I am surprised that you cannot tell the difference between the Soviets relationship with their dissidents, and the Iranians.

America could support Soviet dissidents, and it wasn’t going to make any difference in how they were treated.

America’s overt support for Iranian dissidents would almost certainly have been used as justification by the Mullahs to crack back even harder on them.

The surest way to ensure that any opposition group in Iran fails would be for the President to publicly support it.

Maybe he just doesn’t think the U.S. has the moral high ground to do this.

That is a tragedy. But after a decade where the American brand has been sullied by war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions, and human rights abuses … that’s where we are. Obama has to do some brand rehabilitation before he can expect our bully pulpit to have resonance abroad.

Reagan talked with Gorbachev

But at the same time, Reagan actively supported Soviet dissidents, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. Covert aid given to Solidarity helped crack Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

What bothers me about Obama is NOT that he’s talking to foreign leaders. It’s that he’s blowing off the opposition forces in those countries that might, just might, weaken those regimes and force them on a more moderate course.

For example, Obama has had almost nothing to say in support of the Iranian dissidents whose heads were getting bashed in by government forces this year.

And Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Gration, suggested that we should offer milk and cookies to the Janjaweed, as some kind of gratitude that they’ve eased off somewhat on their genocidal war in Darfur. (Did we offer milk and cookies to the Nazi war criminals after 1945, in gratitude that they had now stopped killing Jews?) That was too much even for Obama’s liberal supporters; he’s taken heat for that from them.

Unlike just about every previous postwar president from Truman up through Bush 43, Obama has refused to use his bully pulpit to speak out for human rights in these unfree countries. From what he said in his U.N. speech, it seems that he doesn’t think the U.S. has the right to “interfere” in that way. Maybe he just doesn’t think the U.S. has the moral high ground to do this.

That’s a tragedy.
Speaking out for liberty around the world has been America’s unique role throughout its history.
Until Obama came along.

brilliant

Off topic (forgive me) but that reminds me incredibly of the parody of Ann Coulter, where they went through Mein Kampf and replace every reference by Hitler of “Jews” with the word “Liberals”. It ends up reading remarkably like Coulter’s most recent books. Can’t find it anymore – I think that since then Coulter has made any satire of herself obsolete.