In The Blogs

Responding to Iran

| Tue Jun. 16, 2009 8:44 AM PDT

Jonah Goldberg on Obama's response to the mass protests in Iran:

Reportedly, you are biding your time, waiting to see what happens, as if it is a great mystery. Your campaign lived and breathed YouTube. Check it now, check it often. You and your team promised "soft power" and "smart power." Well, let's see some of that. Because by not clearly picking a side, it appears you have chosen the wrong side.

Do you fear antagonizing the powers-that-be in Iran? That ship has sailed. Though I am sure they're grateful for your eagerness not to roil the seas around them. Is it because you think "leader of the free world" is just another of those Cold War relics best mothballed in favor of a more cosmopolitan and universal awe at your own story?

"Enough about those people bleeding in the street. What do you think of me?" Is that how it is to be?

Obama really drives conservatives to the loony bin, doesn't he? I mean, the story here is pretty simple: if the Great Satan forcefully intervenes on Mousavi's side, it gives the clerics just the excuse they need to brand him a foreign stooge and really crack down. Goldberg can't possibly not know this, can he? Obama, so far, is doing exactly the right thing: deploring the violence but otherwise staying in the background until and unless Mousavi and the protesters themselves ask for more. He's doing his best not to make it about him, but about them.

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Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here.

Comments

What about wisdom?

Submitted by Trippp on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 9:10 AM PDT.

Goldberg is all about what makes him feel good right now.

Goldberg lacks wisdom and maturity.

Wisdom is doing what brings you what you want in the long run, even if it means you don't get to feel good in the short run.

Angry people just don't get that. Expressing their anger works, in the short run, and they get hooked on that, but in the long run it backfires.

Tripp

Iran's supreme religious

Submitted by tpx on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 9:34 AM PDT.

Iran's supreme religious leader did not make his opinions known to the people of the US about their contested presidential election in November of 2000. The US leadership should follow his example and not interfere in Iran's contested election of 2009.

Goldberg is an infant.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 10:03 AM PDT.

Goldberg is an infant. Reading him these days is like reading a two year old being contrary to whatever mom and dad say.

Disingenuous, you are

Submitted by Linkmeister (not verified) on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 10:44 AM PDT.

"Goldberg can't possibly not know this, can he?"

"Never attribute to malice what can be ascribed to stupidity," Hanlon's Razor says.

The MO of a BA

Submitted by SRW1 (not verified) on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 10:55 AM PDT.

Goldberg can't possibly not know this, can he?

Correct! So, Jonah Goldberg is acting in bad faith. Which, coming on the heels of the fact that he has also written a book called 'Liberal Fascism', suggests that acting in bad faith is Jonah Goldberg's modus operandi.

Which suggests that Jonah Goldberg has forfeited the right to be taken seriously and, until he mends his ways, deserves to be called a BS artist. Please, quote his works accordingly.

Iran elections - what Americans can do

Submitted by Reva (not verified) on Tue Jun. 16, 2009 11:11 AM PDT.

tagged as:

solution

Peace Action West's political director, Rebecca Griffin, just returned from 2 weeks in Iran, just before the election. Her contacts there have been providing reports of what's happening: http://tinyurl.com/nb9afe

In addition, we're asking Americans to support people in Iran by asking Congress to stop undermining Iranian democracy activist by calling for more aggression. Anti-diplomacy politicians -- many in Congress -- have been latching onto this election as an excuse to push for sanctions on Iran. The Iranian regime is skilled in turning this kind of external aggression from the US into an excuse to crack down on reformists. Here's a blog post w/ more on this: http://tinyurl.com/lthqlw

Oh, for the love of god...

Submitted by DougNC (not verified) on Wed Jun. 17, 2009 1:14 AM PDT.

Jonah hasn't a lick of sense, and never did, about any subject. Every time I hear his name, I just get more depressed that I live in a world where his audience is greater than the two people (maximum) who would otherwise be interested in listening to him if his mother weren't the mid-20th century's premier right-wing attention whore.

He (and his ilk) do not do nuance. Diplomacy, or any strategy that does not involve hitting your enemy over the head with a club, is beyond him. Surely there is some dustbin of history he can take up with, so that the Enlightenment can proceed anew?

No posts on The Corner that address the 'U.S. Puppet' argument

Submitted by low-tech cyclist on Wed Jun. 17, 2009 5:06 AM PDT.

At least, none that I could find.

By the 'U.S. puppet' argument, I mean the obvious argument that if we clearly take the side of the protesters, they will be viewed as U.S. puppets (which is still a pretty damned serious charge over there), which will undermine their credibility and increase the legitimacy, within Iran at least, of a crackdown on the protesters.

They're free to respond to or ignore whatever arguments they want to. But if they don't take on the best arguments of their intellectual adversaries, there's no reason why anyone should pay attention to them: they're not even pretending to be serious.

For reasons that would take

Submitted by Dino (not verified) on Wed Jun. 17, 2009 11:17 AM PDT.

For reasons that would take too long to explain, I used to see all of America as divided into two types: Seinfeld fans and Tim Allen fans. The former group loved irony and solipsism while that latter group preferred family dynamics and broad slapstick. These two groups roughly reflected the red/blue dynamic, Seinfeld fans resided in Northern/urban areas and Tim Allen fans tended to be Southern/rural. Like all systematic endeavors, it is crude but it served my purposes.

Now I see that I was woefully wrong. The wingnuts really have embraced irony. The apparent looniness is merely a stratagem to induce frustration and ultimately surrender. Goldberg, Rush and O'Reilly et. al. are actually very devious and their fan base disguises the subterfuge very well. I believe they are trying to raise blood pressure and lower life expectancy in order to counter the current demographic advantages of their opponents.

Since when did Goldberg

Submitted by Riggsveda on Mon Jun. 22, 2009 9:53 AM PDT.

Since when did Goldberg start worrying about "those people bleeding in the street"? I can't seem to recall his voice among the bleeding hearts when we were trying to focus attention on the Congo. Oh, I forgot...when we get no political or economic advantage out of standing up for the raped and dying, THAT'S when it's OK to remain silent.