Oh, look, it’s another:

Iran’s escalating protests, which many fear will be met with a crackdown given recent hardline rhetoric from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have upped pressure on President Obama to respond more forcefully. However, Iranian cleric and civil-rights activist Mohsen Kadivar, who has taught at Duke University for the last 10 months after being jailed for his views by the theocratic regime, wants the U.S. to stay out of it.

In an interview with The Daily Beast after a rally and prayer session by the United Nations in solidarity with Iran’s protesters, Kadivar said that the opposition movement was entirely self-sufficient and in need of no support from foreign leaders. “What Obama has done so far is about perfect,” Kadivar, garbed in his traditional cleric’s robes, said. “We don’t need any special support from you. The green movement for democracy and liberty in Iran is independent and we don’t need anything from the foreigners. We should get democracy ourselves.”

Hmm, let’s tally it up shall we? Iranian Nobelist Sharin Ebadi agrees with Obama and me. Tom Ricks with Obama and me. Kissinger with Obama and me. Lugar? Noonan. Rick Moran? Now another Iranian cleric? With Obama and me.

And let’s tally up the other side. Oh, look, it’s Krauthammer. Who last got something right in 1992. Idiot neocons looking for another war they can lose oppose Obama, and everyone with a functioning brain supports him.

Peggy Noonan, Reagan speechwriter:

To refuse to see all this as progress, or potential progress, is perverse to the point of wicked. To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous. The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week. John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn’t know whose side America is on. “In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral,” said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it’s neutral?

This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else’s delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.

One more useful quote. This is from an email to Sully:

You’re calling it right on the bizarre pieces by Kagan, Wolfowitz, and Krauthammer but missing what I think is the deeper motivation. Since the Cold War, neocon aspirations have not been to change the world but to change the way America thinks and acts in the world. They would like us to be more belligerent and assertive — not because the world needs it but because we need it to toughen our fiber. It’s all about us.

That’s why it never occurs to them to ask the Iranian dissidents themselves if we should make public pronouncements. Who cares? And also why someone like Pipes is rooting for Ahmadi: America needs that kind of enemy if it is to become what it should be. That’s what matters.

Exactly. And I’ll add: solipsism, moralizing, threatened manhood. Indifference to actual success, an inability to focus on a goal and pursue it. Naivete, fuzziness, insecurity. And of course the desperate, overriding need to find some way, any way, to lay a glove on Obama.

Rightwing Nuthouse’s Rick Moran:

But wishing don’t get it done. I believe we are doing the demonstrators a favor by laying low and letting events unfold. There may come a time in the near future where Obama may wish to use stronger language to condemn the regime and support the demonstrators. Until then, he’s got it just about right – a Goldilocks moment for our president; moments that have been far too few in his young presidency.

The bluster has come from you.

The titular leader of the free world is supposed to stand up for human rights and speak out against blatnant human rights abuses.

Wrong. Naive. Even stupid.

The head of the free world is supposed to win.

A win will advance human rights. Stupid, self-destructive bloviating will set back human rights.

I’m sick to death of armchair heroes making foreign policy about the size of their balls. I want to win. It would be a nice change from the last 8 years.

But honestly Tully I don’t think you give a damn about Iran or the protestors. I think you want to take shots at Obama and damn the consequences. Because you aren’t stupid enough or naive enough to believe what you’re saying.

Simple question that I keep asking and no one wants to answer:

How does more rhetoric from Obama help the protestors?

Can you give me an answer? Or will it be more posturing and strutting?

Yep. QED. When called on it, he blusters more, throws out more straw men to set on fire, and adds extra ad hominem. It’s a very familiar pattern. I’ve noticed that fiction writers are quite prone to it.

Michael, I’ll call your Lugar and Kissinger with current Sec’y of State HRC and current VP Xerox Joe, both of whom according to NYT reportedly urged stronger condemnation of the human rights abuses (not the apparent election fraud, mind you) and were rebuffed by the President. And I’ll raise you a Merkel, a Sarkozy, a Gordon Brown, the Canadian Foreign Minister, the Sec’y-General of the UN, and overwhelming majorities of both houses of the U.S. Congress.

It really is a clear and simple principle. The titular leader of the free world is supposed to stand up for human rights and speak out against blatnant human rights abuses. Not champion sides in elections, or declare them fraudulent, not even necessarily DO anything material, but simply speak out against blatant human rights abuses. And Obama isn’t doing that. That is indeed a failure of leadership, and it is indeed being noted worldwide by other governments and non-state actors. Obama is showing us what he WON’T stand up for in terms of clear and simple principle, and that message is being heard today around the world.

Every President in the Post WW2 era has managed to do this one simple thing, even when it was only symbolic lip service, like Carter’s impotent words regarding the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter of millions.

For real laughs, watch the White House trying to claim that after all Obama really meant what Congress and others said, he just didn’t actually, you know, manage to say it! Enough BS spin in that one to make even a Clinton dizzy.

You and Tully are devoted to the idea that Obama is naive and has made a mistake. Your political prejudice gets in the way of your ability to analyze. You’re prisoners of presupposition.

In this and in other threads I’ve made the point over and over that the less we respond the better. I’ve cited authoritative support for that argument. And I’ve explained the logic. Tully meanwhile has talked about JFK doing Ich bin ein Berliner. Tully and you still want to make this about us, when it is not.

I’ve pointed out that we have a situation with numerous moving parts. That we know very little about those moving parts. That there are undeclared generals and mullahs. That any vocal support from us is likely to impede those we hope to support.

On the specific question of whether Obama handled it just right, I’ve cited Kissinger, Lugar, Ricks and an Iranian Nobelist. I could cite more.

On the opposing side of the argument are a pack of neo-cons who want a new war.

I’ve pointed out that there are no cries from the protestors for more American support. That there is no reason to suppose there is an Iranian “market” for our “support.”

Tully has supplied nothing but bluster and criticism based on his presumption that Obama must be wrong. I’ve given chapter and verse.

I think you have failed to demonstrate the conceivable harm that you imagine would have come from this. You’ve repeatedly conflated making a clear statement with a general sense of “getting involved.” All to win your argument that Obama’s response was perfect.

I don’t think the exact nature of Obama’s response matters nearly as much as most Americans would like to believe. But I do know that new Presidents who make very circumspect statements in response to serious international incidents invite further exploration of where that new President’s lines will be drawn.

KISSINGER: Well, you know, I was a McCain supporter and — but I think the president has handled this well. Anything that the United States says that puts us totally behind one of the contenders, behind Mousavi, would be a handicap for that person. And I think it’s the proper position to take that the people of Iran have to make that decision.

Of course, we have to state our fundamental convictions of freedom of speech, free elections, and I don’t see how President Obama could say less than he has, and even that is considered intolerable meddling. He has, after all, carefully stayed away from saying things that seem to support one side or the other. And I think it was the right thing to do because public support for the opposition would only be used by the — by Ahmadinejad — if I can ever learn his name properly — against Mousavi.

Kissinger, the British foreign minister, Tom Ricks, Richard Lugar and Iranian Nobelist Shirin Ebadi, all back Obama’s handling of Iran.

On that last it would depend what they wanted. Help keeping communications up? I hope and believe we’re helping with that already.

Money? Sure, if we can manage not to broadcast it.

UN support? That’s a case-by-case thing. We’d have to have a good sense of who we were dealing with and what their agenda was.

Military support? I think any Iranian group that asked would be on a self-defeating path.

Rafsanjani is believed to be supporting the demonstrations behind the scenes. No one knows quite what his game is, but if this new accusation makes it more likely that Raf has jumped more fully behind Moussavi.

Then again, this is Persia we’re talking about. Westerners haven’t understood for centuries. Or ever.

I don’t see how any indication of support from us could do anything but hurt Rafsanjani and any military support he may be lining up. But of course the trouble is we may want to be hurting Raf. Who knows? Which is why we need to let the Persians play this game: we don’t do subtle, and we don’t even know who’s holding what hand with what stakes in the pot.

Americans are terribly solipsistic, seeing ourselves at the center of everything. And the need to “do something” is a cultural trap for us. Sometimes you do nothing.

And if a genuine, viable opposition movement asked for our aid, should we give it to them?

Simon, let me phrase this in a way you can understand. Goverments don’t lie to people – People who run governments lie to people. Don’t forget we gave Bushie the benefit of the doubt for a couple of years, too. Remember all those Dems who voted for war based on what?, Bush and Cheney lies, we later found out. That’s when we stopped trusting The Cheney gevernment. I trust the Obama administration until it proves me wrong. So far, so good.

I think President Obama is correct in showing extreme restraint in dealing with the situation in Iran. My concern is that opposition protestors will interpret any voicing of Western support as a sign that we will come to their aid. Every time I see one of those “Where is my vote?” signs in English, I worry even more.

snip

This problem goes to the essence of strategy: A “tough” stance that Fox’s anchors are pushing might feel good, but it likely would be unproductive. A sober stance of the sort that Obama has taken is more difficult but likely more effective in the long run.

Our short term goal should be the removal of Ahmadinejad and the installation of Moussavi.

Because we think Moussavi’s a great guy? No. He’s not.

We should want him to prevail because the success of this mass-movement will, by itself, advance the cause of democracy. The people will have taken on the power structure and prevailed. It’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle once it’s had a taste of real power.

I think the odds are that the movement peters out. Or that it is crushed. But right now the regular army has not gotten involved and they are a wild card. Rafsanjani is still out there. Montazeri is out there. There are generals and mullahs right now deciding which way to jump. Every single thing we can say or do has the potential to make it more difficult for those generals and mullahs to do the right thing. Conversely, nothing we say or do at this point can help them.

At some point it will be clear that the movement has failed (if in fact it does fail) and that is when we ratchet up the condemnation. Not when there are dozens of fragile moving parts in a game we don’t understand. A game we cannot win for the Iranian people.

The insistence on scoring points against Obama — which is all the right wing is doing — is unhelpful to American goals and unhelpful to the Iranian protesters. Which is why, as quoted above, the Iranian Nobel-winning activist and most people who actually understand the situation think Obama is handling it just right.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said she has no complaints about Obama’s rhetoric. “What happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard,” she said in a telephone interview from Geneva. “I respect his comments on all the events in Iran, but I think it is sufficient.”

So we have on the one hand you and a bunch of other conservatives looking for any excuse to hurt Obama.

And on the other hand we a Nobel Prize-winning Iranian rights activist. Who amazingly, sounds just like me on this topic.

Gosh, it’s so hard to decide who’s more likely to be right.

Maybe Obama’s America really doesn’t care much, one way or another.

Such right-wingers as FDR? “We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.”

Such right-wingers as JFK? “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. ”

Such right-wingers as LBJ? “We can never again stand aside, prideful in isolation.”

Such right-wingers as Jimmy Carter? “Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.”

Such right-wingers as Bill Clinton? “We will stand mighty for peace and freedom.”

Yeah, God forbid we should pay any attention to such right-wing loudmouths as those.