President Announces Support for Iranian Protesters

President Bush, I mean, in 2003.

I believe that some day freedom will prevail everywhere, because freedom is a powerful drive for people to… and it’s the beginnings of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran, which I think is positive."

Very good point made in The Nation (though I'm linking Hot Air, which quotes it). Obama was sold to us as having Absolute Moral Authority on hope and change and peace and love. He had much greater moral suasion that Bush, we were told. The world hated Bush, but loves Obama. Ergo, Obama would be able to make the compelling case for freedom and peace that Bush never could, even though he tried.

Ya been had. Bamboozed. Run amok. Because Obama is using that Absolute Moral Authority to protect his precious debating partners.

And it's noticed. Mousavi's own spokesman to Obama: Stop saying we're just like Ahmadinejad.

A good round-up of Iran news at the Berman Post. The post concludes with this cartoon:

That's from the Dry Bones Blog, which posts a cartoon every day.

And speaking of Ron Paul: Only one Congressman voted against a resolution condemning the regime for its violence and repression, and that of course was The Only Man Who Can Save America (Ron Paul!!11!1!eleventy!).

The only two politicians in America who believe that the Iranian regime should not be condemned are, then, Ron Paul (Ron Paul!!! and Barack Hussein Obama.

White House Spokesretard Gibbs claimed the resolution's language was "very consistent" with Obama's-- but as Jennifer Rubin notes in the above-linked post, that's a, what's the word, lie. Barack Obama specifically refused to condemn the regime. He specifically, out of his own mouth, considered that word and then dismissed it.

Further, Obama's support for the protesters extremely limited -- he supports their right to protest for a while, then give up and buckle under the mullahs with few getting hurt but nothing at all being changed.

Which is exactly the same level of support Khamenei and the mullahs show for the protesters, too. They too want this to end relatively bloodlessly, but with their fraudulent election winning and their power undiminished.

Mike Pence piths:

“When Ronald Reagan went before the Brandenburg Gate, he did not say ‘Mr. Gorbachev, that wall is none of our business,’” said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Even Obama SuperFan David Ignatius at the WaPo finds Obama wanting:

President Obama was right to speak carefully about the events in Iran during the first week of protest. But it's time for him to express his solidarity with the Iranians who are so bravely taking to the streets each day. He can do that without seeming to meddle if he chooses his words wisely.

Obama should invoke the Iranian yearning for justice -- which was a powerful theme of the revolution. He should cite Iran's own rich history of political reform, going back to Cyrus the Great, whose declaration on good governance was chiseled in the Cyrus Cylinder in 539 B.C. He should cite the Iranian constitution of 1906, which established elections and basic freedoms. Democracy is not an American imposition but an Iranian tradition.

...

Obama's agenda of "engagement" with Iran must be on hold for now. He shouldn't renounce his offer of talks, but allow it to sit. Let the Iranians chase the West for a while; they're the ones who need legitimacy.

On the other hand there's David Brooks (link to Commentary). He is, of course, reassuring us all once again that Obama is much smarter than we can even begin to contemplate and that there is great wisdom and innovation in his domestic agenda and his Iranian cowardice.

Jennifer Rubin doesn't buy Brooks' go-to "he's just too brilliant for you to even understand how brilliant he is" spin:

There is of course another explanation: he’s a radical liberal on domestic policy and a Chas Freeman “realist” on foreign policy (e.g. hostile toward Israel, unconcerned with human rights, contemptuous of the idea of American exceptionalism). That isn’t the image he spun for the elite punditocracy during the campaign but it sure explains his actions since taking office.

Oddly enough, Charles Krauthammer agrees with David Brooks, and writes that Obama is handling this "nearly perfectly," likening him to the "calm and clear eye of the storm, around which the maelstrom swirls."

Kidding. He slashes him to bloody ribbons.

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What's at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime -- and the future of the entire Middle East.

Getting your face beaten in by foreign thugs imported by your tyrannical masters = dialogue; tyrant = Supreme Leader.

Read the whole thing.

Can't Stop the Signal: Good for the BBC. The Iranian tyranny is jamming the satellite they usually use to broadcast into Iran, so they're enlisting two more satellites to beam their coverage in.

The BBC, bastion of the left, is "meddling" more in Iran than Obama. Must have been taken over by neocons or somethin'.

posted by Ace at 03:28 PM

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