Two items excerpted from today’s WSJ Opinion Journal “Best of the Web,” both links appearing under the heading “Why ‘Human Rights’ Groups Are Irrelevant”:

In a New York Times op-ed (link requires registration), Michael Ignatieff warns that the ‘human rights era’ may be ending. ‘Rome’ — meaning America — ‘has been attacked, and Rome is fighting to re-establish its security and its hegemony. This may permanently demote human rights in the hierarchy of America’s foreign policy priorities.’ He cites the muting of U.S. criticism for human-rights abuses in places like Russia, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as evidence that ‘in the Bush era,’ the human-rights movement ‘risks irrelevance.’

Well, we’re not sure. For one thing, Ignatieff says nothing about the gains in human rights in Afghanistan as a direct result of America going to war there. It’s almost certain that U.S. action to topple the other three members of the ‘axis of evil’ — Iran, Iraq and North Korea — would improve the human rights of the people who live in those countries.

CBS Marketwatch reports on a panel at the World Economic Forum at which Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, ‘said one result of Sept. 11 is that the world should be cautioned against racial stereotyping as a way to build greater global unity.’ Irene Khan of Amnesty International added: ‘This is a call to the media not to say ‘Islamic terrorist.’

The American military has just liberated 25 million people from one of the most oppressive regimes on earth. Meanwhile, an executive of Amnesty International is calling on the media to refrain from accurately describing the people who are presently the world’s biggest threat to human rights. If ‘human rights’ groups are irrelevant, it’s largely their own doing.

And decrying the barbaric conditions at Camp X-Ray without having first inspected it can’t help the case for credibility, either…

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