Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
A good point was made yesterday by Andrew Sullivan - that the vote likely reflected the aspirations of the Iranian people to live in a more open and free society exemplified by the transfer of power from Bush to Obama in January. Obama's Cairo speech likely didn't factor into that, but his story probably did.
Wrong. That is the romanticized story you and Sullivan would love to believe. We all know the dissent has been brewing among Iranian youth, university students, and the educated for a while now. Obama's "story" wasn't a factor. ANd don't misquote me... I never said it's all Obama's fault, I started out my last comment by saying it wasn't all Bush's fault. There's a difference, Dr. McSpin.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
Wrong.
Well as long as you're dealing with absolute empirical facts here, I'll accede to your opinion on the mindset of the Iranian electorate.
jerZ07002
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
Wrong. That is the romanticized story you and Sullivan would love to believe. We all know the dissent has been brewing among Iranian youth, university students, and the educated for a while now. Obama's "story" wasn't a factor. ANd don't misquote me... I never said it's all Obama's fault, I started out my last comment by saying it wasn't all Bush's fault. There's a difference, Dr. McSpin.
I found something upon which we agree! I also highly doubt the Iranians voted the way they did because of obama. I'm no expert on Iran, but since my college days i've been hearing about popular unrest among the iranian educated.
Halcyon+On+On
quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
So what are the odds on Al Franken winning the recount in Iran?
:stongue: :stongue:
The17sss
quote:
Originally posted by jerZ07002
I found something upon which we agree! I also highly doubt the Iranians voted the way they did because of obama. I'm no expert on Iran, but since my college days i've been hearing about popular unrest among the iranian educated.
LOL... crazy huh? Yeah man I like to see any population of people who are oppressed, in the true sense of that word, rise up against the oppressors. I think it's great. That's why I don't see the point in the current administration laying in the weeds and waiting to see how it plays out. It's as if they're saying, "we're with you depending on how this shakes out," when the fact that the mullahs choose the president anyway makes this pseudo "election" irrelevant... it makes Obama's statement that "ultimately, it's for the Iranian people to decide," irrelevant because it really isn't- unless we see this uprising play out which needs support. Contrast that with Bush's 2nd innaugural address where he said "People of the world who want their freedom, you stand with us and the United States stands with you." Why is it to hard to say that now? Instead it's, "We don't want to meddle.. we'll see how it plays out... it's up to the Iranian people to decide..."
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
LOL... crazy huh? Yeah man I like to see any population of people who are oppressed, in the true sense of that word, rise up against the oppressors. I think it's great. That's why I don't see the point in the current administration laying in the weeds and waiting to see how it plays out. It's as if they're saying, "we're with you depending on how this shakes out," when the fact that the mullahs choose the president anyway makes this pseudo "election" irrelevant... it makes Obama's statement that "ultimately, it's for the Iranian people to decide," irrelevant because it really isn't- unless we see this uprising play out which needs support. Contrast that with Bush's 2nd innaugural address where he said "People of the world who want their freedom, you stand with us and the United States stands with you." Why is it to hard to say that now? Instead it's, "We don't want to meddle.. we'll see how it plays out... it's up to the Iranian people to decide..."
Because if the United States "gets involved" that's going to be a lightning rod among radicals throughout the Middle East. Obama's playing it cool in order to actually allow the voice of the people to speak for itself. He doesn't need to speak for them.
The17sss
quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Because if the United States "gets involved" that's going to be a lightning rod among radicals throughout the Middle East. Obama's playing it cool in order to actually allow the voice of the people to speak for itself. He doesn't need to speak for them.
Well... it may be the right strategy, I can't say you're wrong. Personally I think the people involved in the uprising would be more likely to stay motivated to outlast the mullahs if they knew they had more heavy worldwide support. I guess we'll see what happens.
jerZ07002
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
LOL... crazy huh? Yeah man I like to see any population of people who are oppressed, in the true sense of that word, rise up against the oppressors. I think it's great. That's why I don't see the point in the current administration laying in the weeds and waiting to see how it plays out. It's as if they're saying, "we're with you depending on how this shakes out," when the fact that the mullahs choose the president anyway makes this pseudo "election" irrelevant... it makes Obama's statement that "ultimately, it's for the Iranian people to decide," irrelevant because it really isn't- unless we see this uprising play out which needs support. Contrast that with Bush's 2nd innaugural address where he said "People of the world who want their freedom, you stand with us and the United States stands with you." Why is it to hard to say that now? Instead it's, "We don't want to meddle.. we'll see how it plays out... it's up to the Iranian people to decide..."
well, i certainly don't agree with that statement, and i don't agree that george bush took the right approach. as lebez correctly points out, by interfering with the process, the US would be giving fuel to the fundamentalists about the US intervening in internal affairs. the prudent approach is to see how it plays out and then decide what to do.
Clovis
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
Wrong. That is the romanticized story you and Sullivan would love to believe. We all know the dissent has been brewing among Iranian youth, university students, and the educated for a while now. Obama's "story" wasn't a factor. ANd don't misquote me... I never said it's all Obama's fault, I started out my last comment by saying it wasn't all Bush's fault. There's a difference, Dr. McSpin.
You don't get it, but thats ok. No one here is blaming anyone, we are talking about how small differences in tone and rhetoric go such a long way. These waters are icy and must be navigated with upmost care, a care that Bush never displayed.
Clovis
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
God Clovis that's the worst article I've ever read. Let me put it in summary: It's Bush's fault, Obama inherited a mess, thank god we have a president who is above it all. Same theme of all brown-nosing politicos that carry Obama's water.
The author doesn't seem to understand that all 495 initial candidates were hand picked by the mullahs.... it's a joke; there's no primary like there is here, and whoever the mullahs want to be president will be. I submit that a motive for staying with Ahmadinejad is precisely to spit in the face of Obama and his Cairo speech. Those people (Mullahs/Khamenei) are supreme-leader dictatorial rulers... does the author of that article think they want some young upstart American telling them they need to embrace democracy and decide what's relevant and what isn't in their warped political process? That they will allow worldwide news to be accepted that Obama affected their politics? God.. these people are so sadly desperate to push the idea that with one speech, The One changed the state of middle east politics.
The one thing the author was right about is some of Europe having the balls to denounce right away while our Prez hangs back scared to take a stand one way or the other. After 3 days, the NY Times reports that the State Department "declined to condemn the Iranian security forces for their crackdown on street protesters." Menwhile, Angela Merkel had the stones to stand up and denounce it. Denouce it, Barry.. where are you! Stand with the people of Iran... ing fight now, or fight later.
As usual you are missing the point entirely.
George Packer is a lot smarter than you and far more knowledgeable on middle east politics, so I would listen to him very carefully.
Clovis
Now that Obama has spoken:
quote:
JUNE 16, 2009 IRAN REVEALS US
Obama’s carefully chosen remarks about Iran yesterday made just the right points in just the right tone. And not a moment too soon. He said that the U.S. won’t interfere in Iranian politics, but that the violence inflicted on unarmed demonstrators violates “universal values” and demands a response; that the U.S. didn’t monitor the elections and has no direct evidence of fraud, but circumstances and Iranian public opinion seem to point in that direction; that none of this will change current American policy to seek a dialogue with the regime in Tehran. Finally, and most powerfully, he said: “I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.”
Just when Obama seemed to have fallen a step behind events, he emerged from his silence to do what no politician in our time could have managed: emphasize American respect for Iranian sovereignty and yet, in measured terms, make it clear that the U.S. cannot be indifferent to the tragedy unfolding in Iran. He spoke with calm eloquence to the millions of people who have filled the streets at great risk—spoke to their hopes and their courage. He proved that an American President can lend his voice to “universal values” without sounding like a self-righteous fool. And he showed the emptiness of the eternal argument between realism and idealism. When foreign policy is articulated by a thoughtful politician in the middle of an intense and unfolding drama, the abstractions melt away. It’s actually possible to be pragmatic without being indecent. Why shouldn’t it be?
And yet the crisis in Iran has flushed out all the pathologies of American foreign-policy thinking, or feeling, in the post-Bush era. It’s become weirdly difficult for commentators on both the right and the left to have anything close to a normal reaction to what the world is seeing. Instead, everything gets filtered through what you think about Bush, Iraq, Obama, Israel, and other subjects that have extremely tenuous connections to internal politics in Iran and the actions of the people and the state there. On the one hand, certain neoconservatives and hard-line defenders of Israel (Max Boot, Daniel Pipes) have sounded not in the least sorry about Ahmadinejad’s corrupt re-election, or even come right out and welcomed it, demonstrating that neoconservatism is an offshoot of Leninism in its preference for the morally bankrupt position of “the worse, the better.” (Credit where it’s due: Bill Kristol’s view on the events in Iran is uncharacteristically restrained.) Martin Peretz so despises the Islamic world that he’s convinced himself (going on nothing more than a “sense”) that Iran, contrary to all the evidence, is overwhelmingly Ahmadinejad country.
This is also the view of Peretz’s ideological opposites, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, who twist the facts into a remarkable contortion of perverse interpretations, narrow legalisms, and ill-informed suppositions to prove what they must have wanted to believe from the outset. Why would a pair of dovish realists end up in the same place as a pro-Israel hawk? Because in both cases they want Ahmadinejad to represent the “true” face of Iran—in the Leveretts’ case, because they want the U.S. to negotiate with him; in Peretz’s case, because he doesn’t. Utterly lost are the subtleties, the dynamics, the aspirations of Iranian politics and Iranians themselves. As Stephen Walt, an ideological ally of the Leveretts and mortal foe of Peretz, wrote: “In the end, what really matters is the content of any subsequent U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, not the precise nature of the Iranian regime. If diplomatic engagement led to a good deal, then it wouldn’t matter much who was running Iran.” Unless, of course, you’re an Iranian.
A great many left-leaning pundits have ended up in Walt’s position, which is the classic expression of foreign-policy realism. Commenters on my last post maintained that the only position America, with its inglorious track record of recent years, should take is none at all (presumably they deplore what Obama later said). Spencer Ackerman chides me on different and less reflexive grounds, for not seeing that the Administration’s tip-toeing was motivated by a desire not to imperil the Iranian dissidents with the fatal American embrace. Even if this were true (and the statements that came out of the White House and State Department over the weekend were mainly focussed on American interests, not Iranian demonstrators), it’s not a smart approach to the brutal suppression of a largely peaceful electorate asking that its votes be counted. Anyway, it’s impossible for the U.S. to “stay out of it.” A non-response is itself a response—one of tacit acceptance of the regime’s actions. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad taunted the world by saying that Iran would decide its foreign policy based on how other countries treated the election results. Even from the point of view of cold-blooded self-interest, for the U.S. to have acceded to that kind of blackmail would have been a disastrous impression to give Iran’s rulers. By Monday, American silence had become intolerable, which is why Obama chose to speak.
But I think Ackerman’s view, motivated as it is by a concern for human rights, is wrong in a more fundamental way. It’s true that the Bush Administration’s noisy support for Iranian dissidents put many of them in peril, which is why they told America to keep its seventy-five-million dollars in democracy-promotion money. What we’re seeing right now is a far greater sort of peril. The demonstrators are risking their lives just by being in the streets, and being called agents of America is among the least of their worries, which may be why, in the days since Saturday, more and more of them (and of their Iranian supporters abroad) have been asking the world at least to speak up. Not for one faction of Iranian politics, but for the “universal values” that Obama defended yesterday—the right to a fair election, to peaceful protest, to be spared the baton blows of the state’s thugs:
It’s remarkable how difficult it’s been for writers of many different ideological persuasions to say that scenes like this (via Andrew Sullivan, the number one source for Iran news these days) are shameful. The reason, of course, has everything to do with the wars of the Bush years, at home and abroad, which have left so many thoughtful people incapable of holding onto the most basic thought. But it’s a mistake to let your attitude toward historic events be shaped and deformed by the desire not to sound like a neo-con, or to sound like a neo-con reborn. Trust the evidence of your eyes.
POSTED BY GEORGE PACKER
Krypton
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
LOL... crazy huh? Yeah man I like to see any population of people who are oppressed, in the true sense of that word, rise up against the oppressors. I think it's great. That's why I don't see the point in the current administration laying in the weeds and waiting to see how it plays out. It's as if they're saying, "we're with you depending on how this shakes out," when the fact that the mullahs choose the president anyway makes this pseudo "election" irrelevant... it makes Obama's statement that "ultimately, it's for the Iranian people to decide," irrelevant because it really isn't- unless we see this uprising play out which needs support. Contrast that with Bush's 2nd innaugural address where he said "People of the world who want their freedom, you stand with us and the United States stands with you." Why is it to hard to say that now? Instead it's, "We don't want to meddle.. we'll see how it plays out... it's up to the Iranian people to decide..."
What do you want the US to do? Launch another CIA backed coup? Let the Iranian people fight for their freedom themselves. Otherwise, any "help" could be perceived as nothing more but yet more American imperialism. You may see it as America liberating the world from oppressors and all that happy go lucky , but they don't see it that way.
