[Gaffer]

Published by WaPo but written by Natan Sharansky, a human rights activist and former political prisoner in the Soviet Union, and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

It is a rare bit of dabbling on the other side of politics for WaPo in my opinion. Clearly, the political officer on the boat was asleep when this leaked out.

In America forgetting America, he concludes it is a loss of moral-confidence. To me that confidence was supplanted by a never-ending and relentless assault by the left on virtually every traditional moral value this country has kept since its inception.

Little by little, these values have been assaulted and diminished to the point we are constantly left with fending off reprisals from all manner of “victims” in our own country. We are reduced to trying to forestall the evil aims of even our own President.

How can this not spill over into a national and diplomatic will when it comes to dealing with real evil in this world.

[Ben Ficklin]

WaPo, NYT, and WSJ are considered to be "Papers of Note", which means when a person of standing wants to editorialize on a subject they will be published in one or the others. And sometimes, such as with the military intervention of Libya, all 3 papers were used by different people of standing to publish their opinion.

As for "dabbling on the other side of the politics", NeoCon hawks are very influential at WaPo and NYT. Plus, Fred Hiatt, who heads the WaPo editorial board is very hawkish on foreign policy(but liberal on domestic issues), so the WaPo editorial board is always critical of Obama's foreign policy.

Sharansky's attempt to compare Iran today with the Soviets way back when is not a very good analogy. It would be better to compare Iran today to Iran way back when.

Back then, the US sent the CIA into Iran to put the Shah Pahlavi onto the throne. The takeover of the US embassy was a pre-emptive move to shut down any attempt by the US/CIA to influence Khomeni's ascendancy.

Today, the world economy is very prevalent, so economic interdependence of the nations makes sanctions a more useful tool in foreign policy than it was way back when.

We use this term "Soft Power" in foreign policy, which is a persuasive approach using economic and cultural influence, to implement policy, which is a lot cheaper than military intervention, which is important when the national debt is high, and we haven't paid off the still ongoing wars.