Just kidding. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has taken a break from prescribing tax cuts in relation to every economic development so that it could criticize Obama’s response to the current situation in Iran. Obama speaks “like a good lawyer;” displays again his “now-frequent moral equivalence” by deigning to mention that we overthrew Iran’s elected government in 1953; lacks the moral clarity of Nicolas Sarkozy (what the fuck?) and proves prescient Hillary Clinton’s criticism of his inexperience during the primary season.
The WSJ takes issue primarily with the following quote:
“Now, it’s not productive, given the history of the U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections”
I realize it is hard for some people, particularly those who have been inculcated with the mythically manichaean narrative of America’s relations with the world that’s common currency in the media (or those who suckle deeply of Bill Kristol’s teet), but American endorsement is poisonous in many parts of the world and a death kiss in others. This conclusion would probably be borne out if they took the time to pick up any international history text about the 20th century, but why read 300 plus pages when you could any speech of Ahmadinejad’s from the past year? His rabid anti-semitism and somewhat-less-but-still-there anti-Americanism isn’t just a middle finger to the United States, it’s also to rev up his constituency, many of whom are old guards or conservative rural folk with whom the memory of the 1979 revolution is still mostly positive and that kind of talk plays well with. But why read a speech when you could read 140 fucking characters? There have been numerous tweets about how the perception of American support for the reform movement would play right into the hands of Ahmadinejad (who has already begun to play that card in earnest).
The position of all the twitterers with Iran, of course, is not unanimous. Some probably want a more vigorous condemnation from Obama. But a lot don’t. All this is beside the issue, anyway, since the WSJ didn’t even have the intellecutal honesty to address what Obama said – that the perception of American involvement could be deleterious – and instead attacked a Straw man about how 2009 is different from 1953 because the CIA isn’t there right now and ergo Obama is wrong/a weak wristed liberal/etc.
The part that’s the most confounding to me about this editorial, and about right wing foreign policy thinking more generally, is the notion that we should loudly voice approval/disapproval of other country’s internal situations. I’ve never been quite clear what exactly doing so is supposed to accomplish besides jerking off our own moral sensibilities. A stern reprimand from an American president is not going to cause a dictator to rethink their latest stolen election. Besides, if we really want to be seen as a credible moral force, not helping prop up abhorrent dictatorships (like the one in Equatorial Guinea, to name one of many) would probably work much better. At worst, it can play right into the hands of the very people that such statements are ostensibly supposed to undermine. One need look no further than our most colossal foreign policy failure of the 20th century – the war in Vietnam – to see evidence of this: American support was enough to doom a succession of military juntas that tried to rule South Vietnam. People in other countries like to make decisions about their own future, and, like it or not, the U.S. has a history of, how shall we say, encouraging other countries to make certain decisions. Anything the president can do to minimize the perception that we’re up to our old mischief is smart policy. But who am I to expect anything remotely like that from the WSJ?
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