A test for Obama

Nothing like confronting up close what really bad allies look like to remind you of the virtues of your better ones. As NATO’s leaders prepare to meet on Saturday to discuss Afghanistan, the news is full of stories reminding us of the yawning chasm that exists between the values of the society we are committing blood and treasure to assist and our own. 

America’s hand-picked man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, put those differences in stark focus with his decision to sign a new law that legalizes rape within marriage and prohibits women from venturing outside the house without the permission of their husbands.  The law, deeply objected to by human rights groups and, one can only suppose, anyone with a brain or a heart, was characterized by Senator Humaira Namati, quoted in a story in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, as “worse than during the Taliban.”

Perhaps this development puts the administration’s search for a moderate Taliban in perspective.  If we can tolerate such behavior from our “friends” perhaps we will therefore now find it easier to tolerate in our enemies. What’s more, the Taliban themselves seem to be in the midst of a vigorous PR campaign seeking to position themselves as the Afghanistani equivalent of MoveOn.org or Arianna Huffington (if she weren’t a woman, and thus had fewer rights and less respect than a stray dog in the street.) 

Speaking of which the attempt to present a new, warmier, cuddlier Taliban was recently described in the Huffington Post as follows:

The Taliban are now prepared to commit themselves to refraining from banning girls’ education, beating up taxi drivers for listening to Bollywood music, or measuring the length of mens’ beards, according to representatives of the Islamist movement. Burqas worn by women in public would be “strongly recommended” but not compulsory. 

Of course, the effort to paint a smiley face on every rock used for their public stonings is just in its formative stages and is cast in a somewhat different light by the fact that the “mainstream” “democratic” Afghan government put in place by the United States has taken such a brutal, medieval stance toward half its populace.

It is therefore easy to see why Barack Obama’s European tour seems to be such a lovefest even if the Europeans themselves are less-than-enthusiastically responding to U.S. requests for their active support in AfPakia. Today, when French President Sarkozy offered to take one U.S. prisoner from Guantanamo and send something like 150 gendarmes and a mobile charcuterie to Afghanistan, he was embraced by Obama as though he were the 21st Century Lafayette. 

Indeed, reading the heart-rending stories about the Afghans and at the same time seeing the lengths that, for example, the French and in particular, Sarkozy have gone to on behalf of restoring the trans-Atlantic relationship, I regret poking fun at the French as allies a few weeks back.  It was entertaining, but it is was a bit of a cheap laugh at the expense of an ally who was, after all, right about most of criticisms of Bush Administration policies.

Which brings us to an early challenge for the Obama Administration and for all of NATO. While much is made of their initiatives to reach out the Taliban and the merits of their new AfPak strategy, we need to stop and ask ourselves if we aren’t overlooking a vitally important question: why does the mistreatment of male terrorists in Guantanamo outrage us more than the abuse of average women in Afghanistan? Which, in fact, is more odious to core American values? 

Cheney argued America’s national security interests justified our abrogation of international treaties and the U.S. constitution. Is it any different to argue that our national security interests should obligate us to continue to support a government that so disregards the fundamental rights of women? 

Or shouldn’t the Obama Administration and the West set a new standard and demand that international minimum human rights standards be upheld by our allies or we will no longer support them?  This is truly an opportunity to draw a line between the moral failings of the last administration and this new one and one of the best ways to judge NATO going forward will be not simply in terms of its force levels in Afghanistan but in terms of what it is actually fighting for.

Update: Per this New York Times report, Hamid Karzai has announced he would now review the law referred to above. The Times story says that this was due to precisely the kind of pressure from the Western Alliance called for in this blog post. Therefore, you might think I should take full credit for it. I cannot do that of course. It is only right to let history decide. However, before making Karzai next year’s National Organization for Women Man of the Year, it is worth noting that he did not exactly back away from the thrust of the law nor did he fully acknowledge what has made it so reprehensible to so many worldwide. The actions and statements, however, of the UN, the Canadians, the Italians and others including strong language from Barack Obama do deserve credit and we can only hope they maintain both their resolve and their vigilance on such issues in Afghanistan and worldwide.