Michael Rubin writes “On this, the one-year anniversary of Obama’s Cairo speech, the silence of the Obama administration in the face of backsliding on rights, freedom, and liberty in Kurdistan, Turkey, and Arab states such as Egypt and Yemen, is deafening”:

In recent weeks, independent journalists in Kurdistan have begun to receive cell phone death threats (as Sardasht did before his murder). When they have gone to security to lodge complaints, the journalists are harassed. It is now only a matter of time until more journalists are whacked. The victims are not insurgents nor violent Islamists, but rather liberals and the best of the new generation. Obama’s inaction is dangerous because, when administration officials like assistant secretary of state Jeffrey Feltman or U.S. congressmen on a junket take their photos with [Masud] Barzani, cynicism grows about perceived U.S. endorsement [of] dictators; this in turn encourages anti-Americanism.

I don’t disagree with Michael here on the Obama administration’s lack of follow-through on the promise of the Cairo speech, which I’ve found deeply disappointing, or with his concern about the increasing oppression in Iraqi Kurdistan. Nor do I disagree that cuddling up to dictators encourages cynicism and anti-Americanism (though isn’t it interesting how conservatives can make such claims without being accused of “blaming America”?) As you can see from the photo at right (Bush shaking hands with Barzani), Bush himself knew quite a bit about cuddling up to dictators.

I do disagree, however, with his use of “backsliding” here, as if George W. Bush left the region on a pro-democracy trajectory, which he most certainly didn’t. Back in January 2009, just as Bush was leaving office, Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report — its annual survey of global political rights and civil liberties — noted that “2008 marked the third consecutive year in which global freedom suffered a decline.”

In February of this year, RAND issued a report finding that the Iraq war, in addition to hurting U.S. credibility and influence in the Middle East, had hobbled democratic reform in the region. According to the report, Iraq’s continuing instability “has become a convenient scarecrow neighboring regimes can use to delay political reform by asserting that democratization inevitably leads to insecurity.” A rather grim verdict for Bush’s “freedom agenda,” the difficult consequences of which Obama now has to contend.

Our guest blogger is Jamie Bartlett, head of the Violence and Extremism program at Demos, a UK-based think tank. He recently authored The Edge of Violence, a report about homegrown terrorism in Europe and Canada.

Is a U.S./UK consensus emerging on the sensitive issue of counter-terrorism? Last month saw two important developments in the fight against al-Qaeda. First, Pauline Neville-Jones, the Minister for Security in the UK’s Conservative-Liberal coalition outlined the new government’s approach. Then the Obama Administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS). More unites these approaches than divides them.

The UK Conservative-Liberal approach to counter-terrorism aims to re-evaluate the balance between concern for security and protection of civil liberties. Stop and search powers for police, pre-charge detention, and “control orders” (the power the Home Secretary has to restrict an individual’s liberty when the intelligence against them cannot be used in court) will all be reviewed and very possibly jettisoned.

President Obama shares this liberal approach: the NSS pickpockets Franklin in its claim that “if we compromise our values in pursuit of security, we will undermine both.” Not quite as good as the original, but the point is made. There are pledges to prohibit torture “without exception or equivocation” and that prolonged periods of detention must be evaluated and justified. Both countries understand that examples of supposed Western hypocrisy play into the hands of extremist recruiters.

The UK will also move sharply away from the so called “multicultural” model — where minority cultural mores and attitudes are protected and encouraged — and towards greater integration. It won’t quite be French style assimilation (we Brits are too cynical for such idealism) but there will be more help for migrants to integrate, tougher border controls, and more confident support for British and Western liberal values. The NSS, by contrast makes no such mention of issues of integration. Not because it is unimportant, but because American Muslims generally are integrated, well-off, and ethnically diverse in a way European Muslims are not. The successful integration of immigrants is of course written into the American DNA — and successful integration is critical in both countries.

The final, and most interesting, similarity is that the NSS specifically mentions the danger of “home-grown terrorism” to national security. Quite right. The U.S. is not immune from radicalization within its own borders as the last two or three years clearly illustrates. Recognizing terrorism and radicalization can come from within, the NSS commits to “empowering” communities to counter radicalization. Read more