When we arrived at the Human Rights Council meeting, ambassadors and their aides chatted with each other and typed on their BlackBerries, barely listening as speaker after speaker read monotone statements condemning Qaddafi. But when Clinton began to speak, the crowd hushed. Clinton reinforced President Obama’s demand that Qaddafi step down, and, knowing she was speaking to ambassadors from other repressive countries, pointedly warned, “The power of human dignity is always underestimated until the day it finally prevails.”
