Friday, June 19, 2009

The Wall Street Journal Gets It

Peggy Noonan has put out a brilliant piece for the Wall Street Journal today, and I applaud it. Thanks Peggy, for getting it right and for getting the word out - and in a conservative newspaper no less! Hooray!

I am by no means a liberal or a Democrat. I grew up loyal to the Republicans, but am now a registered Libertarian. That doesn't mean I don't usually side with the Republicans though. Nonetheless, I've been entirely vehement at the ignorant and wreckless politics of certain Republicans lately, especailly Captain America, John McCain, which I've written about here. And yes, by calling him Captain America, I do mean to make him look ridiculous and cartoonish, so that you won't take him seriously.

The best thing for the President to do is stay out of it. I even wrote him a letter telling him as much, and I told him that he needs to get prominent Republicans to speak out about it in conservative forums, because frankly, conservatives won't listen to Obama.

Why is that? Well, because conservatives have already made up their minds about Obama. He's a liberal and probably a coward, they say. He couldn't possibly be right. Thus it's very, very easy for someone like McCain to come along in a smug desire for revenge for losing last year's election and say that Obama is screwing up foreign policy, just like conservatives always knew he would. It reminds me of when Rush Limbaugh said that he wants Obama to fail.

It's ironic how conservatives accuse liberals of being anti-American, because Rush's comments are what's truly anti-American. And I LIKE listening to Rush Limbaugh! McCain's actions here are also anti-American. I know he's got access to BETTER information than I do, since he's a Senator. Although, I doubt he spends as much time looking into it and thinking about it as I do. I didn't vote for Obama. I don't think liberal policies work. But I'm happy to be proven wrong. I want the country to succeed. I want Obama to succeed. I don't want him to ruin our country, and in fact, I'm convinced that ruining our country is a lot harder than it looks.

Obama is not just being a coward. I agree with him, and I was a Marine. Choose any Marine at random and call them a coward. You'll find out if you're right. If I were President, I would do just what Obama is doing. He's doing the right thing.

I might have a small disagreement with Noonan's article though. She thinks it was a mistake for Obama to say that Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are basically the same thing from our perspective. First, let's admit that yes, Obama's statement is incorrect. Noonan assumes that Obama doesn't know that. Perhaps that's a fair assumption, but I think it's incorrect. I think Obama knows that what he said did not reflect the truth of the matter. He knows, because he can employ common sense, that millions of Iranians think the difference between the two candidates is worth dying for. Only a fool could overlook that.

If it is true that the two candidates look the same from our perspective, we need to change our perspective. Anyone in our government will tell you that we know very, very precious little about Iran. I was very pleasantly surprised to see this ad for the opposition. I had no idea just how radical the opposition was. Perhaps a change in perspective is a good idea.

Nonetheless, let's assume for a moment that Obama knew that the comment did not reflect reality. Is there still some reason why he might have said it? Sure! Lots of them! For one, he might have been pushing Mousavi to parse his movement in a way Westerners can understand. For another, he might have been trying to be absolutely crystal clear to everyone in Iran that he was NOT taking sides, because in fact, he doesn't see a difference between the two. Perhaps that made the people in Iran kind of resent Obama's ignorance a little bit, but I doubt anyone in Iran was shocked or really cared all that much. They know we're ignorant about them. And in fact, Mousavi's statement describing how irritated he was about that only gives the fact more publicity that the US President isn't taking sides. (And I'm not the only one who thinks it was a good move.)

That's a very good thing, because if Ahmadinejad can paint the opposition movement as an American puppet movement, then the movement will lose a lot of momentum. Almost everyone in Iran is distrustful of foreign influence in their country, particularly Western influence, and that distrust goes all the way back to the Persians and the Greeks. People outside the US have slightly longer memories than we do. They still talk about injustices done centuries ago. When I was in Kosovo, I remember people talking about land disputes in terms of what happened 700 years before. In the Middle East, some still talk about the Crusades as if those injustices still need to be answered for. This is unthinkable for Americans who have only a 200 year history. White people still can't understand how blacks can still be upset about slavery in the US, when it was abolished 150 years ago. What does that have to do with me? we wonder. Well, some people have longer memories, and they have VERY long memories in the Middle East that stretches back for centuries, even millennia.

So the point is, the Iranians are distrustful of foreign influence, but particularly the US. So if Obama picks a side and supports it openly and publicly, that side will immediately lose at least some Iranian support. So it is actually in the best interests of the opposition movement that he remain silent.

But perhaps you ask why he doesn't then publicly side with the Iranian government, to REALLY ensure their doom. Of course he can't do that, because the American people wouldn't understand that he's lying. So the only thing he can do is take no side. And for this, the Republicans and others call him a coward and say that he's not standing up for the protesters. But the fact is, there's nothing he can do to help the protesters. All he can do is try to refrain from hindering their efforts.

What would McCain have done if he was President? Would he have stormed into Iran, in an attempt to oust the government? Doesn't he understand that if Obama did that, the new government would have NO legitimacy in the eyes of the Iranian people? How is that different from the current government? If we're TRULY Americans, if we TRULY believe in government by the people and for the people, then we'll let the Iranian PEOPLE form their OWN government, without our help, without our interference, without our meddling.

Bravo, President Obama, bravo. You're doing the right thing. Please keep resisting the temptation to be Captain America.

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