History Lesson
Hey Obama, it’s 3 a.m. Do you know where your foreign policy is?
Roundup and deep thot kicks off with Michael Ledeen at PajamasMedia, always good on Iran. This great backgrounder that is pretty good on America, too:
Western governments have expressed dismay at the violence, and Obama, in his eternally narcissistic way, said that he was deeply disturbed by it, and went on to add that freedom of speech, etc., were universal values and should be respected by the mullahs. I would have preferred a strong statement of condemnation–stressing the evil of killing peaceful demonstrators–but he finally said something.
He probably thinks he’s in a bind (he isn’t, actually). He probably thinks that if he condemns the violence, and the regime wins, that will lessen his chances to strike the Grand Bargain he so avidly desires. Somebody might remind him that Ronald Reagan was unstinting in his criticism of the Soviet Union (”The Evil Empire”), but negotiated no end of bargains with them, including quite dramatic arms reductions.
It’s always better to assert American values, both because he’s our president and he should be speaking for all of us, and because catering to the tender sensibilities of the murders in Iran won’t gain anything. It will only increase their contempt.
History’s age-old lesson is that sucking up to ambitious dictators is usually a bad idea, and facing them down from strength is usually better. After all, as Friedman rediscovered the other day, even the hated Bush for all his warmongering made the Middle East a better place.
I’d add that Obama isn’t just worried about his big deal with Iran. It’s not just putting a bow on a phony nuke deal. He also hopes to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan as quickly as possible … not with real, enduring peace, but with the fig leaf variety. Hostility with Iran doesn’t work. It’s not that Obama cares whether Iran dominates the region. His policies virtually ensure that it will. But he doesn’t want to risk anything that will derail his Iraq pullout, and lecturing, hectoring or punishing the mullahs in any meaningful way threatens a reaction.
If your goal is not to leave the region better than you found it, but to bail at the first opportunity, then your danger lies in being detained, and possibly leaving the region worse than you found it.
Politico follows the evolution of the White House message over the past few days, and notes a dilemma for Obama. He’s all about the hope and change, but doesn’t want to moralize in foreign policy. Yeah, well, you look at who wrought the greatest changes, making hopes real in the modern era, and none of them shrunk from moralizing, and were willing to take action. FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan and both Bushes. You can dicker over aspects of the action and follow-through in most of those cases … foreign policy is a messy business, and war is even messier … but Europe and large parts of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are free as a result of their actions, and wouldn’t be if all those presidents did was weakly dither.
In fact, what Obama risks with his odd policy that mistakes bowing and scraping for moralism, and seeks to boost America’s image in the world by reducing its profile, is the surrender of the moral authority and leadership that has made America the world’s best hope for peace, stability and prosperity in history. Hopes repeatedly made real by bolder visionaries than Obama shows any sign of being.
Roundups at Memeorandum and RealClearPolitics, including a disappointingly myopic piece by Robert Kaplan, who acknowledges the legitimacy of the “Axis of Evil” rhetoric but bemoans the fact that Bush acted on it, and that the job is not done. He thinks the violence that followed Saddam’s ouster was worse than Saddam, ignoring the threat a de-sanctioned, re-armed, emboldened Saddam would have posed to the region and the world, ignoring the fact that post-Saddam Iraq was destined to blow, but the U.S. presence kept a lid on it and helped guide it, ignoring the fact that Saddam’s ouster got the attention of Iran and Libya and influenced a free election in Lebanon. Is the job done? Of course not. Foreign policy is a Chinese puzzle. Get one ball in the hole, another falls out. That job is never done.
Washington Indepedent snarks on neo-cons who prefered to see Obama stymied in Iran and denounced the faux election there, now calling on him to embrace Mullah-Lite Mousavi. Here’s the deal. A straightup Mousavi election would have changed little, simply giving the mullahs a nicer face to show the world. That situation has dramatically changed with the emergence of more than 1 million people on the street, out in opposition to the regime’s engineering of elections. There is the potential of Mousavi emerging as an actual opposition leader … a position he could be forced into … and the creation of a viable opposition to the regime. There is even the potential of democratic revolution in Iran, bloody though it may be. Obama can be dismayed by the violence, but as history tells us, the Tree of Liberty usually, tragically, requires some blood to grow.
Legal Insurrection dares to ask, is a free Iraq coming home to roost in Iran? Dunno, but it’s gotta hurt when you see free elections in Iraq and Lebanon and your supposedly superior society doesn’t get one. Goldfarb at Weekly Standard looks at the same question, and also mulls what happened to the inconvenient Jew. Hyscience on the Obama Effect … enemies see weakness. Riehl on the excellent timing of Jimmy Carter, shilling for Hamas: Set my terrorists free! Allah at HotAir hurtfully compares some of Obama’s recent rhetoric and examines the dithering at State and on the left. So what can Obama say about Iran? Ace digs into history. Gateway with the latest from Twitter … best news source out there in the last four days, take note MSM … reports the army is moving into Tehran. (via Moe Lane, here’s a tutorial on using and not being used by Twitter in perilous times). News aggregated at everyone’s favorite new non-MSM MSM news aggregator, NTC. Powerline with more news: mullahs order a recount. Uh oh, NYT: opp isn’t having it. Jim Robbins, WashTimes blog: Rev Guards leaders arrested for conspiring with the people. Almost sounds like revolution brewing. Totten, meanwhile, with what the opposition can expect by way of regime reaction. It isn’t pretty.
So what does the opposition expect? Here’s a Seven-Point Manifesto now hitting the streets of Tehran, via PJM, where the first commenter remarks incredulously, ”people still want a supreme leader?” and the second one says, hey, don’t start talking revolution, “WE JUST WANT OUR VOTES BACK.” At last check, the votes were pretty worthless anyway, a multiple choice exercise engineered by the mullahs, who were themselves the ultimate “all of the above” answer to the non-question. But if that’s all what Iran wants, I don’t see why the mullahs can’t give it to them. Freedom for political prisoners and dismantling of the state’s instruments of oppression, could be a problem. That and a big backdown by the mullahs could be the details wherein the devil resides, though. PJM commenter Ali may not want a revolution, but sometimes these things take on a life of their own.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:51 am on Tuesday, June 16, 2009
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June 17th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
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