The greater good is the bitch-goddess of foreign policy. It provides at once both the inspiration to elevate society and the temptation to debase it. I'm sure one of the reasons that the study of foreign policy draws in so many passive-aggressive poindexters is because they get a cheap thrill from entering a fraternity in which the only admissions requirement is checking your conscience at the door.

In the first international affairs class one attends or the first serious discussion of foreign policy in which one participates, sooner or later the focus turns to the tough choices that must be made in the name of the Shiva of Foggy Bottom.

It is easy to understand this impulse when one watches scenes as in Libya in which a corrupt despot seeks to maintain his illegitimate chokehold on a society through the slaughter of those who only seek the rights due all men and women. Using force and taking life to stop evil and to protect those who cannot defend themselves is certainly justifiable albeit fraught with moral complexities that we too often too easily set aside.

That said however, we have to acknowledge that the natural habitat of this particular bitch-goddess is the slipperiest of slopes. It is worth remembering that most of the world's greatest sins have been committed in the service of someone's definition of the greater good. It is a point the Obama administration ought to take to heart as recent headlines suggest that we are crossing to the wrong side of the world's most dangerous border, the one that divides "realism" from "evil."

Not surprisingly, no place illustrates this danger like the region we call AfPak. And as a consequence no place more emphatically shouts out the question: "Have we no decency? Are there no limits to what we are willing to accept in the pursuit of our allegedly high-minded goals?"

We accept Hamid Karzai and elements of the Pakistani government although we know them to be corrupt and very likely supporting or enabling our enemies. We do this despite the lesson being chanted in public squares across the Middle East -- not to mention most of the history of modern U.S. foreign policy -- is that this approach inevitably comes back to bite us in the most sensitive parts of our national interests. We are seen as the co-authors of the wrongs our chosen despots commit or tolerate because ... well, because we are. That we are doing this in Afghanistan even as we are seemingly preparing to embrace a bigger role for the Taliban in the government only compounds the wrong -- the only justification for supporting Karzai is that he is better than the alternative but we don't seem to think that's necessarily the case anymore. Whatever your view of the issue, you have to admit it's a treacherously morally ambiguous place to venture to reclaim the national standing the Obama team correctly feels the United States lost during the Bush years.

Read on

The Wall Street Journal runs a story entitled "TV Host Targets Afghan Women's Shelters." It describes an effort by a 27-year-old Afghan TV personality named Nasto Nadiri to promote shutting down shelters for women, which he argues "are not acceptable for our people who have fought 30 years to put the word 'Islam' in front of Afghanistan." He resents that "some NGOs come and want to make another way for our country." Many of the women are in shelters seeking protection from death threats from their own families, families who condemn their daughters for "immorality" for running away from arranged marriages.

Time magazine a week earlier runs a cover featuring the image of a woman brutalized in the name of Islam and arguing that should we leave Afghanistan, countless other women will suffer her fate. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argues we will not forget the women of Afghanistan -- that they are one of the reasons we are there. The government of Brazil makes a fumbled effort to offer sanctuary to a woman sentenced to stoning under Islamic law. The same fate and worse affects women across the Islamic world who violate religious precepts and are treated as second-class citizens according to the dictates of local clergy turned lawmakers.

For policymakers and for people who care about the moral and ethical underpinnings of policy, there is a dark and difficult conundrum presented here. If we embrace tolerance, celebrate diversity and promote religious freedom, what do we do when a religion or a subset of its practitioners or a culture promotes a view that is fundamentally inconsistent with the most basic, most universally acknowledged principles of human rights?

To answer this question honestly requires considerable courage. To live by the implications of that answer requires even more.

The fundamental human rights of women trump the teachings of any religion. To denigrate, abuse, or devalue in any way the majority population of the earth -- mothers, daughters and sisters -- is either an affront to God or alternatively, if it is argued that it is the will of God, it is an affront to decency.

For the United States, embroiled in a war in Afghanistan and entangled with allies and others throughout the world who promote or tolerate policies that are unfair or cruel to women, the challenges are great. As Time asks, "Do we leave if by leaving we sentence women to decades or centuries more of enslavement, compromise and debasement in the name of religion and cultural history?" Would we do so if the reasons for the abuse were that they were black or Jewish or Christian?

History suggests that the answer is, sadly, yes. And frankly, a prolonged stay in Afghanistan is neither in the U.S. interest nor, in fact, is it moral on its own because it produces an appalling waste of life and resources and much suffering in pursuit of an unachievable goal. (Regardless of how small the president argues that ever-shrinking goal has become.)

But we cannot leave Afghanistan nor can we continue to pursue our goals in Pakistan or develop our relations with the Saudis or consider the future of our relations with the Iranians...nor can we appropriately contemplate relations with any nation and at the same time turn a blind eye to the systematic abuse of women and its justification by friends, enemies and whatever it is you might call the Afghan or Pakistani governments.

Should we be providing aid of any sort to any nation that doesn't honor the most basic tenets of the universal declaration of human rights? Should we be allied with or, worse still, should we protect with the young men and women of America any society that seeks to treat women as property, sets double-standards for "moral" behavior, punishes violation of those standards with torture, stoning or legalized murder?

Does realpolitik give these societies a pass? Does "honoring Islam"?

The answer should be no and no. What is going on in these countries is a disgrace every bit as grand and incomprehensible and awful as the Holocaust -- only it is much bigger, much more ancient, and if possible, much more evil if only due to the extent of its reach and the breadth of our acceptance of what has happened.

We need a new international understanding on these issues, one that will produce a coalition of nations that will strictly enforce a ban on aid to countries that abuse women -- and one that will introduce sanctions on those countries until they comply with what must be the most basic entry-level rules for participating in global society. No one has been more tireless or vocal in pursuit of these goals than Clinton and one hopes that the experience of Afghanistan and her increased exposure to the region will produce something beyond the heart-felt rhetoric and halfway measures we have seen on these issues.

We can't be a moral society and turn a blind eye to this. Nor can we call ourselves honorable and ally ourselves to those who tolerate or empower the abusers. Our geopolitical objectives in the Middle East are not greater than the rights of women everywhere. Fighting terror is not greater than our obligation to those women. And no religion, nor any government that acts "in the name of religious values" that promotes the abuse of anyone, is worthy of our tolerance.

In today's installment of the annals of going too far, we find the following stories:

• Hugo Chavez to Replace Bill Murray in Remake of Caddyshack

Hugo Chavez may have finally crossed the line. Gutting Venezuela's constitution was not enough. Fostering leftist uprisings across the Americas was not enough. Getting into bed with anyone who hated America was not enough. Arms deals and military exercises with the Russians were not enough.  Providing arms to the FARC, a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of a neighboring government was not enough.  But yesterday's report that Chavez is now taking on golf may ultimately do him in.

Reportedly, Chavez sees golf as the leisure pursuit of the elite and is therefore taking steps to shut down two of Venezuela's top golf clubs, one in Maracay and one in Caraballeda. Previously he took off after the sport in one of his televised rants. As reported in the New York Times:

Let's leave this clear," Mr. Chavez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. "Golf is a bourgeois sport," he said, repeating the word "bourgeois" as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport's laziness.

Doesn't he realize that he has finally stirred up a bees nest of trouble he may not be able to control. Golf is not bourgeois sport. (Actually, it started as a pastime of humble shepherds in Scotland.) It is a religion of the rich and powerful. Why just yesterday one of Washington's most notable journalists was commenting to me about the avidity with which President Obama made his way to the links by Andrews Air Force Base, going whenever he could find weekend time. In fact, this reporter wondered aloud how the President found time to be with his family given all his weekend golf. But Obama has the bug. It's not curable. It has historically infected presidents and others who might finally start giving Chavez a hard time now that he has decided to go after them where they live. (My pal New York Times columnist Tom Friedman even writes a golf column, he is so devoted to the game. Personally I am a tennis guy ... because tennis is actually a sport ... I agree with Chavez that nothing involving riding around in a little electric cart can actually be called a sport ... but I bear no malice to golfers. I don't dare.)

Eviscerate democracy in your own country and all you do is anger millions of Venezuelans and right minded people everywhere. That's survivable. But does anyone really want to go head to head with Tiger Woods?

• Give Hillary a Break, Please

This week the media went too far (for a change) in its attacks on Hillary Clinton when she took umbrage at a question about what her husband thought about a particular issue. While the question was misquoted, she had every right to push back on the idea that somehow her views were secondary to his. The attacks on her, focusing on her pique, her mood, her level of exhaustion, the challenges of being married to a powerful man, were almost uniformly sexist. She was delivering through her honesty an important message on a continent where the message needs to be heard. (On a planet where the message needs to be heard.) She is Secretary of State. She is one of the most important political leaders in the United States. She is vastly more relevant to contemporary American politics and policies than is her husband.

That said, I wonder if she then went too far in her response to a question about political corruption when she answered that we had our own problems with our "evolving" democracy in the United States and then offered as an example the implication that the 2000 election was compromised by the fact that Republican candidate for president's brother was governor of the state whose contested election decided the race. Personally, I think the 2000 election is a stain on America's political history, that almost certainly the results in Florida were not fairly reflected in the result and that the intervention of the Supreme Court along party lines was particularly ugly. But the implication that Jeb Bush rigged the results without proof was probably a step too far especially overseas. That said, I am not of the opinion that speaking of our warts overseas is such a bad thing. Honesty is the only path we've got to restoring credibility. It also looked to me like she was a.) joking and b.) exhausted (which is understandable toward the end of an historic 11 day trip across Africa).

• You say Myanmar, I say Burma…Let’s call the whole trip off? 
  

Finally, I find myself wondering if Senator Jim Webb's upcoming trip to Myanmar is a trip too far. He will be engaging the leaders of that country's regime concurrently to their latest outrage against the rights of Aung San Suu Kyi -- an 18 month extension on her house arrest which was handed down this week. Further, I highly doubt that anyone sees Webb's trip as that of an independent official.  He is not only a prominent Democratic Senator, he is also known to be close to many at senior levels in the Obama administration and almost certainly would not have undertaken this trip without their okay.

The trip tests the core idea of engagement. There are few more odious regimes on the planet and this one is being interacted with precisely at one of the moments when that odiousness is most clearly on display. If Webb's message is tough or produces some relief for Suu Kyi (or at least makes a legitimate attempt to do so), then the risks such a visit will be spun by some to the advantage of the Burmese regime are worth taking. But it's a delicate business and engagement will almost certainly produce instances in which we are played.

All that said, if Webb's trip involves the kind of direct talk of which he is especially capable and is a real effort to advance U.S. interests there (which begin with fairer treatment of Suu Kyi and movement toward restoration of basic rights within Burmese society) then it is not only not going too far ... it will remind the world of how far Burma's neighbors in Asia really ought to be going (and have not gone) to address this blight in their back yard.

UPDATE: After posting I received a note containing an open letter to Webb from three major dissident groups in Burma: the All Burma Monks' Alliance, the 88 Generation Students, and the All Burma Federation of Student Unions. "We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit and propagandize that you endorse their treatment on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and over 2,100 political prisoners, their human rights abuses on the people of Burma, and their systematic, widespread and ongoing attack against the ethnic minorities," it reads.

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images,STR/AFP/Getty Images,ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images,THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images