Obama is weighed and found wanting
Bookworm on Jun 20 2009 at 7:32 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, Iran
During the campaign, Biden warned that Obama would be tested in his first six months in office. We all assumed that Biden knew about a planned terrorist attack on the US. That could still happen, of course, although I devoutly hope it won’t.
At exactly the five month mark, however, there is a test taking place, and that is the test of Obama’s moral courage with regard to Iran. So far, he’s not doing very well. When 405 Congresspeople turn on “The One,” the one is finding himself on the wrong side of history. When liberal pundit after liberal pundit writes about his or her support for the Iranian people, and then engages in pathetic contortions to justify Obama’s refusal to voice any support, the One is failing a test. When France is a stronger moral presence than the United States, our leader looks small.
I see the handwriting on the wall: Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. Obama is being weighed and found wanting, in the eyes of fellow politicians, in the eyes of his party, in the eyes of the American people, and in the eyes of the world.
Mark Steyn skillfully describes the pattern behind Obama’s moral breakdown:
For the Obama administration, this [the fact that we do have a dog in this fight, whether we want to or not] presents a particular challenge — because the president’s preferred rhetorical tic is to stake out the two sides and present himself as a dispassionate, disinterested soul of moderation: “There are those who would argue . . . ” on the one hand, whereas “there are those who insist . . . ” on the other, whereas he is beyond such petty dogmatic positions. That was pretty much his shtick on abortion at Notre Dame. Of course, such studied moderation is usually a crock: Obama is an abortion absolutist, supporting partial-birth infanticide, and even laws that prevent any baby so inconsiderate as to survive the abortion from receiving medical treatment.
Josh Muravchik, without even having had the benefit of the Iran crisis (since he wrote his article before it arose) sees that same rhetorical pattern having much more ominous overtones for the cause of freedom around the world:
The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.
This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”
In other words, if the American masses can have their TiVos and McDs, and the Muslims can get their people (and maybe our people) just to submit, everything will be as I, the Great One, want it to be.
As for me, I keep being reminded of 1984. While the book is about Winston Smith, the subliminal backdrop is the ordinary people, the ones who aren’t party members. The party pacifies them with cheap food and cheap music, confident that they’ll be disinterested and cowed enough not even to notice that their lives are under complete government control.
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Ran across this blip from Iran concerning a lady sending a message from her home in Tehran:
It’s really striking when you actually know what she’s saying: At first she’s worried about her mom, who has left the house. She’s concerned that her mom may be caught up in a scene like the one she’s watching. But when she starts crying, it’s actually because she sees “them” (she never says who exactly, but you can assume from context that it’s the basiji) climbing balconies and breaking into houses with bricks. She keeps screaming: “They’re going into people’s homes!” and “They’re destroying everything!”
This is exactly why we fight to keep guns in our homes. This is exactly why the fascists, of any ilk, want you disarmed like sheep. So they can send their own Basiji, one million thugs strong, to threaten you, hound you, attack you, at will.
Guess I’ll plant that quote again – fits here better. I should have caught up before planting, I guess…
“Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Sir George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1803
Sorry…forgot the main link…
http://wolfhowling.blogspot.com/2009/06/should-right-to-keep-bear-arms-be.html
I don’t fault Obama being measured in his reaction to Iran, more in his inability to formulate a strategy at all.
I vaguely remember an incident shortly after Clinton was elected where he made an offhand comment about a international situation that put the world on high alert. I remember thinking at the time that he would be more circumspect in public comments. Of course, that was a time when the president spoke, the world listened.
In 1991, HW encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up and depose Saddam, but provided no material support, as far as I know, as Saddam brutually put down the uprising. It has been intimated he didn’t support the Shiites at the time due to concern of increasing Iranian influence.
In part, any moral or material support we could have given a secular uprising in Iran was destroyed when the left in this country, encouraged by enemies of the state, began their battle to neuter our Middle East strategy of deposing Saddam and helping Iraqis establish a secular democracy while projecting power to precipitate the fall of the Syrian and Iranian regimes and the backing they provided to Hezbelloh and Hamas.
Was such a strategy grounded in reality? We’ll never know.
The fact that this president has been slow to develop a response to the changing conditions indicates to me more a failure of his advisors, who apparently haven’t spent enough time developing what-if scenarios.
Whether Obama’s reluctance to project American influence can be traced to some covert sympathy with authoritarian Islamic power or merely a failure to “man up”, I don’t know. What this reminds me of is the image of a beating in an inner city by a gang of thugs, where passerbys are revolted but unwilling to risk their own safety to help or even call the cops.
Today is actually a mere five months into Obama’s term, but your point remains the same.
I thought we paid smart people to sit around in rooms dreaming up what-if scenarios.
I’ll even concede that possibly these smart people couldn’t imagine every scenario in five months, but how much different the world would be today if the left had conceded the same courtesy to the Bush administration, who in charge for 8 months, were unable to formulate a scenario like 9/11 from the rather obtuse warnings from intelligence agencies only months before for the event, the likes of which had never before occurred in the history of the world.
And yes, there had been a few piper cub type planes flown into buildings previously, but terrorist hijackings and bombings like Lockerbie and TWA800 were completely different in nature.
IMHO, Obama remains behind the curve in dealing with this. He looks like he’s a step behind. Which despots around the world are also noticing.
Imagine we elect a President with no backbone
Imagine it’s 3 a.m. and no one answers the phone
Imagine when people seek to let freedom ring over a tyrant’s quell
That the leader of the free world reaches to still liberty’s bell
Imagine when it came time to take a stand,
The President of the United States sat on his hands
Imagine that this had not already occurred.
That when a just word of support for democracy and freedom was needed, Barak Obama had not demurred.
Imagine that then decide is this change so many hoped for or just the thrall of the piper pied?
It has been argued elsewhere that we don’t have a stake in the outcome of this since the choices are between “thug” and “thug-lighter” (not even rising to the Minnie-me category).
I disagree.
If the Iranians can force the mullahs to recognize the right to fair elections, even when fixed, it will be a step in the right direction.
It will embolden the Iranians to push for a truly moderate regime, IMHO.
What makes this difficult is the private army at the mullahs command. They will likely not shirk from whatever tactics are necessary to put down the insurrection, even if the regular army and police might be reluctant to do so.
It will require a civil war at some point.
Thanks for the Muravchik thing, which is very revealing about Obama.
What Obama doesn’t understand, and probably doesn’t want to understand, is that the arrow of causation runs both ways. Yes, a minimal level of economic well-being is helpful to the development of liberty…but a climate of individual rights and stability of law and property is also very important to economic development.
>>If the Iranians can force the mullahs to recognize the right to fair elections, even when fixed>>
?????????????
If they’re fixed, they’re not fair.
Maybe you could clarify this a bit?
Obama resorts to protest slogans…
The leader of the free world has finally weighed in on the Iranian crisis: “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” Obama said in a White House statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is……
“If they’re fixed, they’re not fair.”
All candidates on the ballot had to be approved by Kamenhei.
They were fixed in that respect, but the election could have fairly reflected the Iranian choice.
>>”The candidates, selected from more than 450 hopefuls, were approved after being screened for their allegiance to Iran’s Islamic government system and “absolute obedience” to the country’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”>>
Don’t you just love it? Somebody goofed.
As I understand it, the results of the voting – supposedly 85% of some 40 million people – were complete and counted within 2 hours after the polls closed. Think we in the USA could match that? Even with our technology?
So…._could_ have “fairly reflected”, yes. But I don’t think it did.
You know…I’m not sure, but I think the ayatollahs would have been better off just appointing Ajad to an extended term than promising an election and then just fluffing it. I think a lot of what we’re seeing is just plain frustration. I learned with my kids – you don’t make promises you can’t deliver on.
Obama is weighed and found wanting… more money for his buddies, Book.