An Inadequate Response to an Illegitimate Regime [Victor Davis Hanson]
Obama's Iran policy has been an ethical and practical embarrassment from the beginning.
Moral equivalence? The president put Mousavi — and, by extension, the crowds in the street — and Ahmadinejad on the same moral plain.
Naïveté? For the first few days the administration and its flaks in the media issued pompous "in the know" suggestions to the effect that Ahmadinejad may have "really" won the election.
Straw men? We were supposed to think that those who from the beginning saw the issues at stake and supported the reformers with strong words of encouragement were some sort of interventionist neocons who wanted to do another Iraq-like invasion, or would egg on reluctant demonstrators only to betray them in Hungary-like fashion.
Naked realpolitik? We openly stated that we were unsure who would win, with the obvious inference that we are hedging our bets at the expense of values and principles. Our moral outrage, in the words of the president himself, hinges on the outcome of the struggle at hand.
Hesitancy? Over some ten days, we've seen split-the-difference, 50/50, "debate going on" fluff, as if risking one's life to promote freedom is just a narrative that competes with another from thugs who wish to crush them.
Diplomatic confusion? No one apparently appreciates the stakes at hand, that there was an outside chance that many of the key issues of our time — from lunatic nuclear proliferation to terrorist subsidies to undermine neighboring democracies — are in play, and worth the risk of strong moral condemnation of the Iranian theocracy. It is almost as if this administration assumes a nuclear Iran is a done deal, and is now more worried about scrambling to come up with plans B and C.
Dissimulation? We are to believe that outreach to the Iranian mullahs and Islam in general, in the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, and the video sent to Ahmadinejad explain the popular uprising against a theocratic radical Islamist dictatorship — rather than the intrinsic desire for freedom among millions deprived of freedom by a 7th-century ruling Islamist clique, not to mention the presence of a still vibrant Shiite-majority democracy next-door in Iraq? What logic— speaking out in praise of Islam appealed to those opposing radical Islam to such an extent that then going silent in their hour of need helped them even more.
From my another favorite thinker:
Krauthammer’s Take [NRO Staff]
From last night’s “All-Stars.”
On Obama’s latest statements on Iran:
It had two parts. The use of the emotive words "appalled," "outraged" was new and right. But the policy of engagement remains unchanged.
Major asked him about hotdog diplomacy, meaning the administration weeks ago had said U.S. embassies around the world will be open on the Fourth of July welcoming for the first time in decades Iranian diplomats as a way to symbolizing opening and negotiation.
To do that at a time when the regime is shooting people from rooftops is bizarre. I mean, remember, even the senior Bush, the president who was the most hyperrealist and unsentimental, sent his national security advisor Brent Scowcroft to China after Tiananmen, after the massacre, but at least they waited six months.
This would be the welcoming of Iranians into American embassies to celebrate U.S. independence ten days after the shooting on the streets. That, I think, is disturbing in and of itself.
But secondly, the president speaks about all of these events in an odd way. He says there is a debate happening in Iran about its future. You know, when one senator yields to another in the Congress, that's a debate. Even, if you like, when you're having dueling demonstrations in Tehran, you could call that a debate.
But when you have demonstrators out in the street being shot from rooftops, that is not a debate. That's a massacre or a revolution. And the president refuses to understand or to acknowledge that what's at stake here is the legitimacy of the regime and not just elections.