because they know the truth. The protesters know that Obama is not of the people. Anyone with half a brain can see that as Obama destroys the best hope that the Iranians have to break free of the Mullahs. Especially Iranian women. I am sure as the Iranians heard Obama speak they knew that it would be up to them to unshackle themselves.
Just as the people of Israel know that Obama is useless.

Carolyn Glick agrees that the President is “not open to a rational dscourse.”

Netanyahu’s speech was an eloquent, rational and at times impassioned defense of Israel. For Israeli ears, after years of former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s continuous assaults on Israeli rights, and their strident defenses of capitulation to the Palestinians and the Syrians, Netanyahu’s address was a breath of fresh air. But it is hard to see how it could have possibly had any lasting impact on Obama or his advisers.

To be moved by rational argument, a person has to be open to rational discourse. And what we have witnessed over the past week with the Obama administration’s reactions to both North Korea’s nuclear brinksmanship and Iran’s sham elections is that its foreign policy is not informed by rationality but by the president’s morally relative, post-modern ideology. In this anti-intellectual and anti-rational climate, Netanyahu’s speech has little chance of making a lasting impact on the White House.

If rational thought was the basis for the administration’s policymaking on foreign affairs, North Korea’s decisions to test long range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, send two US citizens to long prison terms and then threaten nuclear war should have made the administration reconsider its current policy of seeking the approval and assistance of North Korea’s primary enabler – China – for any action it takes against Pyongyang. As Nicholas Eberstadt suggested in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, rather than spending its time passing UN Security Council resolutions with no enforcement mechanisms against North Korea, the administration would be working with a coalition of the willing to adopt measures aimed at lowering the threat North Korea constitutes to regional, US and global security through its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its proliferation activities.

But the administration has done no such thing. Instead of working with and strengthening its allies, it has opted to work with North Korea’s allies China and Russia to forge a Security Council resolution harsh enough to convince North Korean leader Kim Jung Il to threaten nuclear war, but too weak to degrade his capacity to wage one.

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/

I’m kind of inclined to agree. Any interference at all will just be used by the conservative clerics in Iran to condemn the reformists.

I can provide a link to Kissinger’s remarks, but I’m not super sure how to embed links here. Last time I tried it was a disaster.

Kissinger is unmatched in his cold-blooded embrace of the ‘realist’ school, which would gladly sell the Iranian public down the river to keep on good terms with the mullahs. Don’t get me wrong, Kissinger’s a brilliant guy and any president should be willing to hear his advice among other voices. But if we’d continued pursuing Kissingerian detente, the Soviet Union would have stayed in business a lot longer.

Doesn’t anyone remember the Shaw of Iran?

He was that result of American and British covert operations ending in the 1953 coup d’etat… which of course was all about oil.

Google “Operation Ajax” for goodness sake.

The Iranians certainly remember.

The “blow-back of all that is we got the Ayatollah Khomeini

Any involvement in Iran is going to used against us, IMHO.

the one thing we should *not* do is back the current repressive govt as we did the “Shaw”.

With great power comes great responsibility. If we do nothing, we have still taken a side. The wrong side.

I am also inclined to agree – I mean since as long as I can remember we have had issues with Iran (I was a 13 when Carter was elected). I am sick and tired of seeing the protests of America – we have got to learn to stay out of things – not because we don’t want everyone to be liberated from tyranny – but because they are using our force against us!

The Iranian people are just as worthy as anyone on earth to have liberty – but we are seriously spent! It is great to see France pinch hit for us for a change – Let Obama be Obama. We cannot change the fact that he is our President. If it turns to toast, like it did the Carter years, then the American people will once again be stronger than ever – behind the conservatives!

After all – what is so extreme about being right?

Letting the Iranians sort it out is a smart move. If we overtly embrace the protesters the regime will blame everything on “The Great Satan” and provide a pretext for cracking down more.

George W. Bush, may have single-mindedly pursued American interests and American values, but he sure wasn’t very good at it.

The fact that it is not patently obvious to you that overtly cheering on the Iranian protesters would give the ruling regime an excuse to crack down on protestors is proof positive why you guys should not be in charge of our foreign policy.

Oh no! we’re not grandstanding like France… What will we do?

How ’bout some old fashioned Republican values like speaking softly and carrying a big stick.

And yes Doc Holliday, I get freedom. I scream it to the rooftops just like Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart!
We just promote freedom more in this case by speaking softly than by getting all rah rah about this.

Do you get freedom? How is silencing opinions you do not agree with freedom?

Blam!!!

Just wondering if there’s a place for libertarian conservatives with a realist foreign policy?

Still, if not, feel free to blam me so I can go out for dinner, I’m getting hungry!

Despite what our President says or doesn’t say not many are talking Iraq now being ( or heading to ) a demcraqtic country

“…certainly the people behind the Iron Curtain always approved of Ronald Reagan speaking the truth about the oppressive nature of the regime they lived under…”

It’s worth recalling that Ronald Regan didn’t overtly support any of the revolutionary movements in Eastern Europe. In fact, his administration and Bush’s followed a hands-off policy that made the Soviets much more comfortable withdrawing. Mr. Regan praised the abstraction of democracy in strong terms, but he never made the mistake of attaching himself to one revolutionary movement. Contrary to the suggestion that the Cairo speech was all surrender and apology, Barack Obama did unflinchingly call for democratic reform, among other things like women’s rights and the recognition of Israel. He’s actually playing the Regan role: supportive, consistent abstraction and dialogue without any risky specific support.

Good God, I’ve read some vapid comments in here over the years, but this one has to rank among the most vapid, uninformed, and self-deluded.

Ronald Reagan made one thing perfectly clear – that the communist regimes were evil and they had to go. And he never softened that attitude, because he had it correct. “Mr. Gorbachev – TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!!” Can you image obamos saying something like that? Neither can I.

It wasn’t about “revolutionary movements” (which is marxist drivel about “forces” and anti-individualistic things of that sort). It was about a revolutionary IDEA. And besides moving to defeat the Red Army in Afghanistan (something else obamos would never have done), everything possible was done to pry loopholes open (via any means possible) to get information behind the Iron Curtain.

Lee said that Grant turned his face toward Richmond, and never relented until it fell. Similarly, Reagan turned his face toward Moscow – and never relented until it fell.

I have been making multiple business trips a year to eastern Europe for nearly a decade now, and over there they sure know the story of who won and why. Statues of Ronald Reagan are going up all over the place, and plazas and boulevards are being named after him.

The mighty obamos was around back then, and it’s pretty clear where he stood because he’s doing now exactly what Reagan’s DETRACTORS wanted to do back then – make cooing noises at the cuddly Soviet Union, cut a deal on any terms they would offer, and pretend that somehow it all worked…. even if that meant PERMANENTLY consigning hundreds of millions of fellow human beings to the darkness forever…. and if meant surrendering our civilization to communism…. “Oh, well, at least we meant well – and where there’s life there’s hope (?!), right?”

That’s all obamos wants to do – coo at the mullahs with the notion that they’ll lighten up, cut him a deal, and go away. This is the same nonsense that darn near lost us the Cold War. It’s the approach of a weak man, a Carter – not that of a strong man, a Reagan.

Please don’t slur the memory of a great man like Ronald Reagan as you have done.

What we need to remember here is that we are all human. I am not going to defend Sen. Ensign, however, we do need to consider the facts here. 1) It takes two to tango, both a married man and a married woman were involved here, and it was consensual. Both are to blame. 2) Sen. Ensign and his wife were separated at the time. The woman and her husband apparently were not. 3) Since all of this, at least something good has come of it. The Ensigns are back together and Mrs. Ensign says the marriage is stronger than ever now. That says a lot, and I am not defending Sen. Ensign on this, it is just that we always look for the bad, the negative, the way to hate and criticize others, instead of the Gospel principle of REPENTANCE, which all of us are in need of.

Would I vote for Sen. Ensign? I honestly do not know. It would depend if another strong conservative ran against him or not. He is a Senator people, he is not the Messiah. This is one of the big problems we have in America today. We look to our political leaders and government (just consider the idol worship or our President and all his government programs) for the answers to everything, to be our Savior. They are not! They are just like us-human, with frailties. Sen. Ensign has repented and made it right with his wife. That is what the Savior has asked of each of us.
Let’s do it.

I forgot the words of the Savior here: “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

American conservatives would have been willing to forgive and move on. There is a difference between worldly remorse (borrowed term) and true repentance.