What Did We Need With Moral Authority Anyways?

"Moral Authority" is a term many politicians love to use to throw their weight around. George Bush certainly has time and time again. Unfortunately he has tossed it so many times that he apparently lost it. Moral Authority has gone missing and Americans are having trouble locating that time-honored tradition in the United States. Fox News was going to cover the possible kidnapping story, but they decided to go with the Holloway story yet again.

The Washington Post picks up the ball for our friends at Fox:

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, has used its past 17 annual surveys to highlight the most egregious humanitarian crises in the world and to note improvements when warranted. The latest report marks a break with that tradition by focusing on democracy and the ways in which U.S. influence have affected other countries' pursuit of it.

The group delivers a harsh critique of the Bush administration, suggesting that by accommodating autocratic allies in the fight against terrorism, it has failed to meet its declared goal of promoting democratic values.

In an introductory essay titled "Despots Masquerading as Democrats," Kenneth Roth, the organization's executive director, blasts such leaders as Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Roth accuses them of finding "utility in holding electoral charades to legitimize" their reigns.

Now to be fair the United States has a long history of supporting autocrats as long as it has seemed to benefit our own agenda. The thing is, the level of support for people like Putin and Musharraf has grown so much in the last seven years, no one can deny that our Moral Authority ran away from home when Bush beat him so badly. You'd run away too if you were in that White House.