism, discusses North Korea, and gives a shout out to his wife for her work on Burma.  (That’s right, of all the people working on Burma in this world, he chose to praise Laura.)

The actual criticism takes up two paragraphs of twenty-nine.  They look almost like an afterthought.  And they include the following sentence:

Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions.

I just ran that little gem through the Diplospeak Translator, and this is what came out:

DIPLOSPEAK TRANSLATOR: We’re not really serious about this, but Congress and those whiny human rights organizations back home will kick my butt for the rest of my term if I don’t pretend to care. Please please please please don’t be mad at me.

What nonsense.  And the ChiComs got in a lather over this? Here’s what the Foreign Ministry said in response:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang admonished Bush, saying “We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.” He also said the Chinese government is dedicated to promoting basic rights, and that “Chinese citizens have freedom of religion.These are indisputable facts.”

This isn’t foreign policy.  It’s Chinese Opera.  I don’t know which I find more distressing.

• The fact that the White House is spinning this as courage;
• The fact that the Chinese have gotten their collective Communist capitalist noses out of joint for such innocuous language; or
• That the Western media bought the whole thing as a real controversy.

The games have started, Bush will forget about his admonition, the Chinese will welcome him, and everyone will enjoy the spectacle and the athleticism.  Nothing else will happen.

There’s a term my summer camp friends used to have for such hypocrisy:  Reindeer Games, which we defined as pretending to care about something when you really didn’t give a damn what happened.  I think that pretty much summarizes the situation here.  All posturing, no content.

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You probably missed it, but President Bush went over to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on Thursday in order to give a big ol’ speech on his “Freedom Agenda,” whatever that is.

I was invited to attend, but I’d rather have my toenails staple-gunned to my forehead that listen to Bush prattle on about how much he’s done for  human rights.  If you look closely enough at this photo,  you can almost see the beacon of freedom shining down on the smirk of hubris and denial.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put his speech through the Diplospeak Translator.  And to save you the trouble of poking out your eyes with a sharp stick, I’ve included only the best parts.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I’ve had been planning to blog on the whole Obama at Brandenburg gate issue, but Marbury managed to sum up the my concerns pretty well:

First post:

Audacious, heavily symbolic gestures like this make me queasy (Gordon Brown did something similar, on a smaller scale, and look how that worked out). It’s the kind of thing that can seem brilliant when cooked up at a strategy meeting, and genius when it’s actually executed. But if things start to go wrong afterwards, for whatever reason, it’s the first thing critics will point to and shout “hubris“!

Second post:

Here he is, not even president yet, and he wants us to think of him as Ronald Reagan demanding that Gorbachev tear down the wall. Why does he even have to make a speech whilst in Europe? What’s wrong with a few handshakes and an eight-course dinner?

Let me put it another way: it is an unfortunate fact of life that many Americans are convinced that all Europeans a) are secretly French; b) hate us; c) want us to fail; and d) to use The Simpsons’ classic phrase, are “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”

So let’s just say I have my doubts about how the Obama speech is going to play back home.

Read the rest of this entry »

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