Note this story in today’s Washington Post:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed alarm Saturday about what she called a growing crackdown on citizens groups around the world and announced a fund to help them fight back.
In what aides called her most important speech in a four-day swing through former Soviet-bloc countries, Clinton said the repression symbolized by the Iron Curtain had given way to government pressures that were often more subtle.
“We must be wary of the steel vise in which many governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit,” Clinton told an international meeting of democracies.
In her speech, Clinton bluntly accused U.S. adversaries such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran of pressuring or outlawing civil-society groups. But she also chided Russia and China, with whom the Obama administration has sought to build closer ties.
Critics have accused the administration of abandoning President George W. Bush’s emphasis on democracy. Administration officials deny that, saying they are redefining a democracy policy that had become discredited by such actions as the invasion of Iraq.
It’s become so automatic for the corporate press to argue that the Bush administration promoted democracy and Barack Obama has not. Neither has and both are pursuing policies that continue wars and begin new ones.
Name one dictatorship that Washington no longer supports and now backs the real democrats.