Criticizing Obama's Subdued Stance on Iran Is Self-Indulgent and Silly
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It is stunning to me that, with an event of such potential importance as the Iranian election, critics who know nothing about what's going on in Tehran are so quick to criticize President Obama for being insufficiently vocal in his support for the protesters.
That kind of critique seems sentimental and self-indulgent.
Sure, it might make us feel good. But would it have helped the marchers?
Americans like to think that everybody loves us. But if we have forgotten, the Iranians have not: Iran is the nation where the US of A overthrew the last real democratic government and installed a despotic shah, and where generations of Iranians have suffered since.
Do we see any protesters carrying American flags? Or building statues of Lady Liberty?
Obama needs to do what will help. And vocal cheerleading may not be it.
Conservative columnist George F. Will avoided the easy impulse on ABC on Sunday.
"The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what's going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism," Will said. "The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don't need that reinforced."
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Tags: Iran | foreign policy
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Reader Comments
OBAMA & HIS MARXIST ASSICIATES
HAVE YOU ASK OBAMA WHY HE HAS FILLED HIS GOVERNMENT WITH MARXISTS, SELF AVOWED COMMUNISTS, AND FAR LEFT RADICALS? REMEMBER, IT IS WAS OBAMA HISSELF THAT SAID IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MY POLICES - LOOK AT WHO I SURROUND AND ASSOCIATE MYSELF WITH!
Republicans criticizing Obama
HAHA. Are Republicans mad because Obama happens to be smart and articulate? He doesn’t take cheap shots, he just tells his opponents that they contradict themselves. It’s ok if young unintelligent people want to resort to name calling, than let them, because Obama is hundreds of times smarter than anyone that has to resort to name calling especially Republicans that won't even attempt to articulate their words.
The Washington Cheerleader
Cheerleading is the only thing this president does well - in fact, it's all he ever did, but he did it so successfully that he has risen from a well-deserved obscurity to become the most powerful single individual in the world, on the basis of his ability to shriek "change" every time he uncorks his beak, and his slippery propensity for calling a political life of abstention a record of accomplishment. If he knew anything at all about the people he claimed he wants to approach diplomatically, it should be that they hold him and the United States in the deepest contempt. His condemnation, strident or otherwise, will have the same effect, and attract about as much attention, as flatulence in a hurricane. If silence were worth $50 a second, the man simply couldn't make money.
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