With the announced intention to take a more accommodating approach to Sudan, the Obama administration is proving to be a disappointment to those who imagined that “hope and change” extended to the world’s oppressed peoples. The New York Times notes that the new soft-pedaling approach may not be well received by the human rights community, which is still trying to come to grips with Obama’s snub of the Dalai Lama:

The new administration policy is likely to inflame an already vociferous chorus of criticism. In advertisements and letters to the White House, legislators, activist groups and Sudanese rebel leaders have accused Mr. Obama of abandoning his promises to make Sudan a priority from his first day in office and to stand tough against President Bashir, whom the International Criminal Court indicted this year for crimes against humanity.

Some critics have expressed outrage over earlier statements by [special envoy General J.Scott] Gration in which he raised questions about the effectiveness of imposing sanctions and suggested that a series of rewards might work better at getting Mr. Bashir’s government in Khartoum to cooperate.

Beyond letter writing and ads, however, what are Richard Gere, Mia Farrow, and the rest of the chic set prepared to do about the administration’s pusillanimous human-rights policy? One would think the people with the “best moral compass” on the planet could bestir themselves to rise up in unified opposition to a policy that amounts to playing footsie with perpetrators of genocide.

The Obama administration’s crouch on human rights on Sudan, Iran, and everywhere else – giving a pass to thugs and spouting cringe-inducing moral equivalency — is of course not simply morally noxious, but also counter-productive. We have assisted the mullahs in establishing international legitimacy. We have taken the heat off of Hugo Chavez. And we now propose to allow Sudan to ooze back in the “international community” with not so much as a traffic ticket for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In doing so, we have systematically undermined those struggling for democracy and regime change, given breathing room to thugs, and muddied our own position as the world’s leading democracy. The world is less democratic, less free, and less safe as a result.

All of that, one would think, should be cause for alarm and protest. But alas, the plight of Roman Polanski and the vexing issue of Rush Limbaugh’s NFL bid seems to be taking up all the time of the liberal preeners. And besides, it’s not as though it’s George W. Bush’s policies we are talking about. What would be odious coming from a Republican administration elicits only yawns from this one. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize, so cut him some slack, right? That, tragically, seems to be the prevailing sentiment among those who used to rail that we weren’t doing enough to defend human rights around the world.