Obama's approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president's words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.
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One senior administration official with experience in the Middle East said, "There clearly is in the region a sense of new possibilities," adding that "I was struck in the aftermath of the president's speech that there was a connection. It was verysweeping in terms of its reach."
These administration officials spoke off the record so presumably they were speaking out of turn. Yet, it strikes me as peculiar that the president says that he wants to stay out of the way as much as possible while administration officials privately tell reporters that they believe their man is responsible for the whole thing.
Does the administration believe that the Mullahs won't get wind of this statement? Do these anonymous administration officials not follow the president's lead? Wouldn't this undermine his policy of distancing? Does this mean the White House is going to find the leak and deal with them harshly?
After all, if the White House wants to maintain a low profile, they can't have staffers leak anonymously to the press that the president is really responsible for all this. This whole thing smells of duplicitous opportunism. The president comes out weakly in the aftermath of the demonstrations. He claims he doesn't want to rock the boat. Then, his staff proclaims he's responsible for the whole thing. That's cynicism at its highest.
The O is still in campaign mode so to speak. He is not coming out publicly with any real statement on Iran so that if the Protests are successful and the regime is overthrown, he can come back after and credit the overthrow to his Cairo speech.
ReplyDeleteIf, on the other hand, the protests are crushed, as appears to be the case as of today, or at least from what I can tell from the very few articles on the Iranian protests, he can come back after and pat himself on the back for not getting involved.
He is still trying to please all parties on all sides of an issue, and he needs to stop. He is the leader of the United States of America. He should be the first to voice support for protesters fighting for their rights. He should be the loudest voice calling on the UNSC to adopt a resolution condemning the Iranian regimes use of force to quash the protests.
The O is destroying America's standing more than Bush did. Bush may have made some international enemies, but he didn't drop our international allies and friends the way the O is doing today.
If Bush wreaked havoc on this country for 8 years as the Left likes to state constantly, what will be the legacy of the O.
We will be cleaning up his mess for the next 3 decades. Bush's messes will be cleaned up within the next 5 years.