Human rights gets excised, in principle and in title, from the White House's agenda

You almost have to admire the attention to detail, as Trump's team of "alt-right" hacks and cronies seek to dismantle any notion of collective human decency.

The White House used to have a senior National Security Council post called "special assistant to the president for multilateral affairs and human rights." This staffer coordinated, developed, and helped implement government policy related to human rights and humanitarian relief. This included a host of matters, including refugee assistance, human trafficking, and the law of war (think drones, Guantanamo, and torture). A main responsibility was, of course, pushing for human rights abroad—not always an easy task when doing so might clash with other priorities of an administration. [...]

Under Trump, the title for this position has been changed to "special assistant for international organizations and alliances." Note "human rights" has been excised.

The new denizen is an ex-Navy admiral turned military business consultant, because of course he is, and it sounds like the office will be moving away from worrying about irritating things like human rights in order to take a more, shall we say, "corporate" approach to international relations. Under Team Trump the administration has been shifting U.S. rhetoric to be more favorable to authoritarians with a flair for jailing or murdering those that oppose them, from the steady tick-tock of Russia's political assassinations to Duterte's campaign of street-by-street murders. Having human rights be removed from the job description in favor of organizations and alliances is, if nothing else, on the nose.

Whether shifts like this are the Trump team attempting to interpret the whims of their rudderless boss or whether the Bannonites are taking the initiative to excise humanitarian concerns from U.S. policy on their own is of course subject to debate—put me down firmly on the side of suspecting Trump neither knows nor cares about any of these changes, because why would he—the effect is the same.

from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2qsTF5m