In Defense of President Obama

Our President is so accustomed to a servile press and context control that it must be a lot of fun finding himself in charge during the current Iranian discombobulation. No matter what he does, he will look like he has no idea what he is doing. Fred Barnes thinks the President is showing weakness by hiding behind a false choice.

Obama has sought neutrality between a discredited regime and democratic protesters. This actually helps the regime, since President Ahmadinejad and the mullahs don't need Obama's support. The protesters do. In effect, Obama has tilted in favor of the regime. The result is personal shame (for Obama) and policy shame (for the United States).

That, unfortunately, is correct. The Iranian protesters are carrying signs in English for a reason. They nourish hopes that the United States can bring some kind of clout to bear on their behalf. Not doing so surely means supporting the status quo.

Peter Spiegel and Neil King think that pressure is increasing on Obama to "act forcefully."

The uncompromising stance taken by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who on Friday ordered an end to protests, ratcheted up pressure on the Obama administration to take a forceful line against the Iranian regime.

But how forceful, exactly, is a "forceful line"? The Administration is indeed bending under such pressure. Ali Akbar Dareini and Brian Murphy note this:

In Washington, President Barack Obama urged Iranian authorities to halt "all violent and unjust actions against its own people." He said the United States "stands by all who seek to exercise" the universal rights to assembly and free speech.

Is that a "forceful line"? Jeffrey T. Kuhner has forceful words for the President:

President Obama has betrayed the pro-democracy protesters in Tehran. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators are risking their lives to contest Iran's rigged elections. They understand that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election was a fraud and that his main challenger, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, is the victim of a stolen election.

The best the president can muster is that he is "concerned" by the election results and "troubled" by the "suppression" of peaceful dissent. His top priority is that America not be seen as "meddling" in Iran's internal affairs. Mr. Obama is convinced that nothing - including a possible democratic revolution - must derail his "grand bargain" to negotiate an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. This is realpolitik at its worst.

The trouble with all of that is that it is a mix of truth, conjecture, and wishful thinking. Yes, the election is a fraud. All elections under the current Iranian regime are fraudulent. That doesn't mean that Mousavi is the "victim of a stolen election," because the thing about fraudulent elections is that they don't tell you what would have happened in an honest one. It seems as like as not that Ahmadinejad would have won a fair election. By contrast, if Mousavi had won he would surely have been as much a regime stooge as Ahmadinejad. Only his official loss has turned him into a champion of democracy.

Obama should come out forcefully in favor of the protesters, not because Mousavi is the rightful President but because the Iranian regime is not a rightful regime. That he does not do so, as Barnes and others point out, is because he doesn't want to overly irritate the Ayatollahs, with whom he hopes to negotiate. But those negotiations are going to come to nothing anyway. Without a credible threat, Obama cannot win concessions. He has no credible threat. So he might as well issue a more forceful line.

But if he did that, he would just as vehemently criticized for playing into the hands of the Iranian regime. He has no good options. So no matter what he does, he will look like he doesn't know what he is doing.  That doesn't mean, of course, that he does know what he is doing.  No signs of that have appeared in English or any other language. 

Meanwhile, North Korea is apparently about to launch a missile toward Hawaii. Welcome to the Oval Office, Mr. President. Don't you miss Chicago?

Comments

[A.I.]

Considering this post KB, were I in legal trouble, I don't think you would be my first choice as a "defense" attorney. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Just what is it the Fred Barnes faction of the Right wants Obama to say or do that would be "forceful"? And do these people ever consider consequences for their actions, or are they all like Dick Cheney who after everything falls apart or blows up in our collective faces says something profound like "stuff happens".

There likely is some truth to the notion that Obama has taken a measured approach "...because he doesn't want to overly irritate the Ayatollahs, with whom he hopes to negotiate". That does not mean that is his only reason or even a primary reason. He may simply want to not screw up a situation that already is stuff of our dreams.

As for any future negotiations, sure the Ayatollahs may renege on any agreement achieved. But if they do, they will continue to erode their credibility in the world and with their own people making their ultimate failure more likely.

There was far more to the collapse of the Soviet Union than Reagan's bluster about tearing down walls. And that likely will be the case in Iran as well if we continue with a patient and measured policy.

[A.I.]

Apparently I have too much time on my hands as I'm adding to my original post. Stepping back a bit from all the partisan brouhaha about forceful this or that, I have seen virtually no mention of the "big lie" theory back-firing on Mr. Supreme Leader--who is not, as one comic noted, to be confused with Diana Ross. Khamenei told the big lie and the people of Iran said no way, our leaders are deceiving us and that is something up with which will will not put.

That implies other big lies may meet the same fate. We might ask whether Iran's leadership still will be able to pursue nuclear weaponry under the guise of developing an alternative energy source, or will their own people cry foul? Will characterizing Iran's leadership and people as some sort of evil monolith we must destroy before it destroys America (as the Right has so often done) still fly or will we recognize that many, and likely most Iranians by no means hate us or wish us ill?

There is a faction in this county that treats every tin-horn dictator as if he were the equivalent of pre-Polish invasion Hitler and every choice of non-confrontation as Chamberlain-esque appeasement. If only their big lies would be treated with the same disdain as those offered by Ayatollah in Chief and fabricator extraordinaire Khamenei.