1. I wouldn't say "piss off" but I have doubts. The evidence of accountability was that Abrams was asked a pointed question on a panel. Hardly sufficient redress for lying to congress, covering up massacres & praising genocidal leaders.https://twitter.com/dandrezner/status/1096039180436676608 …
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2. "in the early 1980s, Abrams played a vital and constructive role in ensuring that the State Department’s human rights bureau was treated seriously by the rest of the State Department." As if instrumentalization of human rights is not, in fact, the problem!
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3. To unpack that a little: one of Abrams' main historical legacies is that he showed that rhetoric of "human rights" could be a potent tool of American foreign policy, building a bridge from 1970s Democrats (Jackson, Moynihan, Carter) to Reagan/Bush.
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4. Within the American foreign policy elite, this intrumentalized version human rights is regarded as a good thing (hence the bipartisan praise of Abrams from NatSec bigwigs). Those of us on the outside have some questions.
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5. Instrumentalized human rights (i.e. human rights in the service of American hegemony) has always been open to the charge of hypocrisy (see Abrams role in denying El Mozote massacre) but beyond that has underpinned disastrous interventions (2nd Iraq war).
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6. Beyond Abrams himself, there's the larger problem of elite impunity of which he's only one emblem. No one in American foreign policy elite ever pays for anything they do or is held accountable in any meaningful way: McNamara, Kissinger, Cheney etc.
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Hillary Clinton was also one such emblem, which is why many of us felt the way we did about her.
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Not really. She was subsequently appointed Secretary of State
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