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But though Bush 41 was in many respects a smashing foreign policy success, he also made a number of egregious missteps, including the notorious “Chicken Kiev” speech, in which he essentially endorsed the survival of the multinational Soviet empire and not the nationalist aspirations of Eastern Europe. ~Reihan Salam That Kiev speech really sticks in [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Rather than reassure the Iranians with a wink and a nod that we’re ready to do business, President Obama should be building an international coalition to isolate a recalcitrant Iran as thoroughly as the the West once isolated apartheid-era South Africa. Bush, to the chagrin of the neocons, could never pull this off [bold mine-DL]. [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
In the same column I responded to below, Reihan gets something else pretty badly wrong: If the regime can’t do business with the likes of Mousavi, they certainly can’t do business with Obama, no matter how many barbecues he invites them to. Reihan must know that this doesn’t make sense. If an authoritarian regime won’t [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The great danger of Obama’s response to the street protests in Iran has been that he’d choose Iran’s thuggish ruling class over Iran’s masses on the grounds that Serious People don’t fret about human rights when grand strategy is at stake. ~Reihan Salam The great danger of Obama’s response is not, as Reihan suggests, that [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
But now, if the clerical junta prevails, anyone who shakes hands with Ahmadinejad will have a hard time washing the blood off his own hands. ~Jonah Goldberg This will come as news to some, but metaphorical blood is non-transferable. Nixon did not pick it up from Brezhnev or Mao, Reagan did not somehow acquire the [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
So Obama has come out with a lengthier, “tougher” statement on Iran, some of which is redundant because he has said it before and most of which is unnecessary. John is appropriately critical of the move towards what some are calling the “Biden-Clinton line.” Unfortunately, I am being reminded more and more of Obama’s response [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Do you think it’s an accident that when the neocons were in charge Hezbollah led the Lebanese elections but when we ditched the neocons, the Lebanese ditched Hezbollah? Do you think it’s an accident that when we ditched our far-right extremist government here in favor of a realist liberal that the liberals in Iran advanced [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The United States and the West must unite as never before. Although in the past blunt economic sanctions have hurt the average Iranian, it is now imperative that America and its allies adopt ever more stringent, focused sanctions to bring this regime to its knees as quickly as possible. The world should use available financial [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
This is hardly the most important aspect of the debate over the Iranian protests and the administration’s response, but it seems telling that according to Rasmussen’s new poll (via Scoblete) there is not one demographic in which a majority believes that Obama has been insufficiently aggressive in his support for the protesters. This seems all [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
So to recap, we have “no horse in this race,” we should do nothing, we have to negotiate with whichever government emerges, and the victory of the reformers would change nothing about Iran’s nuclear program and “would not stop the country’s rivalry with the United States,” all of which “hard-core non-interventionists” have already been saying [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics