President looking resolute
Many people are dying in Iran, and more death sounds imminent some of them for doing nothing more than watching what is going on. Iran tries to prevent growth in the cult of freedom’s martyrs. For these, I again prayed the Office for the Dead, this morning. I pray their deaths will not be in vain.
Do watch this mesmerizing video. Crossing the threshold of fear, indeed.
Reading around? Begin here, where Andy McCarthy perfectly articulates what so many of us have instinctively gleened about President Obama, particularly in the past week.
It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah’s “unjust” repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable “assault,” though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover. But expect him to remain restrained and to continue grossly understating the Iranian regime’s deadly response. That will change only if, unexpectedly, it appears that the freedom-fighters may win, at which point he’ll scoot over to the right side of history and take all conceivable credit.
I think Victor had this right on Saturday: “Obama is almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners, whose grievances Obama has long studied (and perhaps in large part entertained),” (though I’d have omitted the “almost”). Mark Steyn made the same point in a post last week (about a Robert Kagan column that Pete Wehner also discussed).
It’s a mistake to perceive this as “weakness” in Obama. It would have been weakness for him to flit over to the freedom fighters’ side the minute it seemed politically expedient. He hasn’t done that, and he won’t. Obama has a preferred outcome here, one that is more in line with his worldview, and it is not victory for the freedom fighters. He is hanging as tough as political pragmatism allows, and by doing so he is making his preferred outcome more likely. That’s not weakness, it’s strength — and strength of the sort that ought to frighten us.
Damn straight. What some simply project as “hate” or “spite” from the right toward the president can be better understood as our warily pulling back from a political creature we identify as particularly ruthless. The fact that many (like myself) still find him a likable guy despite what we clearly distrust in him makes illustrates further what “ought to frighten us.” But read the whole piece.
Has Obama hit the snooze button? No. He’s just waiting to see how events turn out so that, either way, he appears to be on the correct side of history. If the Mullahs win, Obama gets to (maybe, finally) say nice words about human rights and liberty to them while “negotiating” and if the people win, Obama will say, “I did it. I did it all.”
Even the NY Times begins to notice that Barack Obama is creature of political expedience,; he is the first American president I can think of who projects an air of ambiguity on the issue of human freedom. While his slobbering minions in the Mainstream press (who do not realize how little he likes or respects them) gush Obamajuice and work out convoluted apologia for a liberty-shy president, Ed Morrissey writes: Heaven forfend we should actually lead on freedom and self-determination.;
The idea that keeping quiet while Iranian protestors [sic] try to free their nation will convince Khamenei to not only sit down with us openly but give up the nuclear weapons they have spent years developing is beyond naive, especially considering the history of the regime. It crosses over into stupidity. It comes from a mindset that the problem in the relationship is America and not the extremist mullahs ruling Iran, an argument that the Iranians themselves rejected this week in protests across their nation.
I think some of us understood that “diplomacy” with Iran was always a dead thing, as long as the Mullahs remain in charge. People seem to have shorter and shorter memories. When Bush was castigated for his (fake) “unilateralism” in Iraq, he went “multilateral” on Iran, asking for lots of involvement and input from Europe and other countries, and the result was…nothing. Diplomatic negotiations on Iran cannot yield anything for the West because the West cannot give Iran what it really wants, which is the destruction of Israel (who cautiously voices support for the Iranian people) and the Jews. Some in the west are trying, though.
Writes Jim Geraghty:
It only took about eight days of violence in the streets in Iran to bring E. J. Dionne to the position a lot of us were in last weekend…I would prefer if Dionne, and or the president, spelled out what that price for repression is. In this case, I suspect abstraction hinders deterrence.
Bush called this one correctly while he was still in office:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the women will be leading freedom movements in Iran and elsewhere, and the role of the United States is to provide moral support and other support without undermining their cause.”
I keep thinking that the late, great Oriana Fallaci would have been vociferous in her support for the people of Iran, particularly the women.
Bookworm writes An Open Letter to the Iranian People:
When Americans see you in the streets fighting for your freedom against a government that controls your every move, that makes a mockery of your votes and that, when you speak out, tortures and kills you, we feel in the very marrow of our being that you are fighting the good fight. In homes and in offices, on blogs and in letters to the editor, and in the halls of government, Americans applaud your courage. We want you to cast off the chains that deprive you of the liberty to which each person on earth (man and woman) is entitled.
We want you to live in a country in which all people can speak out freely, worship their God as their conscience demands, and move about without fear that their government will constrain or control them. We recognize that, as an Islamic society, your concept of free speech, free worship, and free movement are almost certainly more narrow than ours. Nevertheless, we believe that any limitations placed on speech, worship and movement should come from the people themselves, and not from a group of unelected rulers who brook no challenges to their power.
You’ll want to read it all. Really.
David Warren: Dialogue with Iran’s Monstrous Rulers?
Krauthammer wonders if Obama is simply incompetent, while Michael Barone looks at some cognitive dissonance with this president.
Regime Change?: Movement Seeks to Eliminate ‘Supreme Leader’ Position. I will hold my pointless snark and urge you to stay tuned.
Do you like this blog? Hopefully blogging will still continue under this regime. Will bloggers have to tell you, everytime they post, that your Amazon and Mystic Monk Coffee purchases help support the site by helping to support the blogger? Stay tuned on that, too. One way or another the government is going to try to regulate the content of blogs and the wild-west free-speech therein.
But to remind you, 
when you do purchase anything via Amazon, or buy the world’s best coffee, from the monks, you support the site, and other charities, too, as I always tithe a percentage to others from those earnings.
Another for the if-it-were-Bush-they’d-all-scream file
End: Why I dumped Obama’s party.
Related:
UK Pulling Embassy Families out of Iran
A split in revolutionary guard?
Sarkozy says no to burqas
“His lack of response will not be regarded lightly”
Twittering Liberty and Hope
Office for the Dead
June 22nd, 2009 | 1:33 pm
Call me a conspiracy nut but I sincerely believe Obama is simply an empty suit that stands up and gives great speech.
His initial election was guaranteed as he ran as a machine candidate in Chicago, in his run for the state senate a judge tossed all his democratic candidates off the ballot including the incumbent. When he ran for the U.S. Senate the Dems got hold of a judge in California who “unsealed” his opponent’s nasty divorce case and began spreading the malicious charges his wife made and the poor guy just dropped out.
June 22nd, 2009 | 1:54 pm
Jim – Huh? You do realize that the push for the records to be unsealed came from the GOP primary candidates as well as Chicago press, right? And that when this campaign was going on no one had even heard of Barack Obama?
Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan:
“To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn’t know whose side America is on. “In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral,” said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it’s neutral?
This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else’s delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.”
June 22nd, 2009 | 2:02 pm
Elizabeth Anne, I’m not all that certain the world does know whose side America is on anymore. As a people I think we continue to treasure democracy, personal freedom, and minimal government. These values seem to run contrary to our leadership over the last six months.
June 22nd, 2009 | 4:13 pm
[...] bleed for freedom in Iran Michelle Malkin: Iran: What next? The Anchoress, A First Things Blog: Iran, Multi-lateral Diplomacy; Bush right? Gateway Pundit: Obama Tells Killer Iranian Regime “The World Is Watching”… Then [...]
June 22nd, 2009 | 4:56 pm
Elizabeth Anne, I’m with the bear. There have been times in America’s history where people could instinctively know which side America was on (ex. Kennedy, Reagan). This is not one of those times (cf. Johnson, Nixon). As for Peggy Noonan, so she said it, so what? Too often quotes are asserted as self-proving and I, for one, am getting a little tired of the false choices so often thrown out by liberals in an attempt to silence their detractors rather than reason with them.
June 22nd, 2009 | 6:06 pm
[...] Had Barack Obama not sided with the evil regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the first, the revolution would be on sturdier legs today. [...]
June 22nd, 2009 | 8:03 pm
I don’t pay attention to what Peggy Noonan says anymore but the enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend. We don’t understand Iran and need to stay out of this. The last time Iran’s young people marched in the streets they ushered in the Ayattolah Khomeni. Remember him?
June 22nd, 2009 | 8:29 pm
Sometime last week as others were pondering Obama’s responce to the Iranian crisis I accepted that I did not find his responce in any way strange or unusual and knew that this is in fact what I had expected of him.
The reason is that I grew up in a black Third World country. With my experiences and observing Obama’s background, his body language and nuances I knew that in his heart he is a Third World socialist with all the resentments towards America that you could find in the political science Dept of any University in Nigeria or Jamaica. I socialized with and dined with and laughed with just those as Obama and read him like a book.
With his anti establishment mother, anti colonialist father, life in third world countries, training at the hands of the Saul Alinsky bible, community organizing in gangland black Chicago plus baptising by Rev Wright , Obama has an even more extensive anti-american upbringing than the most revolutionaly socialist you can find anywhere in the world.
Indeed it is a supreme sign of his duplicity and dangerousness that throughout four years of scrutiny by so many Americans that he sailed forth to the Presidency – this wolf in sheeps clothing.
All of the politicians I have met in the Third World who most resemble Obama have bankrupted their countries and gutted all their institutions. Like Obama they made all and sundry afraid of their public institutions. I saw it happen in small nation states but was amazed to see Titans of American industry cower before Godfather Obama and consiglieri Emmanuel as with the banks and car companies.
America fear this man. By nuture he has a profund liking for any anti Western dictator on the block. He actually salivated at the chance to meet Castro and Chavez precisely because they were anathema to the America of George Bush or middle America. He has been trained to see such as “white Europe” to be feared, distained and rejected and this was clear in his responce to the UK, France and Germany in his recent trips. It easily makes you understand his apology tours. It easily makes you understand his lovefest with the Muslim world, bowing to King Abdullah while making demands on Israel but kowtowing to the Iranians.
Israle is DEAD in Obama’s books. Make no mistakes about this. There are some Third World black countries in which Israel cannot even be mentioned and they would like that state to be blown off the face of the map and Obama would fit in very easily there.
In other words you have elected a Third World socialist despot who was smart enough and tough enough to get to the predicency. If you think that this does not spell trouble for America in the future you are living in a fool’s paradise. He wants to see America bankrupt, brought to its knees and subjugated to others preferable the Muslin world.
As you say in the US he is the ultimate snake oil salesman.
June 22nd, 2009 | 8:59 pm
[...] Iran, Multi-lateral Diplomacy; Bush right? by The Anchoress [...]
June 22nd, 2009 | 10:38 pm
Obama’s chronic fence straddling has emasculated him.
June 22nd, 2009 | 10:45 pm
Before I forget and as an addition to the post above.
On the issues of the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and on abortion – be guaranteed that the only thing stopping Obama from going full bore into homosexual “marriage” and abortion on demand through full term, is political pragmatism. As soon as he thinks it is feasible then good by to all the social norms we conservatives hold sacred.
June 23rd, 2009 | 1:18 am
I greatly enjoy your blog. I share your views regarding a wide range of issues – and I share your taste in relation to such vitally important matters as the Code of the Woosters. But, frankly, you horrify me when you say that you regard Pres. Obama as “likeable”. You must know his views regarding abortion, stem cell research and other life issues. And his voting record regarding saving the lives of children aborted but still alive. I share the views of the great Father Neuhaus, Joseph Bottum, Archbishop Chaput and others who have written about your President in First Things. Obama is an astute politician and a compelling speaker, but “likeable” he is not!
[I can disagree with someone, and find their views completely out of accord with my own, and still manage to find something to like in them. Obama seems to be a good and loving father and a devoted husband and he has the ability to laugh. One of the things I most disliked about the left during the Bush years was that they were so into their hate that they were incapable of seeing anything good in him; they could not even admit that he'd married well without insulting his wife. I do not "like" Obama, but I find him "likable." There is a difference. And I would rather not see myself sink any further than I already do in my feelings toward politicians and newsmen!
-admin]
June 23rd, 2009 | 1:19 am
At this point in our experience I am thanking God for the internet and the ability of every day people to get information out to the world. Without it we would be in even worse trouble than the mess we have.
(Oh, and I guess I should thank Al Gore for the internet as well.)
Great and helpful post… thank you.
Came via Brutally Honest.
June 23rd, 2009 | 7:26 am
Well said Joseph. The current administration has expanded the Clinton administration dependence on focus groups, to establish their position, to a art form. Isn’t it great we’re now so cosmopolitan and don’t have to deal with someone like Bush who said what he meant and meant what he said.
June 23rd, 2009 | 9:18 am
Anchoress: An outstanding summary of these sad events. I wanted to add this link, as it about one of the key events — and I think it may eventually be known as the Twitter Revolution or the Neda Revolution. Here is the link to a synopsis of what is known about the young woman killed by Iran’s thugocracy:
Just One Bullet and it’s Over
June 23rd, 2009 | 11:34 am
@dymphna – I just started reading a book by VS. Naipaul (Among the Believers) written in the early ’80s. The first section is based on his travels through Iran. It appears that many people were surprised when Khomeni did not step back to let others run the government.
There is a lot we don’t understand about Iran, and I would add your comment about the youth wanting Khomeni to be the ruler to be one thing that is not necessarily true.
@Joseph – I think this is something that many of us secretly fear…
June 23rd, 2009 | 2:52 pm
I think Joseph is right on track about the person Obama is and what he wishes for the U.S.
June 23rd, 2009 | 11:17 pm
Speaking of the media, I was passing by a TV with CNN on, and I heard a reporter describe how Obama’s statements today re: Iran were “brutal” and that he had “hammered” them.
I didn’t know whether to die laughing or throw up. Instead I seethed all the way down six floors and out to my car, knowing that this crap will probably succeed with people whose memory only extends back to the last soundbite and who, out of the goodness of their simple hearts are all too eager to give him chance after chance.
Obama won precisely because the tactic works. How depressing is it to think that there may be still millions of people out there swallowing these abrupt changes of heart and going easy on him because he’s new and inexperienced. Oh the irony….
June 23rd, 2009 | 11:23 pm
Oh yeah, I forgot to add how some lackey of his was actually trying to credit Obama with encouraging the uprising in the first place thanks to his Cairo speech, of all things!
But hey, if the supposed leader of the free world is the last person to do the right thing, it doesn’t matter really, as long as he comes around in the end, right?! Why he is so masterful it only looks like he is trailing behind everyone with a decent sense of right and wrong. In reality, he was in front of everyone and we just didn’t know it. Ohhhhh, I see it now.
June 24th, 2009 | 12:09 pm
[...] O-presser was a little interesting. The White House seems to be doing what I predicted the other day; they’re suggesting that the so-so Cairo speech was the impetus for the popular uprising in [...]
June 24th, 2009 | 1:14 pm
Dear Anchoress,
Before we condemn Obama too strongly for his quiet tone, I will point out this web site, which has been carrying a lot of Twitter traffic from Tehran:
niacblog.wordpress.com
22 Jun update, 3:15 PM
“Dear friend, if you have any contacts within the American Administration, please send them this message on behalf of us, ordinary Iranians in Iran (whose interests and concerns are very different from those of the exiled Iranians in the United States and in Europe who do not yet understand the mentality here and who have been cut off from the Iranian society for too long). Tell your contacts in the Administration that their point of view regarding Iran is by far the best position that an American Government has ever taken. We appreciate this and thank the President.
During the last two or three decades not one American president had “understood” Iran. All of them got caught in the traps of the mollahs, despite themselves having to play the bad cop .. but this time the intelligent president has decided not to join in their game, bravo.”
=====
While I have great respect for Krauthammer et al and read their columns regularly, I’ll take the word of the people who are there and are actually in harm’s way over the word of pundits, no matter how savvy.
Which doesn’t mean there’s no room to criticize the administration. There are multiple reports from witnesses, for example, of Hamas thugs beating Iranians in the streets.
The present regime evidently doesn’t trust it’s own people, so it’s imported alien thugs to do the dirty work for them.
And who has been pushing Israel to the wall to make a deal with these people? The current administration, of course.
And of course the entire idea of bargaining with the current regime so we can wave a piece of paper and proclaim ‘peace in our time’ — well, that worked so well before, didn’t it?
Respectfully,
Brian P.
[I am being very judicious with my twitter quotes, because one does not know who is twittering or what the agenda might be. These people are carrying signs in English, suggesting they want some input from the West, and frankly anytime I read something like what you quoted, I immediately remember the man who twittered me that "Obama has been more poor and oppressed than any American president, ever." People on twitter have their agendas, like anyone else, which is why I quote so few of them. American presidents have certainly gotten Iran wrong time and time again, and Obama does supposedly have more insight into the mind of Islam, but he is still two steps behind, all the time, and his silly invitation to a despotic regime to celebrate our values on the 4th of July suggests that he is flying as much by his pants as anyone else, even with his additional insights. If I am going to make an error, and I am sure I will, I would rather err on the side of the people trying to bring about real change, and introduce real freedom to Iran. - admin]
June 24th, 2009 | 1:24 pm
Forgot to add ..
Notwithstanding the above, I note that France and Germany have condemned the violence more strongly and earlier than we have. So we appear to have ceded moral leadership to France. FRANCE? Waaaggghhhh …
Respectfully,
Brian P.
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