Human Rights and the War on Terror

Pakistan’s prime minister is coming to the White House in July and once more President Bush will take every opportunity to praise army general and self-styled “president” Pervez Musharraf for his “bold leadership” in opposing terrorism. He’ll greet the prime minister cordially and then sit down to discuss how the United States will sell F-16 fighters to Pakistan; fighters capable of carrying nuclear missiles.

While Mr. Bush will talk of “freedom” and “security,” he won’t mention that Mr. Musharraf took power in a coup d’etat in 1999. And while Mr. Bush will probably praise the general for his opposition to Al Qaeda, he’s unlikely to even mention that Pakistan suffers from domestic terrorism against women – with one being raped every two hours.

Nicholas Kristof notes that rape in this Muslim country is particularly atrocious because women who are raped are encouraged to kill themselves to maintain their honor. Those who do not must have four male witnesses to prove their innocence (or risk a whipping for committing adultery), and even then they might be considered dishonored and unclean. When a woman such as Mukhtaran Bibi decides to crusade against this inhuman practice, she is vilified and her passport is taken away so that she cannot attend an international human rights conference.

During the Cold War, America frequently made allies of unsavory sorts in order to contain communism. For a glorious ten years after the fall of the USSR, we could almost pretend to act on principle. And now, once again, we are back supporting dictators who profess their hatred of terrorism.

I understand diplomacy well enough to know that we can’t always have the ideal allies, but I’m just disappointed that we seem to have lost the moral authority to speak forthrightly about human rights. Even if we didn’t want to scold Pakistan for its atrocious treatment of women, we’d have trouble addressing other potential abuses because of our treatment of prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo.

All I can say about U.S. human rights is that it’s a sad day when our attorney general releases memos to study how much torture we can do without violating international treaties. Disgusting.