by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Apparently the Obama administration is quietly watching the situation, serially voting present, and unwilling to say much until the final outcome is certain. Meanwhile, debate here centers around whether Bush\u2019s past \u201cAxis of Evil\u201d approach to Iran\u2019s theocracy, or Obama\u2019s \u201cWe are sorry for what we did in the past\u201d lamentation is the better course for dealing with a thug like Ahmadinejad. Some thoughts:<\/p>\n 1. Conventional wisdom insisted that we had \u201cempowered\u201d Iran by removing Saddam and allowing the Shiites to gain democratic majorities in Iraq. It is at least as possible that we are destabilizing the autocracy in Iran by promoting Iraqi democracy that is no longer just a warning about civil chaos, but a positive view of a Shiite-majority democratic society unknown in Iran. The notion of two large contiguous oil producing democracies in the Middle East is unacceptable to the radical Islamists and most of the Sunni Arab dictatorships as well.<\/p>\n 2. When one apologizes to a contemporary terrorist-sponsoring regime for events that occurred 60 years ago at the beginning of the Cold War, and does so without context of the past, then naturally one is self-censored, and will be reluctant to comment on contemporary events in Iran \u2014 relegated to a bystander watching the flow of events, predicating the response on who wins.<\/p>\n 3. We are seeing in Washington that the multiculturalism impulse \u2014 one does not use Western paradigms to judge others \u2014 is far stronger than the supposedly classical liberal idea that human freedom is a universal concept that trumps culture. In other words, multicultural foreign policy is a sophisticated and politically-correct version of the old, far more intellectually honest realist notion that we let the bastards do what they want to their own people, and then deal with the thug that emerges in the real world of mutual self-interest.<\/p>\n 4. For the probable majority of Iranians who voted against Ahmadinejad, the idea that the U.S. was reaching out to him, despite his subsidies to terrorist killers in Lebanon and Iraq, and his brutality at home, was not necessarily a sign of American good will. If the prior policy of disengagement with the Iranian theocracy, while appealing to the good will of the Iranian people was so flawed, why was it, then, that despite America\u2019s bad global PR, the Iranian people remained far more pro-American than did the Arab Street, whose autocrats about four years ago we ceased pressuring to liberalize?<\/p>\n For at least a decade, liberal icons like Bill Clinton (\u201dIran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority \u2026 (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections \u2026 There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.)\u201d, Jimmy Carter and\u00a0New York Times<\/em>columnists have tried to make cute points that our worst enemy in the Middle East, Iran, was in fact the most democratic \u2014 ridiculing the notion of others that rigged plebiscites, pre-screened candidates, the absence of a truly secret ballot and free press, organized thuggery against dissidents, suppression of women\u2019s rights, etc. were hardly democratic.<\/p>\n Iran, let us now confess, understood the America utopians very well, offering them both the thin veneer of \u201cdemocracy\u201d and at the same time the notion of revolutionary opposition to \u201cimperialist\u201d and \u201ccapitalist\u201d America. When Clinton in 2005 said that nonsense at Davos he was simply playing to the international politically-correct Western bunch, the subtext was \u201chey, that awful Bush is running things now in the U.S., and it is a lot worse over here than it is in the Iran that he demonizes (cf. Clinton\u2019s flourish: \u201c\u2026certainly not my own\u201d). That Iran was killing soldiers in Iraq, sponsoring killers in Lebanon and the West Bank, trying to get a nuke to do worse to Israel did not mean all that much to Bill Clinton, at least if he could sound nuanced, neat, and contrarian among the international drones at Davos.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll take axis of evil and evil empire any day to serial apologies to this creepy regime, and \u201ccertainly not my own\u201d comparisons.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Apparently the Obama administration is quietly watching the situation, serially voting present, and unwilling to say much until the final outcome is certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[715],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Gy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2092,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/voting-present-on-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":0},"title":"Voting Present on Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Iran just announced a radical expansion of its uranium-enrichment facilities. The news followed the recent disclosure of the country's previously secret nuclear facility near the city of Qom \u2014 and came just two days after the International Atomic Energy Agency's censure of Iran\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2636,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reflections-on-the-iranian-enigma\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":1},"title":"Reflections on the Iranian Enigma","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Thoughts on Iran 1) \u00a0Why did we reject the Bush policy of non-engagement with a monster like Ahmadinejad, who oppressed his own and threatened nuclear destruction to Israel? Is it all that moral, or all that wise, or all that much in U.S. realpolitik\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2009"","block_context":{"text":"June 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/june-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3729,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/talking-to-iran-moral-and-strategic-mistake\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":2},"title":"Talking to Iran: Moral and Strategic Mistake","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 18, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services One of the many bizarre recommendations in the recently released report from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group is the call to talk with Iran. A formal dialogue with the present Iranian leadership is, for a number of reasons, as misguided as it is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2006"","block_context":{"text":"December 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/december-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4154,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/amoral-euphemism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":3},"title":"Amoral Euphemism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Is \"outsourcing\" multilateralism? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Senator John Kerry has recently opined, \u201cWhy hasn't Osama Bin Laden been captured or killed, and how will he be destroyed before he next appears on tape to spread his disgusting message?\u201d Then the senator argued that bin Laden lives\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2006"","block_context":{"text":"January 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/january-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3546,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-bomb-bomb-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":4},"title":"Don’t Bomb, Bomb Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For now, we should avoid smoking Tehran. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There\u2019s been ever more talk on Iran. President Bush \u2014 worried about both Americans being killed by Iranian mines in Iraq, and Tehran\u2019s progress toward uranium enrichment \u2014 is ratcheting up the rhetoric. But so\u00a0mirabile dictu\u00a0is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2007"","block_context":{"text":"August 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/august-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6833,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nuclear-gangbangers\/","url_meta":{"origin":2638,"position":5},"title":"Nuclear Gangbangers","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Hostile countries with nuclear capabilities have the upper hand on the global police. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The gangster state of North Korea became a nuclear power in 2006\u201307, despite lots of foreign aid aimed at precluding just such proliferation \u2014 help usually not otherwise accorded such\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nuclear Warfare"","block_context":{"text":"Nuclear Warfare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war\/nuclear-warfare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/481px-Trident_C4_first_launch-240x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2639,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2638\/revisions\/2639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}