Posted on 06/23/2009 9:05:59 AM PDT by MaestroLC
No, I’m really not kidding about this. The Washington Post has the story:
But Obama’s shades-of-gray approach rejects comparison to an era when Communist bloc dissidents had virtually no access to the Western media and the world was more neatly divided between a pair of superpowers, not complicated by the set of ambitious regional powers such as Iran that the Obama administration is seeking to manage.
Since taking office, Obama has argued that reclaiming America’s moral authority by ending torture and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay provides essential diplomatic leverage to influence events in such strategic parts of the world as the Middle East and Central Asia. The speech he delivered to the Islamic world in Cairo eights days before the June 12 Iranian election sought to do that by providing what the president saw as an unvarnished accounting of U.S. policy in Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We’re trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves,” said a senior administration official who, like others, declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Obama’s approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president’s words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic’s Islamic authority in its 30-year history.
This is the most despicable, self-serving, and arrogant spin I’ve seen yet from this White House, and that’s saying something. Obama gave a speech, and suddenly the people of Iran discovered that they’re being ruled by tyrants? Never mind that two weeks passed between the speech and the uprising, and that the very obvious trigger for the unrest was the incompetent manner in which the mullahs rigged the election for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Never mind the fact that this President took a full week to even sound like a watered-down Nicolas Sarkozy, let alone the leader of the free world.
This is very obviously an attempt at damage control. Obama has gotten hammered for staying behind the curve of Western leaders in the defense of liberty, freedom, and human rights. He has preferred to stay on the sidelines in the hope that silence will make the mullahs like him enough to grant him an audience, while Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and the Brits slam the mullahcracy for its brutal treatment of political opposition. Now, suddenly, Obama wants to claim credit for getting their first with his Cairo speech — which had nothing to do with overthrowing mullahs, and in fact had only a passing mention of democracy as an official US policy in the Middle East.
He proudly adds his name to the long list of 0’s lickspittles in the MSM.
I thought they didn’t want to appear to be “meddling”? Obama’s EGO can’t restrain itself.
If the White House issues enough confusing and contradictory statements, nobody will know where they stand on anything. “Nobody” includes our friends and enemies.
Quite a strategy. Inspire people to rise up against a tyrannical government and then abandon them. Pompous jerk!
HOORAY Ed Morrissey!
...and a separate reply to you, dead. LOL! Yes, Brilliant.
He definitely inspired the hardliner crackdown.
Why isn’t Obama saying he inherited President Bush’s foundation for Freedom in Iran?
“If they are taking credit for the uprising while at the same time doing nothing to help these people don’t they then, logically, have blood on their hands?”
Yes, and if the protesters are successful in overthrowing the regime, why would they — the ones being shot, gassed and beaten — want to have anything to do with those who acted as a dispassionate spectator?
Just damn...
Remember that line from Wm F Buckley Jr about some leader — roughly, “he leads as the prow of a ship leads the ship.”
The media will make this speech Obama’s “tear down those walls” speech. The crazy thing about it is the dumb downed American public might buy it. TRULY INCREDIBLE!!
The op ed piece from the Washington Times needs to read “The Ghost of George W Bush” and how “W” set all of these things in place with freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I hope that is whyat Cheney will be talking about the next few days.
He invented the internet too.
I’d like to see a parody done in Floyd flavor.
If the administration believes the supposition that the Cairo speech inspired the uprising, how can they not consider themselves responsible for the murders of the protesters?
In retrospect, with this information taken into consideration, the 'ice cream run' takes on a harrowing specter.
“The Liberals talk about a stable government but we don’t know how bad the stable is going to smell.” ~ T.C. Douglas
In that case, the economy totally tanked after Obama took office, sooooooo..... ?
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