Obama bails out the 'human rights' despots

Jonah Goldberg:

It's President Obama's worst bailout so far. He's going to rescue the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Now admittedly, the council wasn't on the verge of going out of business. Heck, if there were a nuclear war, the pinstriped thugs of the United Nations' "human rights" bureaucracy would probably be all that's left to keep the cockroaches company.

But although the effete goons of the UNHRC aren't going bankrupt, Obama has bailed them out in another way. He's given the repugnant cabal that dominates the council a fresh injection of political capital.

President Bush refused to cooperate with the agency, and even held back the share of U.S. dues to the United Nations that went toward it. Obama, on the other hand, feels it is vital to work with the organization from the inside.

The old U.N. Commission on Human Rights was a travesty, recognized -- even by the U.N. leadership -- as a petri dish of moral decay and political corruption. It was the foremost, though far from the sole, U.N. agency dedicated to the defamation, demonization and destruction of Israel. It was closed down in 2005, only to be replaced the following year with the Human Rights Council. Not surprisingly, the transformation was as superficial as it sounds. Once the ink was dry on the new stationery, the world's worst human rights abusers flocked back to run the council.

Initially, reformers had the wacky idea that the new human rights body should have as members only countries that actually care about human rights. Preposterous, responded diplomatic flacks for dictators from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Then there was the idea that the council should regularly review the human rights records of every U.N. member, not just Israel. But the "universal periodic reviews" became a joke, as countries such as Egypt and Russia received glowing reviews that might as well have been written by their tourism bureaus.

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Anyway, the old crew scurried on board the new ship as the old one sank. Joining the Muslim countries are such stalwarts of human rights as China and Cuba. The only reason Mordor didn't make the list is that J.R.R. Tolkien forgot to have Sauron denounce the "Zionist entity" in "The Lord of the Rings."

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Obama and other liberals think they can talk despots and religious bigots out of being whom they are. I predict massive failure and embarrassment.