"Our concern is that the Obama administration is perceived to be softening on human rights."
If that comment came from a human rights lobbyist, you might not pay too much mind. But I heard it from Anwar Ibrahim, a Malaysian leader who is one of the world's foremost spokesmen for Islamic democracy -- and who is himself under threat from authorities at home. If Anwar says that people throughout Asia and the Middle East are wondering about President Obama's commitment to human rights, the administration ought to pay attention.
Obama has committed himself to the cause of democracy in every major foreign policy address of his young presidency. He has met with freedom fighters, in Moscow and elsewhere. In announcing Friday that he would accept the Nobel Peace Prize, he saluted, obliquely but unmistakably, the democracy marchers of Tehran and a former Nobel laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, who, for her courageous advocacy of democracy, languishes under house arrest in Burma.
But Obama's choice last week not to meet with the Dalai Lama, an advocate of freedom, broke with bipartisan tradition and -- following several other seemingly small decisions and ambiguous administration statements -- reverberated across the globe. In an odd way, it showed the flip side of the willingness that he expressed, especially during the campaign, to meet with the enemies of freedom.
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