Obama Administration having a BBQ with Iranian diplomats.
Michael Goldfarb in TWS
Max Boot in Commentary:
It’s bad enough that the president is deliberately refraining from being too outspoken in favor of the freedom fighters who are being beaten, shot, and tear-gassed in the streets of Tehran. But that he’s still prepared to have America’s diplomats break bread with representatives of the very regime which is responsible for this terrible oppression, and to do it on the holiday that celebrates our own struggle for freedom–that’s too nauseating for words.
It essentially confirms the analysis of those who have suggested that Obama is not going to deviate one iota from his previous course of “engagement” with Iran, no matter how absurd and immoral that course now appears to be. For a candidate who mocked the previous president for his supposed adherence to ideology over reality, Obama is displaying that very tendency–only, of course, his ideology is not the advancement of freedom but the advancement of negotiations in the vain hope that somehow we can find common ground with the world’s vilest regimes.
At The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez
I may have disagreed with the George H. W. Bush administration’s lackluster reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing 20 years ago, but at least he was not anxious to have his administration party with murderers. What does Obama stand for?
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:
In any event, the president’s craven, suck-up policy isn’t the only alternative to Bush’s approach. One can always be either more aggressive or less aggressive.
With the regime apparently in some difficulty — and facing problems that won’t vanish if the current uprising fades — increasing the pressure seems like a better alternative than relieving it, however slightly, by treating the murderous regime’s lackeys as if they were esteemed diplomats. Obama has said he does not want to take sides in the current power struggle. But by having U.S. officials break bread with the regime’s thugs, he is doing just that.
Fortunately, it’s far from clear that the Iranian regime will allow its diplomats to party with ours. Thus, we may be spared what would otherwise be a day of infamy.
UPDATE: Michael Rubin
UPDATE: #2: Iran not longer invited to the BBQ.
1 Comment
June 24, 2009 at 10:17 pm
[...] They Won’t Be Bringing The Kielbasa [...]