Two editorials, one in the NY Daily News and other in the Telegraph underscore the political problem facing President Obama with regard to Iran, but in different ways.
Charles Krauthammer, writing in the NY Daily News, is contemptuous of President Obama’s reaction so far. He writes:
Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side. And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued “dialogue” with their clerical masters.
Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with — which inevitably confers legitimacy upon — leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.
Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of “some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.”
That’s not nearly as bad as Gerald Warner’s piece in the Telegraph. Warner’s article is entitled, “President Pantywaist latest: Iran unclenches its fist – to slap Barack Obama’s face” and you can’t get any more obvious about contempt than that. Warner’s says,
For America and the rest of the world, Iranian nuclear development is the supreme consideration. How many of those superficially Americanised young Iranians, so active on Twitter, does Obama think want to see their country stripped of the prestige of being a potential nuclear power, especially when Pakistan is already in the club?
This is a lose/lose situation for Obama. He is as flaky on Iran as on everything else. In 2004 he favoured “surgical” missile strikes against Iran. In 2007 he did not rule out force, but preferred “aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions” – but that was for the ears of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Since he moved address from Chicago to Washington, his stance has become more nuanced (ie he hasn’t a clue what to do).
He is trying to steer a course between appeasement and rhetoric about the Iranian “threat”, while knowing he may eventually have to knuckle down and accept a nuclear Islamic republic, since Barack doesn’t do war. If the Israelis do the job for him, that will be ten times more provocative in Middle Eastern terms. Look forward to change you’d better believe in.
But there are differences to the two editorials. Krauthammer argues that America is losing an opportunity to ride an anti-authoritarian wave which first showed itself in Hezbollah’s defeat in the Lebanese elections and is now rising to a crest in Iran. Warner on the other hand, is implying that events may not be so benign. That far from a wave of democracy we are simply seeing a wave of unknown nature. But, by imitating a deer caught in the headlights, instead of acting the Leader of the Free World, President Obama is passively letting events sweep him along.
The clearest indication of the Obama lag came when Congress approved a resolution “in support of Iranian dissidents” by a vote of 405-1. Only Rep. Ron Paul voted against. Two Democrats, Ellision and Loebsack, voted “present”. Congress is a weather vane that is forever ready to feign principle when the polls suggest it. That may say something about Congress, but it also says something about the polls.
“The resolution was approved in a 405-1 vote, with two members voting present. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was the only lawmaker opposed to the resolution. Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and David Loebsack (D-Iowa) voted present. “This resolution is not about American interests,” said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee. “It is about American values that I believe are universal.”
Benjamin Sarlin at the Daily Beast on the other hand, carries an interview from an Iranian ‘reformist’ cleric that doing nothing in Iran for the present is the right course of action. “Critics have urged Obama to “go green,” to side with Iranian protesters more vocally. But in an exclusive interview, one of Iran’s most high-profile opposition clerics, Mohsen Kadivar, tells The Daily Beast that the reformers don’t want any help. He also says the protests are about the presidential election, not about overthrowing the Ayatollah.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast after a rally and prayer session by the United Nations in solidarity with Iran’s protesters, Kadivar said that the opposition movement was entirely self-sufficient and in need of no support from foreign leaders. “What Obama has done so far is about perfect,” Kadivar, garbed in his traditional cleric’s robes, said. “We don’t need any special support from you. The green movement for democracy and liberty Iran is independent and we don’t need anything from the foreigners. We should get democracy ourselves.”
Kadivar is one of Iran’s top human rights activists, renowned for his religiously grounded arguments in favor of expanded civil liberties and democracy. Moments before the interview, he had delivered a sermon in Farsi to a green-clad crowd of a couple dozen protesters, in which he spoke directly to Iran’s ruling party, asking why they did not respect the voice of their own people, particularly by closing down Internet and phone communications.
There is almost certainly a division on the ground in Iran about the way to go forward. My own memories of the EDSA Revolution and the time leading up to are thronged with recollections of argument and counterargument. There were those who believed [and I was one of them] that gathering millions around the rebel military camp was simply giving Marcos a bigger artillery target. I remember walking a very long circuit through the north of EDSA looking for signs of artillery units at the same time some people I knew scrambled over the fence into Enrile’s beseiged camp to take up M-14s they had never fired in their lives in hastily dug foxholes. I was almost right about the arty strike. Today we know from historical sources that: “helicopters, manned by the 15th Air Force Strike Wings, led by Colonel Antonio Sotelo, were ordered to head to Camp Crame to neutralize it. Secretly, the squadron had already defected and instead of attacking Camp Crame, landed in it, with the crowds cheering and hugging the soldiers who came out. The presence of the helicopters boosted the morale of Enrile and Ramos who had been continually encouraging their fellow soldiers to join the opposition. ” Events were occuring very rapidly in parallel. The mood twitched from hour to hour. Is Kadivar right? Who knows?
My own guess is that President Obama is trapped by two things. The first is the momentum of his own miscalculations. He has crafted an entire strategy for the Middle East and now the carpet (and a Persian one) has been pulled from under his feet. The second is an implicit intelligence and bureaucratic failure. Presidents cannot choose from an unlimited number of action options. They can only select from what is called an “organizational repertoire”. It is like a piano. You can only press the keys on the keyboard. If the key is missing, then no can play. In this case, my guess is that Obama has no worked-up options for this rapidly changing case and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has now been shown what her true capacity is in life.
Things aren’t moving according to the script for the President. And this time, the media can’t write it for him.
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That anyone expected anything less than complete incompetence out if Hillary is beyond me.
Of course she is in over her head. She was in over her head as a Senator.
As to Obama, we should at least consider that he is not an honest actor in this at all, that his agenda from the beginning was opposed to American interests altogether.
He certainly is acting like a front man–one that is trying to figure out if he should cash in now and find a new paymaster or wait it out.
If there is any remnant of patriots left in the intel community, or even just opportunist bidding their time, now is the time to sting him.
I say it obvious that Obama’s allegiance is not with the USA or the West. He is acting in the interests of Islam, the BRICs and players like Soros.
This contretemps make this glaringly obvious, at least to me.
What? The Europeans don’t adore BHO? There is only one rhetorical escape hatch left for His worshippers in the media: the British aren’t Europeans. Ah. Harmony restored.
But there is the inconvenient fact that BHO was not just beaten to the punch Georgia-style by John McCain, but by the heads of state of France and Germany…and that is much harder to dismiss. Nuclear-armed and terror-supporting Iran with hegemonic ambition is much more a clear and present danger to people in their missile range than to us, which is part of the reason GWB invited them along to talks. All they can do really is to talk, particularly the Germans, yet they are not afraid to say what our President took nearly a week to mumble fitfully. Apparently, “nuanced” now means “waited until the situation played itself out”, and “Smart Diplomacy” has a large component of not saying anything if you don’t know what to say. While that is smart, it’s not what we elect leaders for.
I guess if there were hundreds of thousands marching in Tehran for asbestos abatement, our current chief executive and former community organizer would at least recognize a familiar complaint. When it’s basic election fairness and human rights in general, things apparently become murkier. This is disheartening. It’s always disheartening to be out-classic liberaled by the French, but goodness I’m glad they’ve done it this time.
Michael Ledeen’s plea of the last decade regarding Iran, “Faster, please” has been taken up by the people of Iran, but that message could hardly come to a President less-equipped to hear it.
People who reflect on this debacle may want to ask themselves, ‘why did this engagement with Ahmadinejad go so wrong’. The answer, from first principles, is that stable agreements can only be made with stable partners. You can sign a treaty with Japan, Britain, Canada or France for example, and be reasonably sure the deal will stick. Successor governments will honor the deals of their predecessors. But making a deal with Hamas, Hezbollah and Khamenei, for example, is much more iffy because you never know whether they’ll still be in the saddle the next time you look. ‘Engagement’ with Iran was always going to be subjected to contingent events.
This is why all those negotiations with Yasser Arafat and Hamas and whoever else that Jimmy Carter is so fond of talking to, had the tendency to go nowhere. It wasn’t because, as they were so fond of thinking, that we haven’t bribed them enough or the Israelis were too stingy with concessions. It was simply that their cast of characters kept changing. Their internal politics kept churning like a cement mixer on overdrive. You bought one enemy off only to see another come online. Ultimately, it became like trying to eat soup with a fork.
This doesn’t mean you can’t make deals with shady characters, but it does mean that such deals have an inherent amount of instability inherent in them. The idea that Obama was going to build his Middle East Peace on this foundation of shifting sand seems kind of funny in retrospect. I wonder whether Hillary has drawn the necessary conclusions. But maybe she was playing a different game.
No one can seriously doubt now that Obama is an abject lightwieght. The only archtype he fits is Forrest Gump (or, perhaps another movie character, Chauncy Gardner). His core competency is saying things, then later saying the opposite and believing them both (which is really like meaning neither).
One of the problems is that saying things is not reality. Teaching law is not practicing law, getting elected is not legislating or executing, passing a Stimulus Bill does not stimulate the economy, saying you will close Gitmo does not close it and talking about Diplomacy doesn’t move Dictators… but this is not news to folks at BC. For all the radical moves he’s made, it’s only 5 months and the timeline is far too short to judge any of it so, while he has lit the fuse on lots of stuff, it hasn’t hit the powder yet…
His is the thinnest resume of any President and it shows. And the scary thing is if I, a little-accomplished accountant, can figure this out you know the Putins, Khameni’s, Hamas etc… know this to a certainty. (see – “…Barack doesn’t do war…”)
This was what President Bush had in mind six years ago. Persian pilgrims to Shiite shrines in Iraq can’t be silenced. The word has gotten out.
There are 50-somethings and older still in Iran who remember life before the ayatollahs.
There are millions of expatriate Iranians successfully integrating into Western societies.
There are millions of young Iranian women who have had enough.
In a few hours there will likely be a great bloodbath, resulting either in regime change or consolidation and tightening of the mullocracy’s grip on the throat of the Persian people.
The regime has been at war with America for 30 years. Any American who doesn’t want it changed has some explaining to do.
Wretchard — You are making a fundamental error of assumption. That Obama means well. He doesn’t. The man is the intellectual love child of Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, and Bill Ayers. Such a man can ONLY have contempt and hatred for Whites, and for America. That he’s a Muslim, and a not very secret one either, there can be little doubt.
Obama simply wants Ahmadinejad to win because that increases the likelihood of Iran nuking Israel off the map and hitting the US with an odd nuke or two. Obama’s fondest dreams come true.
Much of the nation is solidly behind him. The ladies on the View, for example, if they were not wiped out in a nuclear attack, would be solidly behind the attackers explaining why we “deserved it” and how we have “learn from the experience” and so on. Typical for the Media, Yuppies, and so on.
After all, everyone KNEW what Obama was, and the weakness and appeasement he stood for. About 52% of the nation thought it was a good idea. Obama’s non-stance on Iran is no shock. That’s always been the man. Much of the nation wants desperately to surrender to someone, anyone. and be a servant to terrible masters. It’s why movie stars rush off to hug Chavez and Castro, and so on.
Like a broken clock, I might only be right twice a day, but I do not trust the chain of events in Iran.
The protests are in support of who again? Smells like the protesters seek to replace Jimmy Carter with Obama. Same smell different puppets.
The Left believes that saying something until the masses believe it is Reality. To them if CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS say it then it is true. They believe that we must believe that Hillary Clinton is the smartest woman in the world’s or that Michelle Obama is beautiful and stylish or that Barack Obama can create wealth with words because they say so. Whether they actually believe any of these things themselves is beside the point. Unfortunately for them there are more audiences and voices then they can control. The students in Iran are like the small boy in the fable and the boy is yelling that the Emperor has no clothes.
You can sign a treaty with Japan, Britain, Canada or France.
…
This is why all those negotiations with Yasser Arafat and Hamas and whoever else that Jimmy Carter is so fond of talking to, had the tendency to go nowhere. It wasn’t because, as they were so fond of thinking, that we haven’t bribed them enough or the Israelis were too stingy with concessions. It was simply that their cast of characters kept changing
Wretchard, with all due respect, I that think you should lay off the bourbon for a week or two.
The French never found agreement that they could not weasel their way around, often while
they are kissing you on the cheek or convincing you that it is you that is welshing on the deal. This is a founding principle of their nation and part of their “Charm”.
Deals with shady characters? Arafat and Hamas screwed any deals before the papaer was dry.
Arafat was around for decades. He certainly outlived major changes in American, European and ME politics. His departure changed little but the fortunes of his entourage. The Iranians, they have been there for 30 years. Don’t get me started on the Norks.
In fact the one thing that is constant with these vipers is it does not matter much who is the primary actor or how long he is in the saddle.
This is why,incidentally, GWB’s WOT was so visionary, and why the Iraq theater was so necessary a part of it.
It was not a case of succession: This is a flaw in your argument. But the central flaw is that you are confusing nations with individual scoundrels or criminal syndicates.
Moreover, you misjudge the essence of the core of our civilization relative to those on its periphery. They are not morally equivalent, nor are they bonded by the same history, fears, dreams, hopes, creeds or blood.
The only deals that you can make with such people or groups are minor “deals” in larger designs, designs that when completed destroy the jackals or finally reduce them to vassals or spectators. You have to control the drama from beginning to end. You only make deals with them a bit before you win the war, vanquish them, frogmarch them off to prison or drag them out to a ditch and shoot them.
Mobsters only expect others to stick to their end of the bargain, the terms of which these villains will constantly change. Once you have established that you are either a fool or a coward, they never stop intimidating, plundering, humiliating and extorting.
About the only way you can control them is by complete over-match and fear, but even this is momentary, they will always make common cause with your enemy and weaken you until they can strike again. So it is with a Stalin; so it is Capone; So it is with Russia. They do not honor their agreements because they have no honor.
Beyond all that, it could the key nations of our civilization honor their agreements because they are in fact honorable, not because of succession. And they are wise. They know that barbarity and little else lies at the other side of it destruction. But as the civilization rots out, this morality and the common bonds may well crack, and nations will go their own way.
Famously, this is what happened to Islam; let us hope that we can avoid this fate.
(We will leave a discussion of France to a later date, but it is enough to say that we of the West have figured out how to deal with her “Charms”, We have our work-arounds.)
I would point out that it seems to be that America has a very difficult time managing to keep its commitments as we whipsawed back an forth between decency and Marxism in DC over the last 50 years or so. Note that this often effects those on the periphery more that those in the core. Viet Nam is a core example. Let us hope that Iraq does not rpove to be another one. Onama may yet change this even in the core.
Really, we have to win this Cold Civil War before this America can ever hope to lead our civilization again. Obama’s reaction to Iran places this truth in the harshest light.
Note that Kadivar is an Islamic Cleric, and whatever his attitude towrd freedom and democracy, he is still an Islamic Cleric first and foremost.
Like the ones in Iraq who despised Sadar but insisted that Clerics be protected, he is mainly concerned with making sure his own position is not compromised.
For if the Iranian people do overthrow their masters, they will be no more inclined to give mercy to the clerics than than they were to the their royalty in 1979.
Kadivar is probably just wishing to ride the unrest into a position of power.
I hear you Bonzo but the bigger issue may be that while it seems to us that the protestors are asserting their right to pick between vanilla and French vanilla, Khameini has now laid down the gauntlet. If the protesters puck it up en masse, then they’re rejecting the governmental authority of their theocracy. Who becomes President after that is not as big a deal as the possibility that the whole creaking edifice of church, state, IRGC and so many other feifdoms that make up the Iranian government may likely collapse, and be replaced by something else entirely.
The 1979 Revolution did not start off as a theocracy, there was a lot of dissatisfaction over many things, and there was more than a little leftist communist-socialist contribution. Over time, the leftists were either wiped out or subsumed into the collective of the mullahs. The current government has Five-Year plans, oppresses opponents and is financially destitute despite immense riches — sounds like a leftist economic policy to me.
I doubt the folks in the street are quoting Hayek, but popular overthrow of the most populous and active Islamic theocracy can’t help but be a good thing in the battle against Islamism. KSA is arguably a kingdom with theocratic overtones, but the closest thing to a Caliphate there is in the world is Khameini’s position. The AQ Sunnis may not agree, but name another Muslim religious leader with more temporal power.
The downside to this uprising is streets of dead Iranians with nothing to show for it, Tianenmen II. There have been smaller-scale student uprisings in the past decade that were successfully put down, I had begun to despair that the Iranian people were satisfied with their lot, and this may end very badly. A New Iran without theocracy may be weaker than the current one, in destabilizing ways — statehood for the Baluchis, autonomy for the southwestern Arabs and the Kurds in the northwest, all of which will introduce new problems for Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. There are a lot of people who know how to make bombs in Iran, and lots of them still want to get paid, so a civil war on Iran between a weakened secular-esque government and hard-line pro-theocracy remnants may make the worst phase of Iraq look like an opening act.
The upside, though…millions of Iranians demanding freedom and getting it. The bank accounts for Hamas, Hezbollah and Damascus reading ‘NSF’. Yet another example of Muslims living out their religion without their religion in peace and prosperity. That would be almost as big in the War on Terror as the Berlin Wall coming down was in the Cold War. Not vindication, but a clear repudiation of the aims of political Islam in the place where it reached its furthest extent.
That would be a good outcome. I just hope if the figurative ball gets passes to BHO during this series if events he’ll take it to the hole. But I have my doubts, a neocon would try, but a realist very well may not.
Dear Wretchard,
Responding to your Number 3 post, the problem wasn’t even the classic complaint that “those politicians wouldn’t stay bought,” but that they might be murdered or occasionally just summarily tossed out of their terrorist organization before any agreement could be implemented.
And usually, the reason for their being tossed or snuffed by their brothers-in-arms was… well, punishment for making a deal that somehow diluted their plans for killing every Jew in Israel.
Check “Zahra Rahnavard” is stomping on the America, UK, Israel flags
http://bit.ly/19IGG2
(sorry wrong url)
Check “Zahra Rahnavard” is stomping on the America, UK, Israel flags
http://bokedou-an-hanv.blogspot.com/2009/06/zahra-rahnavard-musavis-egery.html
Bonzo: I doubt that the Iranians will be happy with the government they end up with. Americans never are.
That isn’t the point. It is a salutary lesson for governments to be removed by whatever means. Shows that it can be done. Makes everyone in power look over their shoulder, occupies the mind.
Derek
Marie Claude, from your link it sounds like she and Michelle Obama have a better basis for understanding with regard to the evils of the United States than, say, Mrs. Obama and Carla Bruni do in terms of their roles as international standards of beauty. I expect their meeting will go well.
Stan, @4. Please don’t insult Forrest Gump! He’s a far more honorable character and a better person.
Obama has an entirely obtuse view of the world, so the logic that spins out of his errors can not have a good a good ending. This is not complicated, gents. He so misreads our enemies and confers on them qualities which, quite frankly, they would reject out of hand in a moment of candor with each other.
This guy is Jimmy Dhimmi Carter raised to a factor of 2.
Who are you to judge, Darren?
“After all, everyone KNEW what Obama was, and the weakness and appeasement he stood for. About 52% of the nation thought it was a good idea.”
Not quite, Whiskey. About 1/3 of the citizens voted for Obama; about 1/3 voted for someone else; about 1/3 did not vote at all.
Look back at votes cast in Presidential elections since Watergate, and something become clear: the Democrat always gets the vote of about 1/3 of the citizens, whether it is a Clinton or a Kerry. It is the votes for the other guy(s) that shoot up & down. In the next election after Ross Perot got 20 million votes, it is pretty clear that most of those voters did not go back to voting for the Republican — they did not vote at all.
Obama’s support (outside the media) is less strong than you — & probably he — thinks.
One of the other dangers of an Obama is that he may easily over-react if he thinks that the Iranians are dissing him. Which of course they are.
When you get down to it, there is nothing like a good-going world war as a cover for truly revolutionizing society. And if Obama can get China to declare war on the US, then all those Treasuries can just be ripped up, and the interest money diverted to ACORN.
In general dithering on global events will only signal indecisiveness and weakness on the part of the USA and the Obama administration.
As others have posted, the assumption that Obama’s agenda is aligned with freedom and promotion of democracy may be misplaced. Obama is no Ronald Reagan. Obama has his own agenda and it’s quite different than that of Ronald Reagan.
Lastly, beware of people like ‘reformist’ clerics that are able to spread taqiyya with impunity and moral authority. They too have their own agenda.
Revolutionary Guards In Surrounding Areas Being Sent to Tehran
Iranians are reporting that the Revolutionary Guards are being dispatched to Tehran from surrounding areas.
Voice of Iranian in Semnan City
The Iranian who sent this to me provided this rough translation:
“Many plain cloths were in Semnan, they were so many that I could not believe it.
many Sepah (special and royal guards of supreme leader, Khamenie)or call them revolutionary guards from Semnan City and City of Ahvaz have been bussed and been sent to Tehran for controlling people. They are very low class people, who don’t care to kill our people, and work for money and they are not like army who care and don’t shoot at people.
Sepah has got permission to enter to Universities to attack,and shoot.”
Video sent to me of demonstrations in Samnan City can be seen here and here.
Posted by Ryan Mauro
I don’t know if it’s completely fair to blame Hillary Clinton here. It’s not at all clear how much access she has to Obama, how much he listens to her. His selection of her as Secretary of State was a political calculation. He didn’t pick her because they were going to work well together or because he respected her acumen in foreign affairs. The one thing I do believe is that Hillary would be handling this differently if she were President. Mostly because she’d have Bill in her ear and I think he’d have a clue what to do here.
A famous “Fermi question” is the one about how many piano tuners there are in a big city (NYC, Chicago, etc.). An immensely tougher Fermi question (and not really a Fermi question at all – goes beyond merely determining a scale) is how many guns and how much ammo – all air-dropped in, say – does the Iranian resistance (however one wishes to define it) require to overthrow the current regime? Please list and justify all assumptions.
My personal pet peeve? A nonsensical adjective placed in front of the term “diplomacy” to falsely imply decisive action. How exactly does “aggressive diplomacy” differ from regular diplomacy?
I don’t know that the current regime in Tehran could ever bring itself to make a deal with the Great Satan. Individual rights and a more open society are prerequisite to gaining economically. But under the current regime it isn’t going to happen. What may happen is more repression and more obsession with fashion cover ups and more political control going to the military minded and violent clerics.
There is no guarantee that the new boss will be anything but the same as the old boss except that they may not flaunt the target on their back and might even be open to gradual trade and who knows maybe even eventually recognition of the US as a reasonable player in the world, So Asia and Iran.
There will always be disagreement on what could or should be said in support of regime change in Iran, but what could or should be done in support of that goal is something else. It is what we wish, it is what the Iranians dressed in Green have determined to get. What can we do to help them. As a nation I don’t think much, as individuals, well twitter was a great aid. And the people of Iran have to know that we as a nation want them and not their current supreme leader and president to succeed.
I cannot believe that they don’t know that, I cannot believe that they feel they need our assistance. The opposition is made up of the same guys who ran the show in 1979. These are the guys who called the shots for demonstration in the street against the Shah. Now I recognize that Jimmy Carter played a huge part in their success then, but would the end result have been different had we not intervened?
Is anyone willing to let this bunch in Washington engage? Do you really know what it is you are asking? Won’t you agree with me that president Obama is doing everything as best as he can to the best of HIS ability. You really want him to do more
I don’t know about you guys but, I cringe every time he gets in front of the teleprompter.
“How exactly does “aggressive diplomacy” differ from regular diplomacy?”
In the same way that “aggressive dithering” differs from regular dithering.
I don’t know who Gerald Warner is, but I like him. Short and to the point. [Obama] is as flaky on Iran as on everything else.
It’s impossible to predict the outcome of events in Iran with certainty but it certain that things have changed. Iran, next week or next month, will be different. Obama is definitely letting event run him over. If he has a goal with American-Iran relations he’s not working on it today.
Curiously, Caroline Glick, in today’s jpost has a column, the main point of which, is that Israel should publicly side with the protesters in Iran. Not really sure if she’s right but she has some good arguments, not least of which is that it would be a sharp stick in the eye to Obama. It’s hard to know what outsiders could do to affect internal Iranian affairs. I’m sure that the mullahs are prepared to kill thousands of Iranians to hold fast to power. I’m not sure what anyone outside Iran is prepared to do to stop them.
I was slightly amazed by the remarks of the supreme leader that the election was completely legitimate. Maybe it’s just me but I have difficulty imagining standing up in front of people and the whole world and lying in a way that everyone knows is a lie. Not to mention the guy is reputedly a man of god. Even Obama has to know that the election was a complete fraud and his intention to meet and greet with these bald-faced liars is the hight of folly.
I guess the supreme leader is like dinner jacket when he said that there were no gays in Iran, even though they hang Iranians for being gay. Words mean what they want them to mean. The mistake is in believing anything they say.
President Pantywaist….priceless!
‘eathen,
“Aggressive Diplomacy” refers to conditions demanding extraordinary efforts outside of standard diplomatic practice. Therefor rather than relying on normal diplomatic staff to communicate the interests and concerns of the US government special representatives and dedicated staff are dispatched. The willingness to undertake exceptional sacrifices, such as booking a contingent of transcontinental First Class seats on short notice, in itself demonstrates the importance that we attach to the issue of concern. These special emissaries will go even further to establish their aggressive posture. Frequently they will forego wearing neckties altogether and wear a simple DoS polo style (available online or by order in a range of colors) short sleeved shirt under their jacket.
“Things aren’t moving according to the script for the President. And this time, the media can’t write it for him.”
The media does not write scripts, that is the job of Axelrod and Emmanuel.
“President Pantywaist” BWahahaha, classic!
The problem is not that President Pantywaist would not like to see a softer, more civilized, less Jew-hating Iranian regime. He would. It would keep those pesky American Jews under control.
The problem is that, in Iran, President Pantywaist doesn’t know who is going to win. When you have no convictions and no principles, not knowing whether to vote yes, no or present is the closest you can get to a moral crisis.
great stuff today, wretchard, in the article and your comment #3.
Such good reading, I hate to take issue with it, but I’m not sure that Obama had anything like a real coherent strategy mapped out, nor that Hilda had the foggiest idea how to go about building one, in fact maybe she tripped over one.
I am reminded again of Solzhenitsyn’s phrase “the pitiless crowbar of events”.
Obama is about to get hammered. Maybe his vanity will cause him to act before it’s too late.
Bill Larkin wins.
“The problem is that, in Iran, President Pantywaist doesn’t know who is going to win.”.
Exactly
It is difficult to plan if you don’t have good intelligence. The intelligence agencies have been short on the Humint side of thing for years now, and lately they’ve been keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. Then consider who is in charge of the agencies now.
There should have been a plan A,B,C,D,E, and F already on paper for Iran. It looks like there was only a “smart” power diplomacy plan in place and it seems that is proving to be inadequate.
Lordy, I’m starting to miss Nixon and Kissinger…and I haven’t even been drinking.
I’m gonna give Obama a pass on this one.
The last thing this situation needs is a delusional person who somehow got elected to the most powerful position on earth taking any sort of active role in this. Does anyone believe that if he did get involved, it would lead to anything good?
There is one small silver lining to this cloud. We are in a transformational period, and the days when the US can afford to project the type of power that we have been are rapidly coming to an end. Many have been working to that end, and I don’t think they will like the post US world that they’ve been working so hard to achieve.
But they better get ready for it, cause it’s coming. Maybe the US reaction to all of this will be the first of many wake up calls for the world. There’s a lot of adjusting to be done, and they need to get busy. Responsibility for global stability has rested on US shoulders for a long time, but now everyone must share that burden. The quicker everyone (the Europeans, for instance) gets that message the better.
The problem is not that President Pantywaist would not like to see a softer, more civilized, less Jew-hating Iranian regime. He would. It would keep those pesky American Jews under control.
You kid yourself here. This is the last thng he wants to see.
Besides, Obama would not know what a civilized society is. He is just barely civilized himself. To the extent that he could recognize one he would try to destroy it.
He is a barbarian, at least as regard this matter.
Interesting… thanks.
If you are interested in Australia generally & also what some Iranians are saying there, check this out and feel free to link it and repost it on your blogs & emails:
http://surind.blogspot.com/2009/06/islam-in-australia-western-capitalist.html
More people need to hear what this Iranian activist is saying.
Wretchard: your Washington Post link goes to a piece on the Congressional resolution on Iran.
Fixed the link.
Things aren’t moving according to the script for the President. And this time, the media can’t write it for him.
And will they be in a position to rewrite it later? The circumstances which may flow from this will not suit them. Latest news suggests that Tehran is gearing up for a confrontation.
As much as I hate to see the U.S., as a country, *not* come out and support the “Green Revolution”, I tend to believe it’s the right thing to do from a tactical standpoint.
I say this merely from the perspective of internal Iranian politics. Doing anything to supply the theocratic establishment with hard evidence that we’re behind the Greens will be fuel for those on their side. To them (and some of their followers) the lack of any material support from the West won’t matter.
And for the Greens, which vary widely in background (a few are even supposedly very strictly religious), it reinforces that this is their revolution, and the blood spilled is in the name of their own country and cause.
HOWEVER, I hope to never hear Obama say this was ultimately the will of the people or a free and fair election. Truthfully, we don’t have the facts to know if it was rigged or if so, by how much. But the lack of facts works both ways, and I have serious doubt.
Whatever happens in Tehran, there’s no going back to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic.
Reuel Marc Gerecht
the last “true” casualties
http://www.iran-resist.org/article5440.html
“I don’t know if it’s completely fair to blame Hillary Clinton here. It’s not at all clear how much access she has to Obama, how much he listens to her.”
* * *
What I was thinking, too. Condoleeza Rice said and did a LOT of really stupid stuff while she was in DC, especially after she was named Secretary of State. It was never clear to me how much of it was her own stupid stuff, and how much was stupid stuff she had been ordered to say (and do) by her boss.
With Hillary, you have to assume that at least part of what she’s doing, or not doing, might be at the behest of her partner in crime, the ex-Prez who was also a pretty good appeaser.
I miss Henry Kissinger.
The American dominant media, Iran’s ayatollah and President Obama in Cairo all remind us that the CIA helped overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, suggesting a moral equivalency between American and Iranian actions. How strange that these histories ignore recent history, when Iranian agents, funding and weapons such as EFP mines have killed hundreds of our troops in Iraq. Two years ago, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah caused war in Lebanon against Israel. These same Iranian-controlled terrorists were responsible for killing 220 Americans in the US Marine barracks bombing in Beirut on Oct. 23, 1983. Iran’s other Islamist terrorist proxy, Hamas, installed a murderous regime in Gaza when Israel withdrew to allow Palestinian self-government. Iran today openly pursues nuclear weapons and missiles, while our President says nothing that might offend the Iranian regime as the dictatorship snuffs all hopes of freedom for its people. It is a travesty of both truth and morality to compare the Iranian Islamist dictatorship in Iran that has been chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” for the past 30 years to the United States, which has done more good for humanity than any nation in the history of mankind.
8/LOTM. I agree. An old guru friend of my father-in-law’s once said (approx quote), “You know what’s wrong with crazy people? Listen to them! Bad mantras…”
Typical curriculum structure is to introduce a topic for three to five years in succession, gently going up a spiral in terms of complexity. In kindergarten we add single digits, in first grade we add single and double digits, and so on. A gifted/talented program covers each topic once and builds in complexity at a much faster rate, which delights those tweaky kids. Learning is change, though, and a huge percentage of the population find it uncomfortable. Most people prefer to listen to the same music, “Oh, that’s our song!” It makes indoctrination very easy…
“Things aren’t moving according to the script for [Obama]. And this time, the media can’t write it for him.”
Good metaphor. Unfortunately, on a literal level the sad fact is that once everything settles, the MSM *will* write a script, in which Obama’s response to the Iranian election will be described as nuanced, brilliant and note-perfect. It will include faux quotes from advisors like Rahm and Axelrod noting how Obama realized immediately that he couldn’t let the world perceive the U.S. supporting the people of Iran, since that would generate support for the regime among Iranians fiercely opposed to U.S. trying to meddle in Iranian affairs.
This script will work regardless of the outcome, since if the revolt is crushed, the official MSM story will be that Obama realized that showing support would only result in more Iranian casualties. He was keenly aware that Bush’s short-sighted, insensitive policies had brought civil war to Iraq, and knew he couldn’t let the same thing happen in Iran. So by not fanning the flames, he singlehandedly prevented full-scale civil war in Iran!
To ice that cake, the MSM will run ten-second videos of a couple of “average Iranians” saying just that. (What a coincidence!) And two weeks later, no American outside the right of the blogosphere will remember a single detail, other than the punchline that Obama did exactly the right thing.
Just wait and see.
Ellison voted “present” on the Congressional resolution against Iranian oppression.
Joe Buzz — Ellison = Muslim representative, sworn in on the Koran. I noticed his vote, too. What does it mean, do we think?
Means Ellison has a disease, if you ask me.
#50: ouch, that is on the money. Classic CYA Spintronics. Leadership? Not so much.
#50 – right on the money… as I said at #4 Obama’s core competency is saying two contradictory things. With a compliant media the contradiction is never examined, in fact it is lauded as “nuanced”! After events play themselves out the compliant media can then underline the correct assertion and voila! Obama had it right.
How can you remove the GM CEO, dictate a number of dealerships to close, rule out where cars are to be manufactured (no China small cars) and simultaneously declare you “don’t want to run a car company”?
How can you ram a stimulus bill of about $800 billion and finally a budget with about a $1.8 trillion deficit with Health care and Cap and Trade in the offing and then intone that Congress is going to have to exhibit fiscal discipline?
How can you say on election day that you are excited by the vigorous debate over the direction Iran will take and the different points of view then three days later with a straight face say there’s no difference between the two candidates? (Indeed how does the media keep a straight face reporting this stuff?)
Folks, these clowns need to be confronted about their propagandizing. Remember, each one of these incidents is a HUGE expression of contempt for the President’s constituents and the media’s audience.
Obama’s inability to get off the dime on the Iranian uprising reminds me of a quote of Churchill’s. He said words to the effect of in a contest between between a fire and the fire brigade, neutrality is not a virtue.
Nahn, my guess is that it means that his constituents, supporters, backers are not moderates.
The President gets a clue:
“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-from-the-President-on-Iran/
via Instapundit
Joe Buzz — makes me wonder where he got the money to run for office. And if his campaign donations were in the form of dollar bills or riyals.
“…stop all violent and unjust actions …”
Did anyone else pick up on this uniquely Arabic language? No Western politician or journalist would *ever* use the word “unjust” because it’s so dadblamed subjective. But Arabs use it all the time in their ceaseless whining about the cruel fates bestowed upon them by Israel, America and the tribe over the sand dune. Now Obama just happens to throw it into his little speech casually …?
It’s better than calling for a stop to ” all unjust violent actions…” which would signal some violence is justifiable, and we’ll just ignore it.
Gotta love this quote from our President’s bold new statement to Iran: As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.
Oh, and quoting Martin Luther King – so who is that quote aimed at, the vast Arab world that has no idea who that is, let alone speaks English – or, wait for it, the gullible fraction of the Americans who voted for this guy and signed him up as their personal Jesus?
Quick question: on the video where the girl is shot in the left eye, lots of blood – I wish I hadn’t taken the Universal Studios tour of Special Effects, perhaps I would believe video more.
Okay, I’m going back to staring at the Web and TV, believing my lying eyes.
LIfeofthemind:
You’re spot on. In a former life I once had an embassy marine deliver an “officially important” package to me in a third world country. Of course he stayed to return the package when I finished. The contents? The daily DoS news clippings.
Bureaucracy + mass delusion of self importance = US State Department.
Diplomatic nuance is overrated. To be effective foreign policy positions must be logical, based in national principles and communicated in a clear and consistent manner. But then, of course, we wouldn’t need so many professional diplomats. Creative ambiguity in diplomacy is rarely required. When it is required, it is most often executed ham-handedly by the striped pants from Foggy Bottom.
People would laugh their asses off if they saw those clowns at work. Effective diplomats are nearly as rare at DoS as are Republicans.
WE know the Persians love Photoshop almost as much as their Palestinian brethren. Maybe they’re branching out into special FX, too.
She was not shot in the eye. She was shot in the chest and bled from her mouth. The blood ran from her mouth into her left eye.
The infection of democracy and freedom painfully established in Iraq is impacting Iran.
Does Bush look like a farsighted leader?
Or clueless Babrak Hussein??