Decent interval
On a day when the EU warned Iran after it arrested locals working at the British Embassy and as many as 20,000 Iranians demonstrated against the regime, the administration once again offered to talk to Teheran on the subject of nuclear weapons. VOA says that “Top Obama administration officials say the door remains open for nuclear talks with Iran. They are discounting the latest anti-American rhetoric from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. … He was asked if the tough talk over the weekend by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might be enough to put diplomacy on hold. ‘Understand that he is not the decision maker when it comes to foreign policy and defense policy in Iran,” he said. “His comments are meant for domestic political content.’”
Three questions come to mind. First, how is the administration’s position different from the statement that “no matter how much you insult me, I will talk to you?” Second and more importantly, how can any proper dialogue exist between a party that doesn’t mean what it says, i.e. “his comments are meant for domestic political content” and a party which reserves the right to assign a contrary meaning to a spoken expression? i.e. “They are discounting the latest anti-American rhetoric from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”. At what point is the literal word of Teheran to be literally understood? Tomorrow? On the day they sign the Grand Bargain? There is something surreal about the administration’s version of the Cretan Paradox. What truth value would you assign to the statement, “We can strike a lasting bargain with them because I know they are lying when they say they won’t”? The third question is why the Administration should send a conciliatory message at time when the Iranian street and even the EU are talking tough?
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Barack Obama is the all-seeing, all-knowing Master of Time and Space, that’s how!
He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows when you’ve been bad or good….
Not that you can assign a value to “bad” or “good”, mind you. And it’s probably all the fault of George Bush, anyways. He’s bad, and the Obama Administration knows that, too.
To be less sarcastic, it sounds as if Obama is setting himself and his Administration up for a bigger disappointment than Ollie North and the Reagan Administration had over trading with Iran, with respect to Iran – Contra in the mid ’80′s. Their immense intellectual vanity leads them to make this sort of foolish judgement.
There is something surreal about the administration’s version of the Cretan Paradox. What truth value would you assign to the statement, “We can strike a lasting bargain with them because I know they are lying when they say they won’t”?
That’s the same mindset that allowed so many voters last November to believe that Obama didn’t really mean what he said.
The other example of this mindset that gives me a sense of deja vu is Stalin’s belief in August 1939 that he could trust von Ribbentrop and the Nazis when he signed the nonaggression pact.
I have met several folks over the last half-century who were so unbelieveable that, even when you KNEW that they honestly believed what they were saying, their grasp of reality was so tenuous that you simply could not accept whatever it was at face value.
Add the N00b to this list.
Hence Reagan’s famous “Trust but verify” I suspect.
It’s truly sad that, as Jim Geraghty says, “All of his statements come with an expiration date. ALL of them.”
Since long before Obama came into view, Leftists have had a problem with reality. Data which does not agree with their theory is simply ignored. That is why Leftists still promote central planning, and also why they are convinced that alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming exists.
The simplest explanation of Obama brushing off his forceful rejection by the Iranians is that the event does not match Obama’s model — and therefore did not really happen. In the Obama world view, the Iranians will respond positively (indeed, ARE responding positively) to his brown-nosing & abject self-abasement.
You are right, Wretchard, that the deal Obama eventually gets with Iran will be worthless. But even after tragic events have proved how worthless the deal was, Obama and his followers will still sincerely believe it was a success.
Jimmy Carter
“…why the Administration should send a conciliatory message at time when the Iranian street and even the EU are talking tough?”
Since that is what we would do if our intelligence agencies were very busy over there, it must be to persuade us that the Obama administration is actually doing something.
Nanny Obananarama is Hell bent on an appeasement deal no matter what Achma-di-nutjob says or does or whether or not di-nutjob can be trusted to hold a bargain. It’s part of his banana “hope” strategy.
With regard to Honduras, Nanny Obanananrama will vote present, which is his default mode, rather than openly support democratic aspirations of decent people.
Fred2…
H shut down W’s regime change ops in Iran months ago.
Remember the letter H sent to the murders?
http://tinyurl.com/mh7uvb
Like Hitler supplanting President von Hindenburg Ahmadinejad is co-opting Ayatollah Khamenei step-wise.
Ahmadinejad has placed his buddies throughout the power system of Iran.
The regime is best defeated at the teller window: sabotage Kharg Island… Use local cut-outs.
Naturally H would never authorize any such action.
“Present.”
Despite Dave’s use of annoying nicknames, he raises a good point. This is an entirely new era of foreign policy we’re entering. Cold War “sonovabitch” policy with a new twist: now we aren’t even requiring these two-bit thugs to be “our sonovabitch,” just so long as they are a “sonovabitch” is enough to win Obama’s support against their domestic opposition.
This is beyond the ken of most intelligent people; to truly understand its genius, one must start with the logical proposition of “Bush lied, thousands died.” With that as your frame of reference and starting point, you can began to appreciate the brilliance of Obama’s approach to foreign policy.
Wretchard has correctly compared Obama’s atitude to that of the international community when it was worried that, if the Tamil Tigers were defeated, there’d be no one to negotiate with.
I’d go one step further. Obama’s worried that if the Ayatollahs are deposed, there’ll be nobody to surrender to.
Even worse, I think, is the following. Obama couldn’t care less for the Iranian nukes. They don’t really worry him. But, as for him, every crisis is also or mainly an opportunity, he does need a nuclear Iranian theocracy. Why? Because he wants to use its danger to make Israel surrender to the Palestinians.
Let me repeat it: according to his worldview, there’s only one important issue in the Middle East, perhaps in all things that have anything to do with foreign policy: the so-called suffering of the Palestinians. That’s the only prism through which he sees the whole region, the war on terror, Islam & Islamism etc. All else is secondary or, rather, non-existent.
Or, if you want to put it in another way, he’s more obsessed with Israel than any Jew is, was or shall ever be. Looking at it this way it is easy to understand why he is behaving as he does in the case of Iran and neither will it be hard to foresee his reactions in the next crises.
Talk to Ahmadinehad?
NOT IN MY NAME
Wretchard, you are missing the boat on a possibly gigantuan t-shirt and bumpersticker concession.
Of course, you should probably correct the spelling of Ahmadinejad.
nelson,
Interesting points. Let me ask this, if obama were a muslim what would he do differently?
The answer is simple enough:
Money to Gaza [Hamas]. Money to Zimbabwe. Ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela. An attempted intercession for Zelaya. Anybody else besides me see a pattern here…?
Birds of a feather flock together.
Obama=Marxist Muslim
‘Nuff said
When nothing is real, there is nothing to get hung about.
As Willie says, whether or not he believes what he is saying is true gives no indication as to whether something is real, or invented out of whole cloth.
—
Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama’s ‘Dreams’
Mr. West independently came to the same conclusion that I did, namely that Ayers was not meaningfully involved in Audacity. These two Obama books almost assuredly had different primary authors. What should be transparent to any literary critic is that the author of Audacity lacked the style and skill of the author of Dreams. There are a few pockets in Audacity that evoke the spirit of Dreams but without the same grace.
A likely suspect for these imitative passages, perhaps the whole of Audacity, is Obama’s young speechwriter, Jon Favreau. Favreau joined the Obama team in 2005, time enough to play that role. The London Guardian reports that Favreau carries Dreams wherever he goes and can “conjure up his master’s voice as if an accomplished impersonator.” If so, in Audacity he played the classic role of the ghostwriter — one who absorbs his client’s thoughts and relates them in a refined version of his client’s voice.
Bill Ayers was no one’s ghostwriter. The now overwhelming evidence strongly suggests that he used the frame of Obama’s life and finished it off with his own ideas, his own biases, his own experiences, his own passions, his own friends, even his own romances, all of this toned down just enough to keep Obama viable as a potential candidate.
I would argue that Ayers played Cyrano to Obama’s Christian. His personal history was too ugly for him to woo Roxane/America himself. But Obama — “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” as Joe Biden reminded us — could and did make America’s heart melt.
See also:
Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?
Even simpler explanation.
The man, Obama is a Muslim. He hates America. He hates Americans. He hates everything about this country and wants “evil White Men” punished. For racial as well as religious reasons.
He WANTS Iranian nukes. So not just Israel but the US can be nuked. So he can be Marshal Petain. His dream. That of his followers too.
Let’s be honest about it.
Off topic, concerning global warming:
Check out the following link concerning a recent EPA report skeptical about global warming that was suppressed:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/06/26/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5117890.shtml
The CBS link has a URL that will download the suppressed EPA report. I just downloaded the report and gave it a quick look. The report has some damning criticisms concerning the argument that increased carbon dioxide causes global warming. This report was dated for the later half of March 2009. The report should have impacted the close vote on the carbon tax that recently passed the House of Representative.
Note that things “said for domestic consumption” versus “things said for foreign consumption” are entirely acceptable in certain circles. Hillary Clinton was caught saying some very embarrassing things overseas even before she was SecState. When we were deploying Pershings and Tomahawks in Europe the leaders there were saying they opposed it to their own people and that approved it to the US. Obama said that he would revise NAFTA and then sent envoys to Canada and Mexico to say he would do no such thing, that such statements were for “US domestic consumption” only.
When Pakistan exploded its first nuclear weapon and India responded with their own nuclear tests, the failure of US intelligence to anticipate the event was explained as being an assumption that the many bombastic statements made in advance by both countries leaders warning what they would do were “for domestic consumption only.” Or as NPR put it, “The intelligence analysts assumed that all foreign politicians lie, just as US leaders do and discounted the nuclear threats as a result.” Of course, that was in the Era of Clinton.
So I recently stumbled upon the “Odd Thomas” series by Dean Koontz. Read one of his novels before-Velocity-and didn’t like it. For some reason I gave “Odd Hours” a try and am enjoying it immensely. It is brilliantly written in places, insightful and even hilarious in others. A particularly nice passage, and one relevant to this discussion, comes in the first few pages of chapter 18. The protagonist, Odd Thomas, and a young lady named Annamaria (no last name) are walking through a canyon to a safehouse when they are surrounded by a pack of coyotes. Here I let Koontz pick up the action:
“In the fog, on the greenbelt, alongside Hecate’s Canyon, the six prime specimens of Canis latrans had none of the appeal of any of the various species and breeds that pet shops put in their windows.
This was unusual, believe it or not, because coyotes can have a goofy charm. They are more closely related to wolves than to dogs, lean and sinewy, efficient predators, but with feet too big for their bodies and ears too big for their heads, they can appear a little puppy-like, at least as cute as Iran’s homicidal dictator when he puts on a leisure suit and has his photo taken with grade-school children whose parents have volunteered them to be suicide bombers.
With narrow faces, bared fangs, and radiant-eyed intensity, the six coyotes confronting Annamaria and me did not have what it took to be featured in a Purina Puppy Chow commercial. They looked like fascist jihadists in fur.”
This book was published in 2008 and presumably written at least at some point during 2007 or earlier. How is it that a novelist–a serial offender on the NY Times best sellers list–who lives in California with his wife and golden retriever can get the measure of Ahmadi-nejad while POTUS with all his presumed intelligence and all his access to intelligence (reports) can’t? What is it really that blinds POTUS to the true nature of this regime? If he does know, what does he want so badly that this is worth ignoring?
I’m not outraged, yet.
I’m willing to let Obama try, and fail.
Or who knows, maybe the camel will learn to talk.
Answer:
We have no way of knowing Obama’s true beliefs, whether he is crypto-Muslim or a Marxist in his heart of hearts and, thanks to the MSM, we wouldn’t probably discover that anyway.
Thus, the safer bet is actually quite simple: Obama is an opportunist. He has, however, a very loyal constituency. His most reliable followers are leftists and, though most of them are not Muslims, much of the Western left nowadays is in a de facto “anti-American”, “anti-Zionist” “anti-etc.” alliance with the Islamists.
Besides, this constituency, though small, was (is) dynamic and vigorous enough to propel a first-term senator with a very bad voting record into the White House.
Unless he becomes absolute ruler of the US, Obama will need the hard work and influence of those followers again and again. There are things he’ll have to do that will make them unhappy and, so, he will have to do some other things to keep them satisfied and loyal.
In short, since we cannot read Obama’s mind nor are we his shrinks, the best we can do is to try and understand what his most fanatic followers think, feel and want.
I am wondering if Obama is using a proposed “Grand Bargain” with Iran to put pressure on Netanyahu. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Obama seeks the Holy Grail of diplomatic prestige – an enforced peace between Israel and Palestine that will last for all time, or at least until the 2012 presidential election. Or more importantly, a Nobel Peace Prize. To achieve this, Obama would need to come across as the “good cop” to Israelis. Who would be the “bad cop”? Ahmadinejad.
I really don’t know whether the Obama administration is so entranced by the possibility of getting a Nobel Peace Prize that it would betray America’s friends and allies to do so. I hope not. Hope is not a strategy.
How can Obama return to the mullahs after their barbarous treatment of their own people, and after his (Obama’s) own harsh, truthful words about the mullahs? Has Obama no decency? Commenters above offer interesting theories, all of them possible.
A biblical analogy comes to mind: Proverbs 26:11—”As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”
Let’s take a “realist” look at the Israeli problem.
America’s elite has always been quite divided about Israel, with rather a minority being for it, and a smaller faction inside that minority backing Israel for reasons of principle, not just electoral opportunism.
Now, if one believes, like I do, that in a globalized world modernity and fanatic traditionalism cannot live together (not because modernity doesn’t want it, but because it is infectious and, thus, enrages and endangers the traditionalists)and that they will eventually clash — and only one will win… if one thinks like this and sees Islam as the abode of hardcore traditionalism, well, then one will back Israel as an important ally that happens to be on the forefront of the fight.
On the other hand, if one is transnationalist, multi-culti, believes all can get along together, and that this clash of civilizations thing is just a war and fear mongering invention of the Bushitler gang, then one will have to find out what is annoying our peace loving Arab and Muslim brothers.
According to this latter way of thinking, the sooner the world gets rid of the colonialist, land-grabing, child-killing, racist, apartheid Jewish state, the better. There’s one obstacle, however: even if Ahmadinejad would be happy to see Israel exiting the stage with a bang that would destroy much of the world’s oil supply, the “realists” would rather have Israel going gentle into that goodnight but with a whimper.
Thus, the problem for the American “realists” is how in part to force and in part to trick Israel into allowing itself to be defanged.
Alexis [1930hrs] Short answer: no.
I have more ‘good will’ and friendship towards Israel in my left big toe than the entire current administration put together.
You should take the time to hear some of the sermons that came out of the church Obama sat in for twenty years. Then examine the views of the ME ‘advisors’ he’s surrounded himself with.
That might clear up some of your questions.
We in this readership keep focusing on Obama. But suppose for a minute that he’s only a pretty face, a novelty candidate put forward by 3 or 5 or 10 politicos and financial types to do their bidding. Imagine that the morning briefings are not people giving Obama intelligence and waiting for him to pronounce his policy for the day, rather they are a meeting during which Rahm Emanuel and a few others tell him what position he’s going to take on various topics. Who would they pick as the figurehead for their cabal? Someone who has no track record and who has voted “present” on most of the bills he voted on in the Illinois Senate. Someone who doesn’t believe in anything more than redistributing income and buying votes with promises of health care, housing, etc. And surely someone who can walk away from campaign promises without looking back. Sound like Obama? I would say so. So the task now is, name the people in the cabal. F
F said:
“We in this readership keep focusing on Obama. But suppose for a minute that he’s only a pretty face, a novelty candidate put forward by 3 or 5 or 10 politicos and financial types to do their bidding.”
I believe this is a reasonable assumption.
“So the task now is, name the people in the cabal.”
The quick and emotive response would be George Soros. However Soros could only be part of the cabal. The timing of the collapse of the US economy back in September 2008 was extremely favorable towards Obama’s election. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that people with some influence in high finance were part of the cabal. Likewise the fawning by the MSM over Obama was obviously orchestrated. It’s reasonable to assume that more than one editor/media owner of the MSM is/was part of the cabal. Finally, during his term in office, George W. Bush was constantly being plagued with orchestrated leaks to the MSM by people highly placed in the intelligence community. It’s probable that some of those folks were also involved in getting Obama elected. That’s a formidable Praetorian Guard who put Obama in power and now working behind the scenes. If you cross those people you could easily end up:
1) dead
2) financially ruined
3) every financial and/or sexual indiscretion you ever made appearing on the front page of the New York Times and/or on CNN.
Chuckie Schumer may not be in the big leagues of Big Bucks, but he was running the show deciding what would be said, and who would get Party Money for the Congressional elections.
He tripped the wire and kicked the piggybank by illegally leaking information which led to the run on IndyMac Bank, which started the dominoes falling.
“Understand that he is not the decision maker when it comes to foreign policy and defense policy in Iran,”
BO fails to understand that AMadrasDinnerJacket is not the messenger he is the message, and the message from the powers that be in Iran to the entire waiting world, BO, and their own people is an upraised middle finger.
Tom Friedman writes a lot of dreadful rubbish, presumably to humor his bosses back at HQ, but he does from time to time, make an insightful comment. Here is one of them:
“Rule 1: What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language. Anything said to you in English, in private, doesn’t count. In Washington, officials lie in public and tell the truth off the record. In the Mideast, officials say what they really believe in public and tell you what you want to hear in private.”
“Mideast Rules to Live By” by Thomas L. Friedman in the NYTimes on December 20, 2006
This rule is deeply rooted in the honor-shame culture of the Middle East (Best explained by Professor Landes). Bo and his minions do not understand it. Because they are so foolish, they will get taken to the cleaners.
Professor Richard Landes provides a counterpoint to Professor Joshua Landis.
sirius_sir – One probably ought to correct the spelling of the name Ahmadinejad. Perhaps it ought to be corrected to Ahmadinejihad. Sounds right to me.
Of course, we could also acknowledge the very existence of the 1350-year war, and end it forever. It wouldn’t take more than half an hour. As long as we were thorough about it.
Or to put it another way, acknowledge the truth of the Three Conjectures and make them manifest – but remove the 5E6 or so from one side of the inequality.
Let me fly this one by you. If Bambi cosies up to the mullahs, it allows Israel to attack and bomb with their new bunker-busters the Iranian nuke facilities, without the U.S. Army getting attacked and over-run in Iraq. The U.S. can ‘scold’ Israel about it all, but basically mission accomplished – by the Israelis. That would also allow the U.S. to focus on North Korea. Get all cosey with everyone and then WHAM, Israel bombs the hell out of the Iranian facilities while the U.S. attacks North Korea, putting THEIR facilities back to the stone age. Mission accomplished – Nuclear Proliferation stopped in its tracks.
It may seem unlikely, but it could be argued its the safest course for the world. Stop ‘em now before it gets to where its too late.
Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, to extend an olive branch when a shoe would do better. With the shoe, there is no mistaking the intent and as the shoe is expected of a man, would leave a favorable impression. An olive branch, well, lets just say it does not focus anybodies attention. It will not earn our president any respect however.