Amid the final campaign push, the 10th anniversary of the nation’s landmark covenant on international religious freedom passed largely unnoticed on Monday. That is more than a shame. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president who proved to be better promoting this issue than his ostensibly faith-friendly successor, George W. Bush.
This issue is not only one of the pressing moral concerns of the day, but good for national security, as well–and smart politics, if either campaign had noticed. The issue is one I have spent a good deal of time researching, and I wrote about IRFA and the lost opportunity in an op-ed for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey on Sunday. An excerpt:
For Obama, the benefit is obvious. Despite his church-going, Bible-quoting bona fides, the Democrat continues to lag behind McCain with regular worshipers, especially the white evangelical Christians whom Obama would like to peel away from McCain’s Republican base. Displaying an understanding of the varied travails of believers in different regions could also burnish Obama’s foreign policy credentials.
For his part, McCain is looking to put daylight between himself and George W. Bush, and — ironically, given the president’s faith-based rhetoric — experts and advocates in the field give Bush mixed grades at best on promoting religious freedom overseas. (The Beijing Olympics was the most recent, and most visible, disappointment.)
At the same time, McCain could buff his credentials with a religious right that is increasingly key to his election hopes. Moreover, attack ads haven’t been working for McCain, and embracing this issue would be a chance for him to showcase the kind of world leader he could be and has been: One of McCain’s acknowledged legacies is his push to normalize U.S.-Vietnam relations. Yet religious repression endures there, and addressing it could be a convincing way for McCain to connect his expertise with his experience as a POW.
In the piece I also cite Georgetown scholar-in-residence and former diplomat Tom Farr, and his excellent new book, “World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty Is Vital to American National Security.” Read an in-depth essay by Farr at The Immanent Frame.
And let’s hope that whoever wins on Tuesday, they’ll appreciate the advantages and virtues of promoting religious rights abroad.
posted October 29, 2008 at 12:35 am
It’s really very simple. Right now we need India to balance the possibility of Pakistan going Taliban on us. That is a lot more important than what happens to Christians in India, who don’t vote in our elections anyway.
posted October 29, 2008 at 4:58 am
I see you all have not lost your fight.
Good! Because we have a lot to do. We (the American people) are going to have to take back control of our elected government and set it on the right path of service to us and the greater good of the world. Obama and the Democrats are our best hope of doing that. Tell your family, friends, and everyone you know to support them as best they can. Because the Neocon machine of voter fraud, voter cheating, voter buying, and voter manipulation is already hard at work to cheat us again.
Beginning back in 2000, and before 9/11, it was mostly Republican governors, Republican legislatures, and county-elected Republican officials who conspired with the corrupt Bush administration to raise college and university tuitions by the fastest and highest rate in American history. Some state tuitions went up by as much as a whopping 30% in one year. The reason the Bush administration did this was to force struggling working class kids into the military to pay for the sudden jump in price.
Bush ideology had plans to get us into all these immoral, foolish, and unnecessary wars from the start so that they could use them to seize and keep power. But, for their plan to work, they needed even more volunteer soldiers whose blood they could spill. (Remember Bush’s “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” theatrics.) The exploitation and lost lives of these finest Americans is despicable, disgusting, and criminal. And it makes me SICK, and ANGRY.
We will have to vote for Obama in overwhelming numbers to overcome the Bush-McCain fraud machine. Vote early if you can. Then help your fellow Americans cast their votes now and on through election day. Vote for Obama as though your life (and the lives of your loved ones) depends on it. Because truly, it does: we will not survive 4 more years of the “Let Them Eat Cake” leadership of Bush, McCain, and their corrupt Republican allies.
Just look at the mess we have already. We can fix it with your vote. And REMEMBER, no matter which of us may stumble, the rest of us must continue to surge forward for Obama and the Democrats, and for ourselves most of all. Our children and the world are counting on us.
It’s in our hands now. And I know we will get it done.
God bless all of you.