{"id":769,"date":"2009-06-23T14:19:07","date_gmt":"2009-06-23T19:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/?p=769"},"modified":"2009-06-23T20:51:27","modified_gmt":"2009-06-24T01:51:27","slug":"wheres-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wheres-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Where’s Obama?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Where's<\/a><\/p>\n

The protests in Iran have been going on for a week a half.\u00c2\u00a0 They are not a flash in the pan, and despite being murdered and beaten the Iranian people are still protesting and refusing to accept the results of the faked<\/a> election.<\/p>\n

And what’s Obama’s reaction?\u00c2\u00a0 Half-hearted platitudes about freedom and people choosing their own destiny.\u00c2\u00a0 I just watched his press conference and when he was directly asked about supporting them he talked about the international community and standards of behavior and blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

The last president who actually spoke out against tyranny was Ronald Reagan.\u00c2\u00a0 He will be remembered as the man who demanded “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!”\u00c2\u00a0 When the wall came down during the first Bush presidency, instead of cheers and congratulations the White House response was essentially “Meh.”<\/p>\n

When this first started Obama’s reluctance to speak in favor of the protesters was understandable.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t know if this was going to last, he wanted to keep his options open with President Imanutjob\u00c2\u00a0 and he was afraid that offering support of any kind would be used by Iran’s leaders to argue that the US was behind the protests.\u00c2\u00a0 But the protests have been going on long enough without our support that no one will believe we have anything to do with it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s time for Obama to grow a pair.<\/p>\n

He needs to announce, loudly and clearly, that we support the protester’s demands for a fair election.\u00c2\u00a0 He should tell the world, “The United States will only deal with the fairly elected officials of Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 We will not engage with, nor will we recognize, the current administration, as it is quite clear they do not represent the Iranian people, who have a right to a fair election.\u00c2\u00a0 We will not have any dealings with Iran, diplomatically or otherwise, until they get one.\u00c2\u00a0 “\u00c2\u00a0 This would offer a great deal of hope and inspiration to the Iranians who are dying in the streets.<\/p>\n

That sounds a little clumsy, but I’m sure his writers can do much better.\u00c2\u00a0 They need to come up with a line as memorable as “Mr. Gorbachev,Tear Down This Wall.”\u00c2\u00a0 The first line that comes to my mind is “Mr. Ahmadinejad,\u00c2\u00a0 go fuck yourself,” which is one of the many reasons I’m not a presidential speech writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The protests in Iran have been going on for a week a half.\u00c2\u00a0 They are not a flash in the pan, and despite being murdered and beaten the Iranian people are still protesting and refusing to accept the results of the faked election. And what’s Obama’s reaction?\u00c2\u00a0 Half-hearted platitudes about freedom and people choosing their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":774,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769\/revisions\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davehitt.com\/blog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}