A Nobel winner who went wrong on rights

In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, President Obama talked about the quiet dignity of human rights reformers such as Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi, the bravery of Zimbabwean voters who "cast their ballots in the face of beatings" and the need to bear witness to "the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran." Earlier in the week, thousands of Iranians did just that, gathering at university campuses in the most substantial demonstrations in the country since the summer, when hundreds of thousands protested Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed presidential election.

But back in June, even as much of the world cheered the Iranian protesters, Obama seemed reluctant to weigh in. "It is not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling," he said at the time. The White House may have feared that public support from Obama would allow the regime to paint the demonstrators as American stooges or might undermine U.S. efforts on Tehran's nuclear program. Such fears seemed to paralyze the administration.

The irony of Obama's Nobel Prize is not that he accepted it while waging two wars. After all, as Obama said in Oslo: "One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek." The stranger thing is that, from China to Sudan, from Burma to Iran, a president lauded for his commitment to peace has dialed down a U.S. commitment to human rights, one that persisted through both Republican and Democratic administrations dating back at least to Jimmy Carter. And so far, he has little to show for it...

@'Washington Post'