When he was still a Presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama evoked memories of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan by addressing Europeans from Berlin. In what was then the largest audience of his campaign, around 200,000 people gathered to hear Obama ask,
‘Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur?’
Now into his second term, those are the very people Obama has betrayed throughout his presidency. Iranian liberals were left unsupported during the Green Revolution in 2009 which challenged Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; ethnic violence orchestrated against Rohingya Muslims in Burma over the last year has displaced more than 140,000 people precisely when Myanmar was being lauded for ‘democratic reforms’; Darfur was abandoned, is half forgotten, and remains unresolved; and just last month Mugabe declared himself the victor of yet another stolen election.
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