False Hopes & Pants About the Ankles

There isn't much positive to say about what's going on in Iran, other than there are a good number of people who are very courageous and are putting their lives on the line for even a small chance for greater freedom. It's not hard for the average American to admire the courage.

Having said that, I don't think this is their moment to win. Maybe if a better groundwork had been prepared with the help of liberty loving governments, like America, they would have a chance. Perhaps if we had a president whose core beliefs included a strong love of individual rights, and who was willing to lean on Iran a little bit, their case would be stronger.

As it is, they are pretty much on their own. This doesn't mean they can't win. As I heard someone remark a few days ago, "If the Palestinians had modeled Martin Luther King or Ghandi, they'd have their own country by now." Non-violent protest is a very powerful thing: the power of organized love to bring opposition powers to heel is never to be underestimated.

(Caveat: Ghandi was facing those rascally British. MLK was facing down JFK and LBJ. Not exactly the historical precedents to inspire confidence. Remember that Tiananmen Square didn't end well.)

Beyond calculating the odds that the Iranian dissidents can achieve some degree of success, there is the question for us -- perhaps "mystery" is the better word -- of what President Obama thinks he is accomplishing with his wishy-washy statements.

Jim Hoagland, writing in the Washington Post on Sunday, believes that Obama is clinging to his hopes that he will get to "negotiate" with the mullahs over their nuclear weapons program, and he doesn't want to jeopardize his chances by supporting the dissidents.

The most serious challenge that Iran's Islamic rulers have ever faced caught President Obama and many European leaders by surprise. Their intelligence agencies did little to prepare them for a national catharsis that pits a combustible mixture of youthful protesters and political opportunists against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

[SNIP]

But the president and his advisers still have not adjusted policies and tactics being overtaken by events. This is clear both from the initial "caught in the headlights" reaction by Obama as he temporized -- albeit with steely skill -- and from accounts of diplomatic and other official sources here.

(Uh, what is "steely skill"?)

The administration's words suggest Obama is caught in a political version of the theory of relativity -- that he moves along a predetermined course that prevents him from seeing the new situation in Tehran exactly as it occurs. He clings to the pre-election paramount goal of keeping alive the chances for a nuclear deal with any government in Tehran.

[SNIP]

... Obama should not have blurted out the (accurate) observation that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would probably not change Ahmadinejad's foreign and nuclear policies. This is the kind of assessment that intelligence chiefs whisper to their bosses to explain that their missed call doesn't really matter much.

In other words, our ever-narcissistic president was covering his posterior after getting caught with his pants down by events in Iran.

A good question to ask, though it is unlikely anyone at this White House will answer, concerns the intelligence that Obama received. Was it bad intel, and if so, why? Or was the intel good, but they chose to reinterpret it or ignore it?

I suppose we'll have to wait for Nancy Pelosi to tell us.