In case you missed it (I know I did!), I'm reproducing in full below a statement the U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Carol Fuller made at the OSCE in response to a Russian reply apparently to what was an original U.S. statement of criticism of Russian suppression of media (I still have to fish for the previous statements but the tenor is clear from this response).
What's brilliant about all this is that it shows that even while our Community-Organizer-in-Chief is still struggling to invoke international human rights standards, and is substituting them with a policy of ducking and speaking guiltily of "American values" of democracy and human rights that we shouldn't "impose" (as if "American values were just a doctrine of ideology like "Asian values"), the Chargé d'Affaires is still ringing the chimes on the Helsinki policies that have held for 30 years (until Obama began to undermine them), which is that, yes, it is ok to mention the human rights offenses of fellow members of OSCE, and no, this is not "interference in internal affairs".
I recall in the old Soviet era of Fyodor Burlatsky that if we mentioned lists of hundreds of Soviet political prisoners, he would retort by mentioning...Angela Davis. That was definitely worse than the Mumia hustle we get from the left nowadays despite reversals (and for a good debunking of Mumia, see this excellent blog and particularly this article summarizing the Der Spiegel article going against the grain.).
So in tried-and-true Soviet tradition, the Russian ambassador in Vienna at OSCE has evidently claimed that journalists are repressed in the U.S., because the U.S. representative mentioned the 52 murdered journalists of Russia and the outrageous suppression of the media that has gone on since Putin and Putvedev took power.
I sometimes wonder why these oppressive governments don't hire me as a consultant, because I really could script their game better than they do. If an American representative bangs on you about reporters killed, you could reply, as a Russian official, that you are...in the process of investigating them, and you could then begin to talk piously not about speculative cases of people advocating violence like Black Panthers, but about, oh, lack of coverage of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan that occurs even with the great traditions of press freedom that in fact prevail in America. You could play the moral equivalence game *better*, surely.
But no, the Russian has to "start in" with 1) impugning the very process of being able to raise questions in the Permanent Council 2) making silly false claims that the U.S. is harassing journalists. I hope the U.S. continues to remain strong on these kinds of statements, and that nothing change about them. I hope we aren't going to see chest-beating and weeping and pledges to "listen" when the scales are really tipped rather severely on the human rights questions to the East.
Which brings me to the whole question of "moral equivalence" in the first place as a concept, which I developed in this particular case regarding Russian-American dialoguing.
This phrase *might* have once had a "sincere" usage that actually involved fervent left-wingers actually saying that the Soviet Union, whatever its ills, was on par with the United States. But having been around for a while, I would say that it likely never really had that sincere usage. The usage has always been negative, and always involved someone perceiving another as having equivocated two bad things as being similar or equal, when they really weren't, or, less frequently, never mentioning the other side's bad thing, as if it was unblemished.
The Wikipedia article on this subject by the editors' own acknowledgement with "disputed" neutrality, is absolutely atrocious, biased, and a sterling example in fact of what moral equivalence *is*, seeing the entire concept of making this charge as merely all about Cold War-era American exceptionalist ideology.
So eager is the hard left desirous of banging on America, that the basic truths of the free institutions of America that even make a hard left possible, and make it able to contribute even to the election of the president of the United States, seems to escape it. I marvel at it, continously.
It's not about "Dictatorships or Double Standards" in the words of the infamous article by Jean Kirkpatrick.
I have two very distinct memories of the 1970s -- Katherine Hepburn briskly walking out on stage and Jean Kirkpatrick briskly walking out on stage -- the same kind of brisk emphatic pace of Irish womanhood that I had seen in my own grandmothers. But I am not a Republican, and I don't ascribe to the policy implications of "Dictatorships or Double Standards" which seem to posit that we should uncritically prop up authoritarian governments in Latin America, like Pinochet's regime, because they were different in having more freedoms, and being more changeable, than the totalitarian Soviet Union. I don't know if time and realities of both regimes collapsing have softened those who used to argue this concept so strenuously, but it appears again in other forms today. (And BTW, it's worth contemplating how Iran was lost, and the implications there.)
And it's not about American exceptionalism; in fact, my charge is that the left, in raging so fiercely about America's real and imagined crimes and ascribing them as fueling both the actuality and the jutification of other human rights abroad by foreign regimes, is engaging in the worst form of American exceptionalism -- believing that if everything in the world is explained by "blaming America first" (to borrow another Kirkpatrickian phrase of the "tenured radicals"), then everything can be fixed by making America "better". Naive -- and dangerous because America cannot fix everything and is not responsible for everything.
And "moral equivalence" isn't just some exculpatory Cold War fashion (and remember, I'm all for having a Cold War, as the proper response to a regime engaged in mass murder that you didn't wish to bomb to avoid nuclear conflagration)."Moral equivalence" really was a problem -- it wasn't just about taking account of your own sins as you plucked the log out of your neighbour's eye; more often than not it was saying that there was no log at all, and not even a splinter. It was *denial* that there was anything wrong with the Soviet Union at all, that workers' paradise, and a claim that whatever wrongs might occur -- a suppression of a strike there, a shortage here, even an execution after a show trial over there -- was justified due to, oh, "capitalist encirclement," or "social expediency" or "progress". Deutcherism. Reprehensible.
Anyway, it's my hope that more debate will occur on this topic than has been the case, judging from the Google returns. I do think it is possible to raise common problems, and specifically American abuses, without going soft and squishy on Russian abuses, and in such a way that pays due diligence and respect to the very real differences in the two systems. I don't feel we have to genuflect and blame America first before we can ever see our way clear to raising obvious basic problems like the murder of journalists, including American citizens in Russia. I hope the U.S. will not lose its nerve here -- it really does take patience, and it really has been quite a few years that the U.S. (usually alone, without company from Europeans) has had to play this game.
United States Mission to the OSCE
Reply to the Russian Federation on Media
Freedom in the U.S.
As delivered by Chargé d'Affaires Carol Fuller
to the Permanent Council, Vienna
February 4, 2010
In response to the Russian Federation, the United States does not believe that raising concerns in the Permanent Council under Current Issues is inappropriate or meant for any political end. On the contrary, we believe it is not only an appropriate form of conflict prevention - as has been mentioned previously in our Corfu discussions - but an obligation, a commitment on all of our parts under the Helsinki Final Act. The Permanent Council, and particularly this topic of Current Issues, exists for peer review and dialogue.
With respect to the question of evenhandedness raised by the Russian Federation, the real answer is for each participating State to fulfill our media freedom commitment equally.
When that is the reality, individual participating States will have no more cause to feel singled out, either by the Representative on Freedom of the Media, Mr. Haraszti’s office, or by other international watchdogs like the Committee to Protect Journalist, Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House.
Mr. Chairman, as President Obama has said, we are trying to reset our relationship with the Russian Federation and we are actively seeking out areas of agreement. In that respect, I might note that our two governments appear very close to completing a new START agreement. But, we also recognize areas where we will continue to disagree, and we will not shy away from confronting those differences in an open and forthright manner. We are not afraid of criticism by our partners. As we advance our relations with Russia, we will not abandon our principles or ignore concerns about democracy and human rights. We are willing to listen to any concern of criticism that might be made about our government during
Current Issues.
My Russian colleague is correct in stating that there are “no ideal states.” I would note, however, that if the United States is number 44 in the world on freedom of the press, the Russian Federation is 148th. And I would note specifically the comment that has been made by the very report he cited that “Russia continues to be one of the deadliest countries for journalist.”
In our statement on Freedom of the Media in the OSCE Region, we emphasized the fact that grave threats are gathering in the OSCE area, impacting on the universal right to freedom of expression. I note that in none of the incidents cited by Ambassador Azimov did he allege that: violence was perpetrated against journalists in the United States with impunity; that journalists were killed and investigations were not conducted; that overly harsh prison sentences or outrageously punitive fines were imposed; or that the U.S. Government demonstrated outright hostility towards the exercise of freedom of speech—i.e., all of the items that I referred to as areas of concern in our observations on the previous agenda item.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
With regard to the extremely rare cases in the United States where a reporter has been jailed, it is not for the content of their reporting, but for failing to comply with a subpoena in a criminal investigation – the rule of law prevails. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that in such cases, reporters enjoy no privileges that exempt them from having to provide testimony before a grand jury. Nonetheless, the Administration supports passage of a federal media shield law provided it does not undermine the government’s ability to enforce the law and protect national security.
Mr. Chairman, we would like to respond fully to the specific cases cited by Ambassador Azimov, and we will be glad to do so in writing to save time--as you would like us to be increasingly short and brief in our statements in the Permanent Council sessions. We are, of course, also willing to discuss any cases informally and in human dimension review events.
We do so in the hope that we can count on the Russian Federation’s continuing commitment to fruitful conversation on media freedom – not just the Russian Federation, but all 56 of us – whether the cases under discussion be those in the United States, or Russia itself.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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