I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this press release in my email box time-stamped 5:08 pm on a Friday night:

Tell President Obama not to reward Syria's #1 supporter

In fact, it didn't even register for a moment and I didn't put two-and-two together until I opened it up and saw that it wasn't the re-upping of a good campaign a few weeks ago by United to End Genocide urging the Pentagon not to sell arms to Rosoboronexport, the Kremlin's arms dealer. United won that cause the way NGOs with online petitions seldom do because it was a no-brainer that even the Obama Administration could handle as Russia's blatant support of the murderous Assad grows more starkly visible. The US has remained strong against the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout as well and refused Moscow's demands to extradite him.

No, this petition was a call on Obama — due to the atrocities in Syria, backed by Russia — to stop the signing of the Permanent Normal Trade Relations  (PNTR) law permanently graduating Russia from the Jackson-Vanik amendment to US Trade Law — which also contained action on the Magnitsky Accountability Act to help end impunity of human rights violations in Russia, named for the whistleblower who died in pre-trial detention, Sergei Magnitsky.

It was a call on Obama to stop the progress made on Jackson-Vanik AND to stop the Magnitsky Act. This combined legislation passed 92-4 in the Senate on Thursday. The President is due to sign it into law.

Now, why was this protest to Obama coming at the 11th hour like this?! I had to marvel.

Ostensibly, Tom Andrews and United merely wanted to find a device to tie their concerns about Syria and Russia's role in it. As they did with their campaign on the Pentagon.

But really, guys? Now? All of a sudden? Where were you a year ago or more, when only the first 10,000 people were killed in Syria with Russia's help? Why now?

Magnitsky could have been made into a Syria bill if there really were a global campaign on it, and in fact, a certification process with hearings might have been introduced.

And I realized that it really was quite possible for the "progressives" in and around United to cook up this gambit — and possibly with some planted whispers from certain quarters — to scuttle Magnitsky, so hated was it by the Russians, and so eager were the progs to placate the Russians. Stranger things have happened!

Look, I'm all for making a bill about Syria and Russia. There should be one. But it could have been started a year ago or more. In fact, if "progressives" were serious, they would have worked with mainstream human rights activists and conservatives concerned about Russia's bad behaviour. There could have been a Big Bill of Bad Things Russia Does in the world which was installed even as technically Russia graduated from Jackson-Vanik.

But nobody was interested in doing that anywhere, and their appearance at this 11th hour with this demand just seems suspect to me. It may very well be conceived in good faith; I bet it's not.

The logic, of course, is wrong, as the Jackson-Vanik amendments only deals with countries with non-market economies that impede emigration. It doesn't deal with countries that assassinate people, or let them die in prison; it doesn't contain clauses about punishments in the cases a country sells arms to human rights violators. You can't make Jackson-Vanik do everything you want to do about Russia; it's merely a leftover from the Cold War era in the form it was possible to do things then — BTW, I make no excuses for the Cold War, as Cold was what you had to be regarding Soviet behaviour.

It would be great if there were such a bill about all the bad things Russia does, but there isn't. Of course, anybody who understood the Syrian tragedy always in Russian terms, and understood Russia above all needed to own this atrocity and be eternally linked in everyone's minds with it, would have been happy to see such a bill, long ago.

But there wasn't any such critical mass in Congress. And large social movements tend to be on the left, and leave little latitude for craziness — i.e. crossing over rigid ideological lines. It's a miracle Magnitsky got through the hurdles it did — people saying it would harm good relations with a country we "needed" — for Syria, of all things. People saying it wasn't so terrible — the US is worse. People saying we shouldn't have any international dimension to it — people saying we shouldn't isolate Russia — and then the reverse, which was only about trying to ensure it went back to the House to die.

Someone suggested that if Obama was normal and cared more about human rights per se, he would be happy to sign this bill. And he would even do  something like invite the widow of Magnitsky to Washington for a ceremony in the malachite room or something.

But not, not Obama, and certainly not Obama II. There's no longer a Human Rights Day celebration on December 10.

Let's hope this comes and go and there are no mishaps. I'm all for sanctioning Russia over Syria. Start another bill for that and don't screw with this one.