WHAT WE STAND FOR – AT 7:53 P.M. ET:  On the day when we contemplate the sacrifices of American servicemen and women, we also think about the causes that led them into battle.  And Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post isn't pleased with the way one of those causes has been shunted aside by the Obama administration:

What sort of international order does Barack Obama seek? Last week he gave a detailed answer: "One that can resolve the challenges of our times -- countering violent extremism and insurgency; stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and securing nuclear materials; combating a changing climate and sustaining global growth; helping countries feed themselves and care for their sick; resolving and preventing conflict, while also healing its wounds."

That's a big agenda. But isn't something missing? Nowhere in that long sentence, in the introduction to his new national security strategy, does Obama suggest that the international "engagement" he proposes should serve to combat tyranny or oppression, or promote democracy. In that sense, it is typical of the first comprehensive account Obama has offered of his administration's goals in the world. In theory -- as in the practice of his first year -- human rights come second.

Ouch.  And this is the change we were supposed to believe in.  Oh, the youthful idealism!

The White House's left-leaning "realists" -- who seek to limit U.S. foreign engagements, shift resources to domestic programs and jettison the "freedom agenda" of George W. Bush -- seem to have won all of the big arguments.

Yeah, we've noticed.  Aren't we proud.

Like the Bush administration before it, the Obama team says America has an interest in the creation of a Palestinian state -- but unlike Bush, Obama doesn't say that that state should be democratic.

After all, democracy is just another "narrative."  Isn't that the stuff they teach in graduate schools these days?

It gets worse:

Proponents of an Obama freedom agenda did get one chapter of the report, titled "Values." But its very segregation from the other three "interests" -- "Security," "Prosperity" and "International Order," gives its proposals a fenced-off feel. The policy begins with a couple of big qualifications: The United States will promote its values mainly "by living them at home..."

As the guy from "Saturday Night Live" used to say, "Isn't that special."

Obama has already demonstrated that he does not accept Bush's conclusion that the promotion of democracy and human rights is inseparable from the tasks of defeating al-Qaeda and establishing a workable international order. But nowhere in his 52-page doctrine is there a coherent explanation of why.

COMMENT:  That's pretty devastating, in my view.  Here is the first African-American president, for whom "freedom" should have special meaning, and it doesn't seem to have much meaning at all. 

I wonder why.  Is it, perhaps, because this president harbors a certain respect for socialism, or other forms that dabble in totalitarianism?  Hmm.  Question to be answered.

May 31, 2010