THOUSANDS PROTEST
HUNDREDS DIE
OBAMA IGNORES THEM
PRESIDENT DOESN’T WANT TO “MEDDLE” IN IRAN
WHILE HE MEDDLES IN AMERICAN’S PRIVATE LIVES
Of all the decisions of President Obama’s first year, the one that history may most condemn is his betrayal of freedom-loving Iranians dying in the streets. For a president so in love with his own words, these protesters are the one group for which he has none.
Was there ever such a gutless American president who refused to offer encouragement when hundreds of thousands protested in a foreign country for freedom and liberty?
In a word: no.
One can differ with many of the President’s decisions, but his greatest decision of 2009 may be a non-decision: that of offering any words of inspiration to the Iranians who risk their lives protesting against their brutal regime.
Charles Krauthammer has it exactly right in The Year of Living Fecklessly:
Obama responded by distancing himself from this new birth of freedom. First, scandalous silence. Then, a few grudging words. Then relentless engagement with the murderous regime. With offer after offer, gesture after gesture — to not Iran, but the “Islamic Republic of Iran,” as Obama ever so respectfully called these clerical fascists — the U.S. conferred legitimacy on a regime desperate to regain it.
Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation?
Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. This is no trivial matter. When pursued, beaten, arrested, and imprisoned, dissidents can easily succumb to feelings of despair and isolation. Natan Sharansky testifies to the electric effect Ronald Reagan’s Evil Empire speech had on lifting spirits in the Gulag. The news was spread cell to cell in code tapped on the walls. They knew they weren’t alone, that America was committed to their cause.
Yet so aloof has Obama been that on Hate America Day (November 4, the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran), pro-American counter-demonstrators chanted “Obama, Obama, you are either with us or with them,” i.e., their oppressors.
Thank God Barack Obama didn’t lead the United States during the Cold War–Eastern Europe would most probably still be under the boot of a still-existing Soviet Union.
We gave President Obama quite a honeymoon at DBKP: almost eight months of staying silent on his policies that wounded America, hurt capitalism, attacked freedom of speech, alienated allies, gave comfort to rogue regimes bent on destroying the USA and other policies that seem daily to support his promise to “fundamentally transform the country.”
One wonders how this administration has nothing but an open hand for the gangsters running Iran–until one remembers that this president’s adopted hometown is Chicago.
History will remember his inaction and his support of the Iranian people’s enemies–who are America’s enemies as well.
In this case, the word that Obama most likes to use when referring to his policies is well-deserved.
His turning away from a people yearning to breathe free is truly “unprecedented”.
[ABOVE: Protest scenes from Iranian opposition site: Rehesabz
MORE and UPDATED: Holy Crap! Photos of Protesters Saving Men from Hanging in Iran
* Iran: Khatami Speech Crashed by Protesters
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