All actions of the Federal government should be bound by the Constitution, including its conduct of foreign policy.
In their conduct of domestic affairs the President of the United States and other politicians at all levels of the government meet with ministers, rabbis, priests, imams and all sorts of “community leaders” who happen to be religious leaders all the time. In general, this doesn’t raise any SOCAS (separation of church and state) concerns. (Things like appointing a bunch of preachers to a “Domestic Policy Advisory Council” might, at least to real hardcores like me.) So meeting with a “community leader” as part of the conduct of foreign policy is legitimate, whether that community leader is a labor union organizer or leader of the political opposition or the mother of a “disappeared person” or an Anglican bishop in apartheid South Africa.
The question of the Pope’s status as a “head of state” is probably fodder for a whole thread in itself. I would argue that the Vatican doesn’t really deserve the status of a sovereign country. Diplomatic relations don’t constitute approval, and it was perfectly legitimate for the United States to have diplomatic relations with the Papal States in the 19th century, which were a bona fide sovereign state, just as we have diplomatic relations now with the theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and as we had and still have diplomatic relations with various oppresive Communist dictatorships. But I don’t really think the Roman Catholic religion should be given a special status as a country, where no other religious body is.
Encouraging a country like Cuba to move from official hostility to religion to genuine SOCAS and freedom of religion is fine with me. I certainly don’t think we should lean on or encourage Cuba (or any other country) to officially establish Roman Catholocism as the state religion or anything like that.
How does objecting to another country’s religiously-motivated tyranny violate our own SOCAS?
I think “rules of engagement” which gave religious sites a wholly separate status would be at best kind of weird. As far as I know, though, religious sites are included along with assorted cultural and historic sites, not to mention humanitarian institutions, and civilian sites in general. In other words, we didn’t set out to bomb mosques during the Gulf War, but we also didn’t set out to bomb archaelogical digs, the Iraqi State Museum of Antiquities, the University of Baghdad, hospitals and orphanages, and in general we didn’t just randomly blow up houses. We certainly haven’t always fought wars that way in the past, but those seem to be the standards we officially follow now.
You mean, should we side with the Serbs against the Muslims, even if we think the Serbs are the aggressors and the perpetrators of the worst atrocities? Of course not, and we didn’t, either.
I’m not sure what this means. The United States government is supposed to be areligious. Domestically, the government is also supposed to protect the freedom of religion (and other freedoms) of all citizens. Just because the government protects Christians from howling mobs of atheists does not make it religious, so long as the government gives equal protection to atheists from howling mobs of Christians (which does not make it anti-religious). In foreign policy I see nothing wrong with standing up for freedom of religion and against tyranny and persecution. This may be objected to on realpolitik grounds–which have little to do with SOCAS–and I have seen some criticism of legislative acts which seek to give special status to victims of religious persecution as opposed to other forms of persecution; that last, however, could be easily dispelled simply by aiding the victims of all sorts of persecution.