Tuesday, June 16, 2009
To Speak Out or Not to Speak Out
The folks at niacINsight are doing an absolutely spectacular job covering the uprising in Iran. Everyone should bookmark the site as an indispensable source. I’d like to quibble, though, with something I’ve read there and elsewhere a couple of times over the weekend.
U.S. Representative Mike Pence from Indiana said on CNN that he hopes President Obama offers a word of support for the dissidents in Iran. “This is absolutely the wrong thing to do,” wrote a contributor to the niac site. “Iran has a long history of rejecting foreign meddling in its internal affairs"
But right now the regime may be sticking its proverbial finger in the wind to sense what a foreign reaction to a more ferocious domestic response might look like. It’s somewhat surprising that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps hasn’t already gunned down a substantial number of people. Surely its commanders have at least considered massacring dissidents as in Tienanmen Square. If they feel they might get away with it because no one outside Iran is willing to stop them – which is exactly what happened in Burma last year – silence from the White House might actually increase the likelihood of something monstrous happening.
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The Iranian election: Barack Obama’s cowardly silence
Telegraph [UK]
The Obama administration's response to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's fraudulent election victory is cowardly, lily-livered and wrong.(Snip)As blood flows on the streets of Tehran, the United States government remains as silent as a Trappist Monk. According to The New York Times, the president "did not even convene any high-level White House meetings or conference calls on Sunday". That's not the mark of a leader but a clear display of weakness...
[As usual, we must rely on overseas' media to provide any straight talk on our own President]
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Obama on Cairo Speech: Just Kidding
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[remember this.]“The administration will deal with the situation we have, not what we wish it to be.”
That's what a senior Obama administration official told Mark Landler of The New York Times.
Of course there is a third, less passive, option. The president could seek to affect that situation.
He is the most powerful man alive, after all, and a man whose transformative words, his supporters tell us, can change the world....
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Tehran’s Answer to Obama
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When Obama went to Cairo, it was to signal a new era in America’s relationship with the Muslim world. No longer would the United States deal from a position of strength, but from a position of weakness.
In return for Obama agreeing to deal from a position of weakness, Iran will now deal with the United States from a position of strength...
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Poll: Americans Say Obama Not Tough Enough on North Korea, Iran
Most Americans -- including a majority of Democrats as well as majorities of Republicans and independents -- say President Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea and Iran.
A Fox News poll released Monday finds more than two-thirds of Americans say Obama has not been tough enough on North Korea and Iran (69 percent), while some 15 percent think his actions have been ''about right'' and 3 percent think he has been too tough...
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Thugophilia Isn't Moral
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I think we are going to see, incrementally, perhaps, a rise in the ratings of former president Bush. Iraq is proving to be amazingly resilient, not only functioning as a democracy, but by withstanding the best efforts of Iran to kill it off, proving destabilizing to Iran itself.
By removing Saddam, and trying to isolate Ahmadinejad and appeal to the Iranian people, Bush at least tried to prep the landscape for democratic change....
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NYT's Friedman: Democracy Spreading in Mideast Thanks to Bush
[Yes, that Friedman...]
Did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine reading a New York Times column not written by a conservative that claimed "the forces for decency, democracy and pluralism" in the Middle East "have a little wind at their backs" due to the policies of former President George W. Bush?
Neither did I, but much to my surprise, such was said by Thomas Friedman in his most recent piece entitled "Winds of Change?"
Readers are strongly advised to fasten their seatbelts tightly across their waists, for you are about to enter an alternate media reality:
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CBS Publishes New Republic Piece Comparing Bush to Ahmadinejad
In today's "Will Bush Derangement Syndrome Ever End" segment, CBSNews.com published an article from The New Republic comparing Iran's crazed leader who believes the holocaust never happened and Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet to -- wait for it! -- America's 43rd president.
Isn't that special?
In a piece hysterically titled "Meet Iran's George W. Bush," author Laura Secor said Iran's upcoming elections (this is from last Monday) were similar to ours in 2004...
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MSNBC Suggests Obama Helped Defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon
On Tuesday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann suggested that President Obama’s speech in Cairo may have been responsible for the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon’s parliamentary elections which occurred a few days after the speech.
After a clip of Obama’s speech, the MSNBC host continued: "Three days later, voters in Lebanon elected an American-backed coalition instead of a Hezbollah-backed coalition."
But as Olbermann discussed the possibility that Obama had a hand in the results, he neglected to inform viewers that the apparent 71 out of 128 seats won by pro-Western candidates in 2009 is nearly identical to the 72 won in the last such round of elections in 2005.
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Olbermann Calls Dick Cheney 'As Insane As Any Terrorist'
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has said a lot of disgraceful things in his tenure as "Countdown" host, but on Thursday evening, he attacked former Vice President Dick Cheney in a fashion that should make all of America's enemies both here and abroad proud."Neurotic, paranoid, false to fact and false to reason, forever self-rationalizing his inner rage at his own impotence, and failure dripping from every word, and as irrational, as separated from the real world, as dishonest, as insane as any terrorist; the former vice president has today humiliated himself beyond redemption."
But that was just the beginning, for moments later, Olbermann said Cheney was "culpable, morally, ethically" for 9/11: "At best, you are guilty of malfeasance and eternally lasting stupidity. At worst, sir, in the deaths of 9/11, you are negligent."
What follows is a video of this abomination along with a full transcript, some lowlights, and videos of Cheney's actual speech:
[And MSNBC is losing viewership - I can't understand it.]
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FLASHBACK s >
Cheney's Top Ten Points Every American Should Consider
CBS’s Schieffer Admits Cheney ‘Winning’ Security Debate
Cheney vs. Obama: A Mismatch
Favorable opinion of Dick Cheney on the rise
.Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran?
Washington insiders speculate that Obama has caved to Iran's persistent refusal to accept Ross as a U.S. emissary given the diplomat's Jewish background as well as his purported pro-Israel leanings.
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem surmised that another possibility for Ross' ouster is his just-released book, "Myths, Illusions, and Peace - Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East."
Ross, who co-wrote the book with David Makovsky, a former journalist who is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued against a linkage between the Palestinian issue and the West's policy against Iran's nuclear ambitions...
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Q&A: Caroline Glick on Netanyahu & the World
GLICK: Obama and his advisors have made clear that their view on the settlements is not based on facts. It is based on their acceptance of the false Arab narrative of the Middle East conflict. They accept Arab historical revisionism that places the cart before the horse by claiming that Israel’s presence in the disputed territories is the cause of the conflict when in fact Israel’s presence in the disputed territories is a consequence of their continuous attempts to invade and destroy Israel. Since the Obama administration’s view is based on a false assertion, it is impermeable to fact and rational argument and therefore it is unlikely to change.
GLICK: It is very significant for Israel and world Jewry and perhaps for Israel’s supporters that Netanyahu responded to Obama’s Cairo speech. That speech was full of distortions of Jewish history and deeply dismissive of the Jewish claims to our homeland. It was absolutely necessary for Netanyahu to respond to Obama’s false and hideous assertion that Israel owes its creation to the Holocaust. And in explaining that the Holocaust could only happen because Israel didn’t exist at the time and by setting out the true 3,500-year-old Jewish connection to the land Netanyahu provided a necessary corrective to Obama’s move to write the Jewish people out of the history of the Middle East. Here too, Obama’s position is based on an Arab myth that the Jews are interlopers in the region.
GLICK: If the Palestinians follow through with their threat to renew their terror war against Israel it will be quite bad. This is so not because Israel will be unable to defend itself. Israel has the means to defend itself. It will be quite bad because, in light of the hostile treatment Israel is suffering at the hands of the Obama administration, and given the central role the U.S. under Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton is playing in arming and training the Palestinian army that will likely be attacking Israeli targets in Judea and Samaria, the U.S. may well side with the Arabs against Israel. The administration is already placing limitations on arms sales to Israel. In this event, Israel will have to move quickly to find other suppliers.
[Highly Recommended > ]
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'U.S. Jewish leaders deeply troubled by Obama'
There is growing concern among the American Jewish community over Obama's Mideast initiatives, this according to the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein.
''President Obama's strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes'' ... ''I've heard it from some of his strongest supporters.''
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Obama to Jews: I'm just not that into you
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American Jews and Israel would do well to take a page from the book of Saul Alinsky, who provides the radical underpinning for much of how the Obama left sees the world:
[rember this?]"As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be."
It is [past] time for American Jews to leave the Democratic Party.
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