A Bit Of History

The medievalists ruling Iran have acted in a most predictable way. We should expect nothing else. Nondemocratic rulers find bellicosity, the threat of war as an especially attractive device for justifying the repression that is necessary to control their subjects. External enemies are an effective means of maintaining internal stability; the mullah clowns know that inculcating hatred towards the West is critical to maintaining their rule. Or was. The Iranian masses are catching on. Before, the mullahs transformed potential adversaries into supporters by inventing an enemy - the West. No longer. We have witnessed the beginning of the end for these troglodytes.
Only Obama now stands in the way of an infant democracy in Iran.

A bit of recent history (always a good thing): Kissinger believed in "detente," nothing more than a plan to carve up the geopolitical pie between the two superpowers. Others, Reagan and Senator "Scoop" Jackson (D, Wash) for example saw this as nonsense; they believed in limits, in a right and a wrong. Thus, Jackson co-authored a historic piece of legislation that linked most favored nation status for the USSR’s terms of trade with America, to its protection of its citizen’s right to emigrate. The Soviets had slammed the door shut on millions of Jews who wanted to leave. Kissinger believed the Soviets must be appeased. Jackson and Reagan believed they must be confronted. Kissinger was, as he often is, wrong. Jackson and Reagan, were, as they often were, right. Seeing that he no longer had the strength to control his subjects AND compete with the West, Gorbachev reluctantly implemented his "glasnot" reforms. And this limited attempt at "openness" would usher in changes far beyond what Gorbachev intended. The second the regime lowered its arms, the people it had terrorized for decades overwhelmed it. Thus, the struggle to free Soviet Jews played a critical role in reversing the policy of detente and triggering a new, and eventually successful approach to the USSR.

Jackson rejected the premise that a totalitarian USSR was a permanent fixture on the international stage. He knew the Soviet economy would fold once isolated. And Jackson believed that promoting human rights was also in the strategic interest of the US, one step closer to a democracy.

Kissinger was taken in by the Soviets just as he and Obama have been taken in by the Iranians. The Nixon administration offered the Soviets preferable trading terms as part of their grand strategy of detente. Kissinger saw those benefits as an incentive for the Soviets to moderate their international policies, which suited the duplicitous leadership in Moscow just fine. But by making trade benefits conditional on internal reforms, on the respect for the rights of its own citizens, the Jackson leg actually accomplished something.

The Soviets needed things from the West. To get them, leaders like Reagan and Jackson demanded that the Soviets change their behavior towards their own people. The parallel with Iran is glaring. The bearded thugs open their society or we in the West restrict, and finally if necessary, blockade their supply of gasoline. Use their dependency as a lever for goodness sake. We highlighted this tool three years ago.

We don’t have Reagan now; we are stuck with a dead man walking, who has never known the great enthusiasms, who has never strived valiantly for anything, who has never demonstrated great courage, and, who is profoundly ill equipped to carry out the Founder's definition of the duties of the Executive branch. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at a press conference recently that "the Iranian people … aren't paying a lot of attention to what's being said … here." On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here--as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense. Instead, Obama’s simply trying to vote "present," but he's the president now, not a junior senator from Illinois.

In reacting rather than leading, BO has in a few day’s time gone a long way in relinquishing our Country’s role as leader of the free world.

Our Marin friends from the left remind us of Kissinger’s recent endorsement of Obama policy, as if this were to convey credibility, somehow excusing BO’s behavior. Instead, this is laughable. Kissinger believed, falsely, that he could engineer what he called a "structure of peace" with the Soviets that would preserve order and stability around the world. But to the Soviets, Kissinger was little more than another of Stalin’s "useful idiots". To the Iranian clerics, Obama fills that slot very nicely.

Robert Craven