OBAMA AND THOSE PESKY FREEDOM TYPES - AT 9:40 A.M. ET:  We've said before that the Washington Post's editorial page, although generally liberal, has an admirable streak of independence and principle.  Compare please with the editorial page of The New York Times. 

Today, in a stunning rebuke, the Post goes after President Obama, and his indifference to democracy.  This time the canvas is Latin America:

FOR ITS winners, the National Endowment for Democracy's annual Democracy Award can mean a brief respite from a dangerous life as a dissident: a trip to Washington, attention from Congress and the media, and -- during the Bush and Clinton administrations -- an Oval Office meeting or statement of support from the president. No such luck for this year's honorees, who are five leaders of Cuba's pro-democracy movement.

We must not offend Father Fidel, nor the hard left of the Democratic Party, which continues to marvel at the Cuban health-care system, just as some in the 1930s marveled at the Nazi road system.

It's not that the president is too busy to concern himself with Latin American politics. The White House arranged for a Spanish journalist to ask a question at Tuesday's news conference; reporter Macarena Vidal pressed Mr. Obama on whether U.S. allies such as Chile and Colombia were doing enough to help with "less democratic countries." The president replied by heaping praise on visiting Chilean President Michele Bachelet, a socialist who has been promoting Cuba's readmission into the Organization of American States and who has gone out of her way to avoid offending Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.

Can't we all just get along?

Message to Mr. Chávez and the Castro brothers: We can work with you. Message to Cuba's democratic opposition: We don't have time for you.

It's the same message the freedom fighters of Iran are hearing from this White House.  Ah, Obama has made us so proud again.  Not like that BUSH (!!) and his voting business.  How Texan.

Mr. Obama's hastily drafted statement -- issued after The Post inquired about his silence -- said he wished "to acknowledge and commend" the five dissidents "and all the brave men and women who are standing up for the right of the Cuban people to freely determine their country's future." He called for the release of the three now in prison.

Will the quickly written statement satisfy the Cuban opposition?  No, says the Post:

They, like the beleaguered pro-democracy movements of Venezuela and Nicaragua, are hoping that the American president will focus his policy on supporting them. Yet for now, Mr. Obama's diplomacy is clearly centered on their oppressors.

COMMENT:  Good for the Washington Post!  We can't wait for Obama to compare the Post to Fox News. 

This president claims to represent "American values."  He does not, and he shows it every day.  He has demonstrated far more friendship toward dictators than toward democrats.  He won't have Cuban dissidents to the Oval Office, which, under Bush, had a bust of Winston Churchill prominently displayed.  Obama got rid of that, too.

June 26, 2009