This week brought the odd juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated events: the death of former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, and the visit to the United States of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. What links the two events is America's human rights policy--or lack of it.
This week, Kim died--and Hosni Mubarak was greeted in Washington with hosannas from the White House. He hadn't been here in 5 years, skipping his usual spring visits out of pique at George Bush's suggestions that reform and democracy were needed in Egypt. It is no accident that he skipped the spring visit this year too, seeking a time when Congress would be out of town and thereby eliminating any risk of untoward remarks about democracy from the Hill. Unless he read the Washington Post's powerful editorials about Egypt and Obama's human rights policy, Mubarak must have been a happy man. When he sat next to the president for their press conference in the Oval Office, Mubarak must have noted that Obama didn't pronounce the word "freedom," or "democracy," or even "reform." In fact it was Mubarak who did, saying that "I have entered into the election based on a platform that included reforms . . . " This is laughable, of course, for Mubarak has never held a free election and immediately after the last one jailed his sole opponent, Ayman Nour.
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