On the wrong side of history

Paul

Yup. He is a shocker. I hear Ahmedinajad has demanded Obama apologise for interfering in internal Iranian affairs. I am expecting a grovelling one over hotdogs on the 4th July as he cosies up to Syrian and Venezualan officials.

Ellen

I pasted this in two posts below but it's worth repeating beside the wonderful Anne Bayefsky's comments.

Mark Steyn: "What's striking about the Bystander-in-Chief is that the more he does nothing, the more credit he gets for everything. In the New York Times, Helene Cooper attributes events in Iran to the Obama "stealth effect." The fellows in the street shouting "Death to the dictator!" were apparently inspired to rise up by Obama's outreach to the, er, dictator.'

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTQyNmJjYzAxYTE3ODNmMjI0MjA3YzViYTRhMzVjNjA=

cb

Seen the video, bought the tee-shirt, where can I get the single?

CB

David MacKinnon

Obama has failed his first major foreign policy test miserably. The rest of the world's dictators/thugs must be competing with one another to be the next to take him on.

John from Toronto

I heard a good suggestion:
The US should have left the invitations in place but told the Iranians that the only food was from Hebrew National.

winston

I am so freaking angry at Obama and his marxist pals

Ralph

Do you kids' parents know you're on the internet?

porkbelly

That's OK - Kim Jong Il's throwing a gala fireworks show on Hawaii to celebrate the 4th of July.

Mehran

I am profoundly depressed about the future. We have a volatile religious fascist junta massacring people who's only crime seems to be to want freedom, while at the same time taunting a broken superpower led by a donkey.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

I saw the Guardian paper this morning when i was having a tea break one of those lefties cafe, oh well i did read only the title of the story
The Guardian is not my cup of tea i prefer the Daily Mail, anyhow I don't like the way the Iranian government is behaving, sometimes we have to grow up you know, Ralph posted "Do you kids' parents know you are in the internet?" I don't know, but the only thing I know right now is things don't look good over there, it looks like the normal intelligent people in that country are not happy how they are treated in their own country, women are treated like sheep, young men are frustrated, they can't do what they want when they want, their is no freedom in that part of the world and I am very sorry about that

Edgar Davidson

Obama reaching out not just to the hated and discredited regime in Iran, but also Hamas today and yesterday the reopening of the US embassy in Syria. Whoever next - see
http://edgar1981.blogspot.com/

Si, N

Tweet tweet - so rudely forced.

Hang your head in shame

Bo

Wonder why it is that most if not all of the Iranian commentators, who side with the protesters in Iran, are hailing Obama's position as brilliant? Must be Melanie Phillips and her ilk know more than those intimately involved in the situation, eh?

Terry

Vote left and you get left ideology. I wonder if Obarmey wonders in the dead of night how those pesky Iraians can be so beastly to him when he has been so accommodating to them? It's called appeasement - maybe someone can give Obarmy a copy of the Neville Chamberlain's biography for Thanksgiving Day. Not that he'd understand it.

Jan

Obama is doing what is right for the people in Iran rather than what is right for the fools that think they have a clue. This is a very delicate situation for them and US involvement would only make it worse and play right into Ahmadinejad's hands. Please think before regurgitating the crud spouted by ignorant people.

greg gutfeld

“We don’t know how this thing is going to play out.”

I imagine you can use that excuse on pretty much anything. Except when it comes to press conferences. Which is why Obama does him. And now that our President has recognized that he’s potentially on the wrong side of history – he gave us a press conference designed to blunt criticism, as opposed to blunting the persecution of innocent people.

“Bearing witness,” as Obama calls it, is all it takes, apparently. But I’m not so sure. If you were being mugged, you’d really like a cop to shoot the bastard, instead of bearing witness. If you’re lugging five bags of groceries up four flights of stairs, “bearing witness” does no good. Lend a hand, champ.

So I disagree with Obama – we’re not seeing a “debate” in Iran. We’re seeing a brutal, ruthless crackdown. Something tells me that stopping that is more important than reducing carbon emissions to fight a questionable threat.

Look, I like the fact that he’s finally - although reluctantly - stepping up, but I wish Obama felt as immediately outraged about Iran as he did over the murder of an abortion doctor.

“We don’t know how this thing is going to play out.”

It would have been closer to Obama’s real concerns, if that quote ended with “for me.”

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggutfeld/2009/06/23/daily-gut-the-bystander-in-chief/

Florence

Sorry but I don't really give a 'monkeys' about Iran or the Iranians,we've enough dictators of our own in the westminster council offices to worry about.

Terry

Oh, Melanie, don't you know that Michael Jackson died? And you're wasting time writing about Iran. What's the matter with you, can't you get your priorities straight?
Can't you just be stupid like the rest of the media?

Carol

Obama saves his outrage for his domestic opponents and anybody who dares question his greatness. He is alternately thuggish and wussy, at the wrong times and in the wrong places.

Terry

On a more serious note, what did anyone rational expect of Obama? Wasn't it apparent what he was before his election?
Obama's reaction to events in Iran is no surprise.
That abominable speech in Cairo actually said it all - defined his presidency. It all comes down to one thing, appeasement of Islam at any cost.
Come now - you live in Britain, you should recognize this immediately.

Mr Melrose

Dixon Has The Answer

The lesson of both Iraq and Afghanistan is to invade to remove a regime when necessary, to utterly lay waste to the adversary,...metaphorically busting both their legs so they can pose no future threat, then withdraw and leave them to stew in their own chaos. Have fortified bases remain from which punitive and tactical
raids can be launched on the locals if they try to stand up. But rely essentially on aerial interdiction to slaughter anyone who tries to pose any future threat to us....

Of course, to really do a thorough job of this we would need to introduce biological and chemical weapons into the mix. Plus defoliation of any crops capable of sustaining life in the areas suppressed.

Essentially, we must divide the world into two types of region. Those which we or our puppets can control, and those which are rendered uninhabitable.

This would entail killing large numbers of "civilians", but we need to rediscover a realisation in the West that total strangers in far-away lands are NOT our friends and deserve no consideration in our scheme of things.

Now you can't say fairer than that.

embarrassed, ashamed

Speaking for the citizens of the U.S. who did NOT vote for Obama (almost 50% of us) I'm sorry for the world that we now have the Bystander-in-Chief (love that) groveling to such a wimpy turd as Aqua Velva Job. I grew up in Reagan country, where men were men. Heck, most women I know could probably deck Aqua Velva Job.

Original Tony

I feel absolute outrage about that poor dead girl and her family. I imagine this to be my daughter, my house, and her unknown grave. It makes me feel quite ill actually. My heart and sympathies to all of them.

This, to me, is the straw that has broken the camel's back in my attitude to Obama.

Words cannot express my disdain for him. Does he not realise he is supposed to be the leader of the free world?

Ros

Original Tony: Obama certainly realises that he's the 'leader of the free world.' Only for him the 'free world' represents all those that align themselves along with Islam and those that are anti-Israel, as he most certainly is. Therefore he can play the game however he sees it. He's not going to stand up for justice if it means that he'll lose whatever 'credibility' he has with his new friends. Integrity he certainly hasn't.

What has he done in the six months that he's been in office? Apart from bashing Israel and lying and obfusgating the truth about, inter alia, Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and predicating its existence solely on The Holocaust? He's appeased Iran, apologised for the USA in every which way possible, made friends with Chavez and now invites Syria into bed with him. No doubt Hamas and Hezbollah are on the list too. Where will it all end?

Brian Moshe

In 1956 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to quell a pro-democracy uprising against a detested regime. People protested throughout Hungary and hundreds were ruthlessly shot and murdered by the Soviet Army (including units of Mongolian paratroopers).

US President Eisenhower did not intervene, but the US encouraged the Hungarian uprising via radio broadcasts, yet in the end did nothing. Just as 35 years later it encouraged the Kurds to fight for independence during the first Gulf War, then sold them down the river.

In 1956 Britain was still licking its wounds after the Suez debacle, which the US had not supported, and which resulted in Britain losing most of its influence in the world.

The British Communist Party lost a swathe of members unable to justify (and that's saying something) Hungary's invasion. Krushchev (the Soviet leader) was secretly denouncing Stalin while quite prepared to kill anyone daring to oppose Soviet rule.

Yet conservative white Americans usually look back at the Eisenhower years as the finest period in the post-WW2 era, at least up to the Reagan years. They tend to remember peace abroad and prosperity at home.

This isn't the first time that a US President has let freedom seekers down, but at least one can say of Eisenhower he was constrained by the Soviets having nuclear weapons and probaly being prepared to use them. Hungary, after all, was further away from Main Street than Cuba was for JFK.

No reputable commentator or subsequent historian that I am aware of has had the nerve to suggest that because Eisenhower did nothng to help the Hungarians beyond empty words that somehow he inspired freedom aywhere else.

It is absolutely obscene that in certain quarters (including the White House) Obama is now being credited with having inspired the freedom seekers in Iran. It is the equivalent of claiming that Neville Chamberlain inspired the French Resistance.

Several British pundits have eulogised Obama's Cairo speech, one smug media figure calling it 'a work of art' on TV the other day.

Well, to mis-quote Burke:'Beauty is in the ear of the beholder'.

Obama knew before he crafted his poisoned chalice of a speech that Iran was due to hold an election shortly afterwards.

If he is so cautious that he wouldn't condemn the violence in Iran until he had no option, on the grounds that he was waiting to see which side eventually emerged victorious, why did he state categorically in Cairo that he was reaching out to the 'Islamic' Republic of Iran? Not much of two-way bet there...

Dixon

Ralph
June 25th, 2009 8:19pm
Do you kids' parents know you're on the internet?"

He should study some Transactional Analysis.

Dixon

Jan
June 26th, 2009 5:52am
" Obama is doing what is right for the people in Iran rather than what is right for the fools that think they have a clue. This is a very delicate situation for them and US involvement would only make it worse and play right into Ahmadinejad's hands. Please think before regurgitating the crud spouted by ignorant people."

Here it goes again...why the hell should we give a cuss for the "people of Iran". Our foreign policy ought comprise entirely and solely of what is best for US!

So I say again, stir things up...positively make it look like the protestors are our stooges...provoke more bloodshed, THAT is the way to "divide and defeat" our opponents...which is the state of Iran, irrespective of its "people" or whoever is in power this week.

So, Jan, it is you who are spouting what you call "crud"...a liberal, touchy-feely, hearty-over-head "crud".

It is Jan who is "regurgitating" the kind of ingenuous drivel that a million half-arsed career pundits are lining up to declare on CH4 news and Newsnight. Jan needs to actually sit down in a dark room...without the TV ...and try thinking it through!

Dixon

Brian Moshe: Excellent post.

Alec Rawls

Obama is not a clown. He is an Islamofascist. Remember Nicholas Kristof telling how Obama sang the Shahada for him ("the beginning of the call to prayer," which Obama called "one of the prettiest sounds in the world at sunset")?

With his fundamentalist Islamic education (in addition to the usual Islamic studies, Obama learned to recite the Koran in Arabic, which is the gold-standard of fundamentalist education), Obama obviously knows that a single sincere recitation of the Shahada constitutes conversion to Islam, according to Sharia law, and it certainly sounds like Obama was sincere.

Note also that every single one of Obama's long term mentors and confidants (with the possible exception of Michelle) is not just Muslim, but Islamofascist: William "Abu Zayd" Ayers; the so-called "ex-Muslim" Jeremiah Wright; Islamofascist "cousin" Raila Odinga; PLO terror supporter Rashid Khalidi; Saudi-NOI moneyman Khalid Al-Mansour; and perhaps the greatest influence of all, Obama's communist, racist, Islamofascist father.

Obama is determined to see the mad Mullahs get nuclear weapons. Note his odd locution. He doesn’t say that he wants to stop Iran from getting nukes. He says he does not want Iranian nuke acquisition to start an arms race: “specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.” He figures if he stands by for the slaughter, Khamenei will hold on to power and long enough to get the nuclear weapons that will make it impossible for other nations to help out with regime change in the future. That is his GOAL.

He may LOOK like a clown, but he is not.

pinkiebrown

What Obama is can be said in one word. Follower. The left says beware climate change. Obama satresses climate change when the economy may not be able to handle it. Bush wasn't "diplomatic" in dealing with Iran, hence the refusal to condemn along with the barbeque invite. Germany and the west then condemn, and there he is acting like he was there all along. He can't be expected to be the leader of the free world if he is the "follower" par excellence. Just recall his support for Jeremiah Wright. He could never abandon his "spiritual advisor". He ditched him like he was getting away from cancer when he saw the guy would bring him down. We have as president a man with no principles and bad instincts. What he does have is an ear with perfect pitch to see which way the political wind is blowing. I'm sure others here can remember additional instances of when he changed his tune for political expediency. Nafta. Guantanamo. And the dictators have gotten the measure of the man a lot faster than the oh so intelligent western liberal media. From Damascus to Cairo to Tehran to Caracas to North Korea, they have all taken their free shot at the man who stands for nothing and everything at the same time.

Augustus

"The Obama administration has cancelled its invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations."
But doesn't the Declaration state: 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness'?

What have Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to do with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Doesn't Obama know that thousands of young people like Neda have been murdered in the thirty years of the Islamic Republic of Iran? What kind of advisors has he got for God's sake? Doesn't he have any sense at all of not only being the leader of the Democrats, but also supposedly the leader of the free world? All of a sudden Ahmadinejad isn't cool any more. Why is that? He hasn't changed. At the beginning of the week those invitations had been confirmed, but polls then suggested that more than 60% of Americans disapproved of Obama's
Iranian stance. Obama is an opinion poll president. Not morality, but opinion polls drives his policy on Iran.

Polly Gamma

Alec - I still think he's a clown but I hope you've told the authorities just in case!

Rob-NY

The dumb argument made all the time is US and UK involvment in the coup in Iran in 1953. Consider this was the year a bloody war in Korea just came to a cease fire and Stalin just died. I think the plan was to avoid bloody wars by more covert means. Nevertheless it led to a stable pro-western govt in Iran for 25 years which is exactly what Obama wants. If Obama will apologize for 1953 how about an aplogy for 1979 when Carter incouraged the Shah to leave which led to the US hostage crsis, Iran-Iraq War, Persian Gulf War, 9/11, Iraq War and possible nuclear war in the mid-east.