Human Rights

Jennifer Rubin, reading Daniel Henniger, concludes that "we've had a total role-reversal on the subject of human rights."

Henniger writes:

In New York this week, I asked a former Eastern European dissident who spent time in prison under the Communists: "If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chávez, what would you think?"

He said: "I would think that I was losing ground."

To which Alex Maisse responds:

Fair enough. Hugo Chavez isn't my cup of tea either. But it's hardly that unusual for American presidents to be photographed with autocrats and dictators. More importantly, however, if I were to ask a former Soviet dissident: "If you learned that the American government was waterboarding prisoners and using other techniques favoured by despotic regimes and that this policy was enthusiastically embraced by a hefty plurality of the American people and a majority of conservative pundits, what would you think?"

He might think: "I am losing ground and so is America".

It is, to say the least, mildly dissonant to hear some people proclaiming dramatic set backs for freedom and liberty over Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez, while simultaneously demanding we use Communist-favored "interrogation" methods on prisoners in our charge.