Will Obama Stand Up to, or Smile at, Dictators?

The picture of the President of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our President is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but. The US State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs Magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the U.S. Senate, the South American Project Director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez's government engages in "arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters -- all with impunity". In spite of a presidential term limit of 6 years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president? There's something wrong with that picture.

Then there was the incident of President Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 Summit in London. The President's people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religious other than Islam, said, "It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles."

Of course President Obama is pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country that engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.

Watching all this, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the President of the United States?

Yes, I get it. We have to speak to our enemies and America has to push "reset" on its relationship with many of these countries. We should try and change them through charm. But who said the President himself, rather than a lower-level diplomat, must do so? And if President Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl-scouts selling cookies?

It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia to see the American president back-slapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions.

In Turkey President Obama boldly declared that "the United States is not, and never will be, "at war with Islam." But the person who was at war with Islam, Saddam Hussein, the man who killed nearly one million Muslims, was removed by a country who has already paid with the lives of 4500 of its service men and women. The same is true of the Taliban, another group whom the Obama Administration is considering talking to, who beat Muslim women in the streets of Afghanistan. Yet the President seems reluctant to publicly identify these real enemies of Islam.

Like many Americans, I have watched our President and have been awed by his capacity to draw those who hate us near. He is a man of considerable charm and grace. But I have to admit that I am increasingly troubled by his seeming inability to call out rogue dictators.

While he was campaigning for the presidency Obama promised, "As President I will recognize the Armenian Genocide." But in a press conference in Ankara with President Abdullah Gul he refused to use the word "genocide" when challenged by a reporter on the issue.

Yet it was Obama's early foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power of Harvard, who wrote "A Problem from Hell," a definitive book on the non-American intervention in repeated twentieth century genocides, beginning with the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks which killed 1.5 million between the years of 1915-1923. When I read the book it changed my life. As a Jew who does not want the world to forget the Holocaust, I can only imagine the pain of the Armenian community as they struggle to have modern Turkey acknowledge the crime. And why should modern Turkey not oblige? No one is blaming them for something that happened 90 years ago. It is not today's generation which is at fault. But nations must come to terms with their own history. Could any of us imagine what kind of country the US would be if it denied that it was ever responsible for the abomination of African-American slavery and segregation?

All this leads to one important question. Suppose President Obama succeeds in building friendships with Chavez, Castro, Ahmedenijad and the Taliban. What then? Does Americas still get to feel that it stands for something? Will we still be the beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world, or will we have sold out in the name of political expediency? And do any of us seriously believe that Presidential friendship is going to get a megalomaniac like Hugo Chavez to ease up on the levers of power, or are we just feeding his ego by showing him he can be a tyrant and still have a beer with the President of the United States? Will the Iranians really stop enriching Uranium through diplomacy rather than economic sanctions?

I know that the Bush Administration made many mistakes and I am fan of President Obama precisely because of his sunny optimism. But Bush was not, as Chavez once called him, the devil and it could just be that his emphasis on America being the great champion of democracy and freedom, a mantle that was most eloquently articulated by President Kennedy in his inaugural address, is a legacy that ought to belong to President Obama as much as it did to his predecessor.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Values Network. He has just published his newest best-seller, The Kosher Sutra. www.shmuley.com.

Comments

[Vcubed]

The title of this article poses a false dilemma. Why should Obama deny himself any of the tools in his set to get style points from domestic political adversaries? As for those who feel he has broken promises, it's still early innings, isn't it?

[rubberstamp]

last time i heard Chavez was an elected leader

[stpmdn]

I bet he'll stand up to bibi

[TerrapinCB]

President Obama AND Congress need to stand up to one entity more than any others.

lsrael

[marthainmaine]

Under bush the younger , the U.S. kidnapped a democratically elected leader of a country. Haiti ...Aristide.

That was a dictatorship. 8 years of bush.

[sshaler]

Not to mention backing the coup in Venezuela which ultimately failed.

[RobotRockRod]

How does talking or "shaking hands" witht the enemy = adopting/approaving the enemy's tactics and policies?????

calm down Rabbi, seriously we had MANY high level contacts with the soviets and we today, are FAR from communism

[sshaler]

Why exactly is Venezuela considered your enemy? I can't recall anything Venezuela or President Chavez have done against the US. This US obsession with destroying countries they don't agree with politically is out of line.

[RoloTomassi]

Sir you are a bigot, a NeoConservative warmonger and not worthy even one more minute of my attention.

[norwaylass]

Agree.
And like your screen name--great movie.

[zaz33]

I think the good Rabbi is a tad bias

Keep in mind that Venevuela and Bolivia tossed the Israeli ambassadors because of "cast lead".

Keep in mind that Venezuelan's have voted on national referendums which doesn't happen in the "real" democracies. That's why Chavez can continue to run for president. (It was approved by the people)
Venevuela is probably one of the most democratic countries in the world today.

Keep in mind this is the kind of teaching by Rabbi's to settlers in the West Bank.

Keep in mind that Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Turkey look good when compared to the US and Israel.

[JohnnyLee]

Please move to Saudi Arabia and tell us again about how bad the US is. I guess you like 25% unemployment while the unelected leader of the country lives the life luxury from the natural resources that he plundered from the rest of the members of society.

[arnray]

Call me when Chavez drops bombs on innocent civilians in another country like, say for instance, Lebanon.

[sshaler]

Thank you.

[WoodyTanaka]

Mr. Boteach, I recall your full-throated defense of the criminal war on the Gazans. Why is it that you can put yourself in the place of an Armenian but not, apparently, in the place of a Gazan?

[Melanie226]

I'm a big fan of Rabbi Boteach, but I happen to disagree with his take on President Obama's acceptance of other world leaders. When you walk into a room full of people you've never met, you are not likely to engage in conflict. During the campaign we came to know Obama as someone who liked to have as much info as possible about a person/situation before he'd make a statement. Why is this any different? There is a lot of commentary in the media, which happens to be owned by corporate interests who are owned by large corporations that have other holdings. The media we receive in this country all has a bias, so maybe Obama just wanted to see for himself what these leaders were really all about.

As for the hand shakes, smiles, presumed bows with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, that is our country's own fault. They have the oil, and we are oil dependent. If oil weren't a factor do you really think anyone in the U.S. would want to have anything to do with Saudi Arabia?

In the end, Obama's outreach in diplomacy is a win-win situation. It will either have some of our enemies chill on their anti-U.S. anger (which largely came about in the past 8 years) making us safer, or it will show the world how backwards and brutal these enemies really are that way if the U.S. does take action we won't incur the world's criticism.

[sshaler]

If only the US would "chill". I thought it was extraordinarily gracious of President Chavez to shake the hand of a US president when the US backed an attempt to topple his democratically elected government a few years ago. I wonder if I would be so willing to let bygones be bygones..?

[Freenation]

The list is missing two more names Netanyahu and Lieberman...

[piul05]

Since when is Foreign Affairs an unbiased - and therefore credible - academic publication?

[dsws]

"Dictator" means someone the US doesn't like, right? So does Hugo Chavez really still count as a dictator after Obama smiles at him?

[JohnnyLee]

No a dictator is someone who by force takes control of a country. So sorry Chavez, Castro et al still qualify.

[piul05]

Your grasp of History is pretty dismal.

[SonnyBono]

Gee, Johnny, hate to break it to you but Chavez was elected in democratic elections that were monitored by international groups and the Castro brothers may have seized power but they would probably be elected in free elections - don't forget that Fidel Castro overthrew a dictator, Fulgencio Batista, that was supported by the US government and was in the process of selling Cuba to the Mafia.

[sshaler]

President Chavez was democratically elected and Venezuela is one of the most democratically run countries in the world right now.

The people, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, took over their country from a bunch of mobsters in 1959. Cuba enjoys democratic advantages unheard of in the US, like no homelessness, free medical care, free education and so forth. There are even US medical students, along with students from many countries, who cannot afford to attend university at home getting an education in Cuba on Cuban scholarships. US propaganda against Cuba is a sad and cruel policy.

[LeftLeanWing]

The Venezuelans happen to like Hugo Chávez ...regardless of how we want to compartmentalize him.

A national poll conducted between April 24th and May 2nd by the Venezuelan Data Analysis Institute (IVAD) showed that 68.8% of Venezuelans believe the presidency of Hugo Chávez has been excellent, very good, or good, while 28.2% consider it to have been bad, very bad, or terrible.