Obama Votes "Present" On Iran

Greetings from the Left Coast!

So… over the last week or so, President Obama has gone from “gravely concerned” to “deeply troubled” to, as he said earlier today, “appalled and outraged” by what’s been going on in Iran. He’s even gone so far as to “strongly condemn” their beating and killing of their own citizens as “unjust actions.” Wow. At the same time, though, he made it clear that “the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering in Iran’s affairs.” In other words, we will do nothing but wring our hands and voice platitudes about how deplorable the situation is, and hope that it all blows over soon so we can get back to being nice to them in the hope that, contrary to all experience and reason, they’ll be nice to us in return. “We are going to monitor and see how this plays itself out before we make any adjustments about how we proceed.” Boy, now that's courageous leadership.

Meanwhile, regarding the murder of Neda Agha Soltan, which the ever-courageous MSNBC refers to as an “apparent shooting death,” Obama said, “While this loss is raw and painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.” Unfortunately, when they are in a ruthless theocracy like Iran, they are frequently on the wrong side of the gun barrels, since those in power go to great lengths to insure that they are the only ones with guns. But that’s OK, I’m sure her fiancé and family will take great comfort knowing she was on the right side of history, and that Obama is also suffering in this raw and painful loss.

Furthermore, “The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights, and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent, not coercion.”

Here’s a news flash, Mr. President: they don’t care about the respect of the international community. Most people in this universe already have that figured out. If it wasn’t obvious before the blood started flowing in the streets, it should be now. They have utter contempt for the international community because they believe it is weak and cowardly, and so far, the international community has done little to prove them wrong. They know that you’re not going to do anything, because you and your party have spent the last several years watching them kill our servicemen in Iraq and doing nothing other than maintaining that the war was lost and we should just declare defeat and go home. And they know that the rest of the world isn’t going to do anything, because without strong leadership from the United States, it never does.

So we sit and watch and pretend that the West in general, and the United States in particular, has nothing at stake in the outcome – that it wouldn’t make any difference to us one way or the other if the people of Iran were able to bring down the theocracy. I guess that’s just another example of Obama’s God-like leadership as he stands above the world, the great teacher, working to bring all different sides together. Funny, but to me it seems a lot like the Second Coming – of Jimmy Carter!

Thanks for listening.