Biden has never Been Driven By Human Rights. This Time, It Might Cost Him.
By NAHAL TOOSI
Politico
The Israel-Hamas war has proven much about President Joe Biden.
He cares deeply about Israel’s survival. He’s willing to devote major resources to the Middle East, despite a desire to focus more on China. And he’s really, really had it with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Here’s another reality the bloodshed in Israel and Gaza has exposed: Biden is not — fundamentally — a human rights president.
This might sound harsh to Biden stans. The president, after all, is an empathetic figure. He has experienced personal tragedies, and he certainly talks the talk about helping the oppressed. Besides, doesn’t every president compromise on human rights? Especially in morally tangled cases that affect U.S. national security?
Since taking the Oval Office, Biden has often put his view of U.S. national security and the political scene ahead of rights’ activists demands, especially if he calculates he can weather the blowback.
Still, the past 4 1/2 months have been shattering for many Biden supporters. After all, he had pledged to make human rights a central part of his foreign policy and return the U.S. to the stronger global moral standing it had prior to Donald Trump’s presidency.
In talks with nearly a dozen activists in recent days, I’ve been struck by the sense of betrayal some — especially in Arab American and Muslim American communities — feel over Biden’s unwillingness to change U.S. policy to pressure Israel to stop its military operation in Gaza. As the humanitarian crisis there deepens, some accuse Biden of not valuing Palestinian lives. Many plan to express their anger at the ballot box, including by not voting for Biden during the primary in Michigan, a swing state with a large Arab American population.
“Maybe he was feeding us lies,” said Yasmine Taeb, an Iranian American and prominent progressive who has frequently engaged the Biden team on rights-related issues. “It’s very painful.”
But nobody should be surprised.
For decades, Biden has been willing to de-prioritize human rights, even if it means he looks uncaring. He’s often explained that he’s serving the U.S. national interest, but he also appears keenly aware of the politics involved: voters rarely reject a candidate over a human rights issue.
Politics do change, however, as can a politician’s base, and both those things may be happening now.
Biden has had skepticism of America’s duties to the world from early in his political career.
As a young senator in 1975, he insisted the U.S. leave Vietnam, despite concerns about abandoning America’s allies. “I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation,” Biden reportedly said that year about sending aid to Cambodia. “There’s a point where you are incapable of meeting moral obligations that exist worldwide.”
Biden supported going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But as those wars dragged on, Biden’s skepticism about U.S. obligations returned.
During the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, then-Vice President Biden opposed U.S. military intervention in Libya, despite dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s threats of mass slaughter. He also did not want President Barack Obama to side with protesters against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, whom Biden considered a valuable U.S. ally. These past Biden positions still reverberate among Arab American and Muslim American activists now watching Gaza.
When he withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden knew he’d crush the educational dreams of Afghan women. He nonetheless dismissed the idea that America owed them anything.
Biden aides point to his promotion of democracy, including hosting summits on the issue, in touting his human rights bona fides. They also note that he has often spoken out against genocide, such as in the case of Sudan’s Darfur region, or what befell the Armenians more than a century ago. He also supported military intervention in the 1990s to end massacres in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
His defenders argue, not unfairly, that ending the Afghanistan war has saved many lives — a human rights win.
Biden has “made human rights a centerpiece of our foreign policy,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said, highlighting how, among other moves, he has used “executive orders to fight corruption and protect against misuse of commercial spyware.”
