The Uncertain Crusade
Muravchik, Joshua
Having realized that the world is not populated primarily by those who share his Western values of democracy, law, and compromise, he abandons all those precepts for a purely Machiavellian...
...My government will notbe deterred from . . . promoting human rights . . . in whatever ways we can," Carter told the Organization of American States in 1978...
...This is something O'Brien's fellow Europeans, right as well as left, do not understand, or ignore, and their tacit (often more than tacit) encouragement to terrorists like the PLO will only backfire in the long run, as the massacres at the Rome and Vienna air-ports tragically demonstrated...
...Muravchik juxtaposes two striking quotes from Patricia Derian, the Carter State Department's human rights honcho...
...doesn't come off too well vis-a-vis the American Indians, and the history of European nationalism is decidedly barbaric...
...Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote a famous essay on the subject...
...What it offers is, in a word, proof...
...Hypocritical or not, did the policy work...
...It is such a good idea, in fact, that when the Reagan Administration sought to abandon the policy entirely, it was roundly and justifiably criticized, and forced to retreat...
...This was Carter at his self-righteous, hypocritical, and ineffective best, which is also a good way to describe the human rights policy his administration pursued with such misguided vigor...
...A bad move, Carter said, suggesting he knew how Colonel Qaddafi feels...
...votes were Argentina, Uruguay, and the Philippines...
...In votes on loans or grants by international financial institutions, the same pattern prevailed...
...Some in this community are shameless apologists for Vietnam, the Soviets, the Sandinistas...
...That doesn't take a thing away from The Uncertain Crusade...
...Just when you start to go mushy inside and think that maybe he wasn't really as awful a national leader as he often seemed, he surfaces with some zany new idea or statement...
...One final note...
...Among the seventy-four nations not cited as violators were Syria, Nicaragua, Angola, China, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, all of which, Muravchik adds, "had Communist or leftist governments...
...In December 1977, she explained why she didn't speak out more about the holocaust in Cambodia: "I'm not sure what you can say beyond saying that it's awful, that people are dying, that there is serious trouble there...
...Having realized that the world is not populated primarily by those who share his Western values of democracy, law, and compromise, he abandons all those precepts for a purely Machiavellian interpretation of events...
...Carter also has bragged about his steadfastness in seeking human rights to the point of championing the plight of the Palestinians, saying he wanted to assure them the right to assemble, debate issues, and vote...
...And the harsh judgment of Carter hardens...
...From their perspective, the Carter policy was not nearly one-sided and punitive enough...
...That no democratic alternative existed in either country was lost on the Carter crowd...
...The Carterites nudged Somoza out in Nicaragua, and they did little to keep the Shah in power in Iran, even putting mild human rights pressure on him at exactly the wrong time...
...If somebody killed his own daughter Amy, Carter said, he'd want revenge...
...Why, just the other day I was thinking about how courageous it was of Carter to opt for oil decontrol over the fevered protests of Democratic liberals...
...But there is no reason they cannot, with full economic rights, prosper, even, like other minorities elsewhere (including Jews in Europe and the U.S...
...Carter may not have meant to imply that Qaddafi is justified in retaliating against President Reagan, or even that he and Qaddafi have a lot in common, but that's how it sounded...
...At the same time, notes Muravchik, "Carter did not work to secure the right to vote or assemble or debate issues for the people of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, the Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and especially Saudi Arabia, just to mention Arab peoples...
...In succinct (247 pages) and crisply written fashion, he lays out the weaknesses of the Carter policy...
...Of course, this wasn't true...
...In this situation it's useless to argue whether the founding of the state was "just": the U.S...
...He piously pounded on American allies, mostly in Latin America, while letting Communist regimes off scot-free...
...Fine...
...Self-righteousness...
...THE UNCERTAIN CRUSADE: JIMMY CARTER AND THE DILEMMAS OF HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY Joshua Muravchik/Hamilton Press/$18.95 Fred Barnes 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1986...
...Certainly the sorry Israeli economy ought to put to rest any myth of a world Jewish financial conspiracy, and a Jewish State where its wealthiest (and generally content) citizens were non-Jews is fully imaginable...
...per se with the policy of making respect—or lack of respect—for human rights a major factor in American foreign affairs...
...The chief targets of negative U.S...
...And if you don't find this compelling, then there are the cases of Nicaragua and Iran...
...nation...
...What it ought to boil down to is this: What is Israel today, with respect to what it would likely be otherwise and what it can be...
...Under pressure from Congress, the Carterites voted no on some funds for Vietnam and Laos, but yes on money for Yugoslavia and Rumania...
...Not that there's anything wrong Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...Using Freedom House ratings of the degree to which a country honors human rights, Muravchik found that nations against which the Carter administration took punitive action worsened on average, while those which it didn't punish improved...
...In connection with the Food for Peace program, the Carter administration singled out six countries as human rights violators—Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Liberia, Somalia, and Zaire...
...Muravchik, once the executive director of the hawkish Democratic group, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, offers plenty of it...
...Carter found a reason, frequently a craven one, to let almost every country off the hook but some in Latin America...
...But it was a start in the right direction...
...The whole point about Israel is not just that there is a siege mentality, but that there is a siege...
...When talking about El Salvador several years later, however, she was able to say much more: "No description of hell touches the bestiality of what is happening to the people of El Salvador...
...Rue, Christians and Moslems do not in practice enjoy equal rights with Jews in Israel, and perhaps they never will...
...This movement sees human rights flourishing "in societies where, in the eyes of most Americans, those rights are brutally trampled by Communist dictatorships," Muravchik says...
...Perhaps the modern, secular, and pluralistic state is currently impossible in the Middle East, especially for a Jewish State...
...Muravchik points out the crucial role that the "human rights community" has played in Washington, prompting congressional legislation and influencing Carter policy...
...Okay, so conservatives have been saying this all along...
...This touches on the matter of hypocrisy, or more precisely, the double standard that marked the execution of the Carter policy...
...The answer is that it is a working democracy in an area where that makes it unique...
...Not exactly, says Muravchik, though he praises Carter for making human rights a bigger international issue than it had been...
...But, as he does ask, is that our only legitimate model...
...Where Carter erred was in the way he pursued the policy...
...Muravchik documents the double standard—hit right-wing, autocratic allies, go easy on Communists or leftists—in irrefutable detail...
...There are lots of statements by Carter or his minions to choose from...
...Carter was easily deterred by the Soviets from pressing the human rights issue noisily against them...
...Muravchik explains: Because we were trying to make new friends in black Africa, because we needed oil from the nations of the Near East, because we wanted detente with the Russians and the rest of the Warsaw Pact and also to en-courage polycentrism within it, and because in Asia we were trying to build new relationships with some Communist governments while continuing to protect non-Communist countries against possible Communist aggression, practically the only place left to which the Carter administration felt it could apply its human rights policy was Latin America...
...It's too bad O'Brien didn't devote some of his otherwise remarkable work to the question it so blatantly begs...
...prosper more than the dominant group of the Jimmy Carter never lets you down...
...And it went along every time on votes affecting Syria, Tanzania, Somalia, Panama, Madagascar, Algeria, and Burma, all leftist dictatorships with bad human rights records...
...It adds impressive substance to the conservative case that Carter screwed up badly on human rights...
...Give Carter credit for fastening onto a very good idea...
...You know, I said to myself, maybe Carter wasn't all . . . My train of thought was interrupted by news of Carter's assessment of the April 15 bombing raid on Libya...
Vol. 19 • June 1986 • No. 6
