Seriously, good post. I do my fair share of criticizing international policy, but that’s based on my many years of experience in the field — neighborhood Diplomacy and Axis & Allies champ 2 years running back in Jr. high (the secret is, cheat when everybody takes a bathroom break . . . that’s how Churchill did it). Everybody ELSE opining on the best way to handle multi-lateral International crises are just armchair quarterbacks.

p.s.: Obama, if you’re reading — invite the Supreme Leader over to talk. Give him water, kool-aid, lemon-ade, soda pop. Lots of it. Then, make sure you meet in a room where the only working john is in another wing (gotta shut the others down for maintenance sometime, right?).
You’re welcome.

1. The United States wants to protect our nation from harm and to promote freedom and liberty in the world.

2. We have shown in the past, and in two on-going wars, that we are willing to fight for the cause of our freedom and liberty, and the same cause of freedom for many other nations and their suppressed people around the world, when their cause is just.

3. Because of the continuing development of threatening military capabilities in the world, I have deemed it prudent for the United States to enhance its defensive capacity by sending to Congress a bill that would add 6 new composite divisions (about 30 Brigades) and their support units to the Army, 250 aditional multipurpose aircraft to the Air Force, 200 new tankers, 20 additional warships of several types for the Navy, 50 of the latest landing and support craft for the Coast Guard, and two new divisions for the Marines. Other significant provisions will be included for bombs and ammunition, vehicles, artillery, and especially a major upgrade for Abrams tanks, and significant other classified capabilities as well.

4. We will use these new resources as they come on line over the next years to meet our defensive requirements in today’s increasingly dangerous situations in the world, notably in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and Iran.

5. The United States does not want war, nor do we seek domination of anyone in the world, but we do want to ensure that adequate military resources are available to us in the event of a conflict arising that we did not seek.

It is so refreshing to see our President use a thoughtful approach after the moron Bush used to stand up and threaten our adversaries and utter the idiotic claim “they hate us for our freedom”.

Thank you President Obama. Keep up the good work.

A man with an IQ of 117 is not a moron. And you exaggerate how Bush “threatened” our adversaries. Whether they hate us for our freedom is a matter of opinion and depends on who you are referring to.

In short, you are a boring, exaggerating, ignorant, spouter of talking points. Since you cannot be any more original than that, you are hereby banned from commenting.

ed.

I’m with you there … but on this point, laying low is just a rationalization of a lack of courage of convictions.

As for analogies: what about the SERBIA analogy? Or China 1989 analogy? Or Ukraine? We were harldy on friendly terms with the repressers, but we helped. We don’t have much leverage beyond moral support and we fool ourselves with the prattle that meddling my boomerang. ( had to roll my eyes with Obama’s ‘meddling’ comments, coming just a few short weeks after his attempt to meddle vociferously in mid-east affairs by giving a Cairo speech and less than a WEEK after he made hopeful comments about the elections in Iran.) In none of those cases did/would laying low help.

The point is not to meddle or demand or threaten, just tell the truth, stand on the right side of this issue - for human rights, human freedom, and democratic principles and processes. We frankly lose nothing in standing on the right side of the issue, with pro-democracy and pro-freedom protesters. France’s Sarkozy has led.

Krauthammer says:

But people aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators. … All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen.

There is a revolution possible here, and the helpful action here is NOT silence, but a global, united front to oppose a crack-down or repression of the Tehran “people power”. In this episode, Obama has channelled his inner Jimmy Carter - his instincts are all wrong on this. Obama should be calibrating his response at the level of France and others, not pro-repression Russia and China.

Not to mention that when this horrible regime slaughters its own children in the streets as it is threatening to do, the Iranian people (even some of the die hard regime supporters) will know that they died for their desired agenda for a better country, not the agenda of America or that of anyone else.

And you will have a terrible regime ruling ever more illegitimately over its seething populace. This is a point David Brooks makes in a column that compares pressuring Iran now and in the future on human rights to pressuring the Soviet Union in the 80’s.

I’ve always thought that CK does a good job of proffering thoughtful critiques without gross partisanship (he’s no Glenn Beck). I have never seen him quote Obama out of context, or avoid a fight. I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on his ommission of addressing the opposite side of the argument.