[quote=pri_dk]Allan, you seem to be holding Obama to an absurdly high standard.
The fact that he didn’t overthrow the Iranian regime is a “failure?” Then I suppose we’ve been failing for decades.
Why so much emphasis on peripheral details? His speech in Cario was not a formal declaration of US foreign policy, and the speech never went anywhere near claiming that our goal was regime change in Iran. If anything, the message was “why can’t we all get along?” – nothing more than a gesture. I honestly have no idea where you draw some of your interpretation of the words in the speech:
And since when has Nicholas Kristof (whomever he is) become Obama’s Secretary of State?
If you haven’t noticed, there’s been a lot of other stuff going on in the past two years.
Iran has been rattling the saber for 30+ years. They are contained, and we can hit them hard if they do anything stupid (and they know it.)
Maybe now is just not the time to stir the pot in yet another country?[/quote]
Pri: And, unsurprisingly, you proffer yet another strawman. Where, oh where, did I mention regime change in Iran? I said that Obama should have thrown his support behind the Green Revolution, because he stood on a stage in Cairo and stated “I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.” (text from Obama Cairo speech, full transcript here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html?pagewanted=all).
Again, words mean things and ideals like justice, progress, tolerance and accepting the dignity of all human beings toppled the Soviet Empire.
He was given a golden opportunity to show (and prove) that Cairo was NOT simply a speech, but he didn’t. And it had nothing to do with regime change, but everything to do with positioning America as the leading advocate of those ideals, and as a moral counterweight to groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Iran is NOT contained; that statement is patently absurd and demonstrably false. Iran IS possessed of a literate, engaged populace and one that is strongly pro-US. I realize you don’t travel in the Mideast, nor do you do business there, that much is obvious based on your statements, but things are far different than you imagine them to be and, right now, the events of the Arab Spring and Summer are being carefully watched from Morocco to China and the actions of the US carry immense weight throughout the world.
This has nothing to do with “stirring the pot” at all. What IT HAS to do with is standing for the virtues that have made America an exceptional country and shining that light for the rest of the world to see.
Words mean things. Ideals count. “I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Detroit, June 23, 1963.
