SITTWE, Myanmar — Few people have fought as courageously for human rights as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning democracy advocate who stood up to the generals here in Myanmar.

Aung San Suu Kyi should be one of the heroes of modern times. Instead, as her country imposes on the Rohingya Muslim minority an apartheid that would have made white supremacists in South Africa blush, she bites her tongue.

It seems as though she aspires to become president of Myanmar, and speaking up for a reviled minority could be fatal to her prospects. The moral giant has become a calculating politician.

Another Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Obama, has visited Myanmar, is greatly admired here and cites it as a foreign policy success. I’m generally sympathetic to Obama’s foreign policy, and I understand his reluctance to deploy troops in crisis spots. But here he has been reluctant to deploy even fierce words. The United States often even avoids the word “Rohingya.”