Reply #34

What was done right this year?

Posted by Heather Hurlburt

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2. Finding its feet on human rights. Few will have noticed even among the wonk-erati, but from institutionalizing government procedures for catching potential genocides in advance, focusing on women's role in international peace and security and improving Pentagon training on human rights, the Administration put several long-fought initiatives into place this year. Secretary Clinton's LGBT initiatives only got noticed at home when conservatives tried to make political hay out of the radical idea that sexual orientation should not be a death sentence; her speech that accompanied the women's initiative in December didn't even get that much attention. but in the rest of the world, where sexual and gender violence are all-too prevalent, and three women were among the Nobel Prize winners, this kind of US leadership will matter. The relevance of the US intervention in Libya for human rights will be debated for decades; what should be remem bered is how it also allowed a UN Security council-backed mission to remove a sore election loser in Cote d'Ivoire and end developing carnage.

3. South Sudan. That the new nation was able to come into existence successfully, and relatively quietly, this year is due in no small part to the Administration's interventions at the UN and on the ground.

4. Iraq troop withdrawal. Not so long ago, this didn't seem a foregone conclusion at all.

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6. Decline of Al Qaeda. US military actions, including but not limited to the killing of Bin Laden, have hastened the organization's decline and its loss of support among the global Muslim community, dramatized so vividly in the Arab Spring.

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An interesting problem. These achievements-- which are real and substantial-- are for the most part downpayments on a better future, on a set of global institutions and relationships which work better and function smoothly in a different, more prosperous time. It is hard, from either a security or an economic perspective, to stack that long-range view up against the real or perceived challenges we face, or that we hear shouted about on cable.

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2011/12/what-was-done-right-this-year.html