Source: http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=330735397750646
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Leadership: The president's tardiness in condemning Iran is obviously tied to his wish for an unlikely deal on Tehran's nuclear program. But does he also believe America has too much to apologize for?
Read More: Iran
It may have been the most dangerous period in U.S. history. President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy philosophy three-quarters of the way through the American Century was one of American Impotence.
Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, once infamously described it this way: "The world is changing under the influence of forces no government can control."
Faced with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979, Carter told reporters, "Certainly we have no desire or ability to intrude massive forces into Iran or any other country."
He added that "this is something that we have no intention of ever doing in another country. We've tried this once in Vietnam. It didn't work, as you well know."
Repeatedly signaling that year that the U.S. had neither the ability nor the will to influence events abroad not only led to our ally the Shah being overthrown by an Islamofascist terror regime whose nuclear ambitions now make it the biggest threat on the face of the globe. It also led before year-end to the Soviets invading Afghanistan.
Carter's response: an Olympic boycott, a grain embargo and the curtailment of Russian fishing privileges in U.S. waters.
Behind it all was a deep shame for the United States of America. What business did the country that invaded Vietnam, staged a 1953 coup in Iran (saving it from Communist dominance, it should be recalled) and incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki have trying to exert moral authority?
President Barack Obama seems driven by a similar philosophy. Three decades later, with Tehran slaughtering innocent protesters on the streets, his statement to reporters that "the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran's affairs" sounds an awful lot like Carter's tepid response to the Islamist revolution.
Obama quickly added that "we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people." But it insults their courage, as they brave bullets and batons in repeatedly defying the illegitimate "sovereignty of the Islamic Republic" by taking to the streets, for the U.S. not to make a bold effort on their behalf.
Contrast Ronald Reagan's reaction to the Soviet-backed crackdown in Poland and the massive street protests that resulted in late 1981. Fox News' Sean Hannity this week showed video from Reagan's Christmastime statement that year.
"The courageous Polish people . . . have been betrayed by their own government," Reagan said, adding that "brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics."
And he issued a warning: "Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection."
Reagan made it clear that the series of harsh economic sanctions he was authorizing were "not directed against the Polish people." He announced that "on Christmas Eve a lighted candle will burn in the White House window as a small but certain beacon of our solidarity with the Polish people."
And he urged all Americans "to do the same tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, as a personal statement of your commitment to the steps we're taking to support the brave people of Poland in their time of troubles."
That is real presidential leadership that helped lead to the end of tyranny in long-suffering Poland.
Imagine Americans rallying in support of a Muslim people with some similar symbolic gesture at the behest of a president whose father was Muslim, and who bears a Muslim name. America's moral leadership harnessed in such a way could move mountains in the Middle East.
But Barack Hussein Obama is apparently too busy apologizing for the U.S.A. to consider it.
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