http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/19/is_obama_selling_out_the_iranian_revolution/?ref=fpblgIs Obama Selling Out the Iranian Revolution?
By Jacob Heilbrunn - June 19, 2009
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Clearly Obama was caught flatfooted by the protests. But he does seem to be carefully ratcheting up his criticisms of the mullahs. In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, Obama said that when, "you've got 100,000 people who are out on the streets peacefully protesting, and they're having to be scattered through violence and gunshots, what that tells me is the Iranian people are not convinced of the legitimacy of the election. And my hope is that the regime respond not with violence, but with a recognition that the universal principles of peaceful expression and democracy are ones that should be affirmed." Even that mild reproof was enough to send the Iranian leadership into conniptions, as the Washington Post's Thomas Erdbrink reports today.
If Wolfowitz seeks to exhort Obama to take a more forceful stand, Krauthammer lashes into him as a pathetic wimp who is missing the chance to alter history, or least put himself on the right side of it. He sees a new domino effect in the region. Peace and freedom can bloom overnight: "Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception--Iraq and Lebanon--becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed. All hangs in the balance."
This is, of course, a pleasant fantasy. It is essentially no different from the one that the neocons peddled on the eve of the Iraq War. Just as the war was supposed to topple dicatorships in the Middle East, so Obama's support for the demonstrators would, somehow, usher in the end of the age of tyranny. But even a moderate Iran would not be an unflinching ally of Washington's. Instead, it would follow its national interests. Ever since the Shah's days, Iran has had a nuclear program.
Ultimately, Krauthammer's belligerence rests on the bogus assumption that America can by itself steer events in Iran as it wishes. If only Obama will demonstrate more support for the demonstrators, then all will be well. Krauthammer ascribes an omnipotence to America that it does not possess.
The truth is that the impressive thing has been how well Obama has handled the crisis. Again and again, Obama was pounded for his lack of experience during the 2008 election campaign. But imagine if John McCain were president? The mullahs would not be in the predicament they are. Instead, they could point to the demonstrators as American stooges. The uprising would have been quashed before it ever began. His basic approach has been to follow the foreign policy equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm." Imagine the obloquy that would greet Obama if he were to champion the demonstrators and help to create a bloodbath, as Radio Free Europe did during the 1956 Hungarian revolution, when it encouraged Hungarians to revolt by assuring them that they had backing of the West, which they didn't. So far, Obama has shrewdly hewed to a middle course that allows him some flexibility in dealing with Iran.
For no one truly knows where Iran is headed. It could lurch into civil war, a violent crackdown, or the regime could crumble. But with Khamenei denouncing the demonstrators in his Friday address, Iran is turbulent enough without Obama piling on. Obama doesn't deserve criticism, but plaudits for his statesmanship.
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