Weakness As Change
A week later there were multiple casualties, injuries and threats, and 46 million voters wrenched away from that doorway to freedom that had opened–if only a crack. But when the president was asked Tuesday: “Is there any red line that your administration won’t cross where that offer [to talk to Iran's leaders] will be shut off?” He answered: “We’re still waiting to see how it plays itself out.”And when asked again, “If you do accept the election of Ahmadinejad … without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?” He answered: “We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places.”
And asked again: “Why won’t you spell out the consequences that the Iranian people…” He answered: “Because I think that we don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out.”
And yet again: “Shouldn’t the present regime know that there are consequences?” He answered: “We don’t yet know how this is going to play out.”
Yet earlier today, unnamed Obama officials (my personal bet is that it was Axelrod) were trying to claim that Obama inspired the demonstrations in Iran by his very words. No, really, they were:
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 very sweeping in terms of its reach.” The adviser said that “there is something particularly authentic about those who are carrying out these demonstrations,” citing the fact that some are carrying symbols of the 1979 Iranian revolution as they march for new elections, including photos of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
”The more you keep this in Iranian terms, the better the chances of change,” the adviser said.
Read the Bayefsky piece and see where the “adviser” is completely – utterly – clueless.
I pointed out last night that the Obama administration is, rather obviously, notably short on attention span. Their reactions to various world crises since taking office have been a few words, then off to something else. The only thing they have focused on is grabbing private companies and giving them away to unions.
When did Obama last say anything about Pakistan? Afghanistan? North Korea?
Only when the issues are hot in the press is Obama interested in “intervening” with a few fire-and-forget words. Then his “advisers” grab lots and lots of credit from a supine press for the few moments of attention.
Then its off to looting another company or bleeding the nation to pay for another grandiose plan of the week.
Or is that “Plan of the Weak?”
Politics, World news | Gaius June 24, 2009
By Tom, June 25, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Obama is more concerned about the domestic agenda, i.e., how to screw over the American people in order to make their lives better.
By martian, June 25, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
I think we can fianlly settle on a nickname for Obama. If Reagan was “The Great Communicator”, Obama has amply demonstrated that he is (drumroll please) “The Great Equivocator”. I now dub him as such.