Are You with Us or with Them?

President Obama likes to preen himself on his supposed moral superiority to his predecessor. He announced the closing of Guantanamo in his first week on the job (though, ten months on, it remains open) to advertise the new administration’s disdain for George Bush’s war-fighting tactics. And at every opportunity since, he has stressed that his policies — on taxes, on the Middle East, on health care, on “man-caused disasters,” and on “climate change” — reflect a more refined and elevated morality than has ever before held sway in Washington, D.C.

He has known that critics in the United States regarded his posture toward the Iranian regime as weak. But on Wednesday, he heard this critique from a different quarter — one that will be more difficult to dismiss.

Every year, on November 4, the anniversary of the day in 1979 when Iranian thugs took American diplomats hostage in Tehran, the government has organized a street demonstration outside the former American embassy. In the early days, the rallies may have engaged a certain number of spontaneous participants, but they have long since become utterly stage-managed government shows. The only people the regime could muster this year to chant “Death to America! Death to Israel!” were non-Iranian members of Hezbollah and students bused in from the provinces for that purpose.(snip)

But this is what should awaken Obama’s conscience: The protestors chanted something new this time. As they dodged the blows of the militia they chorused: “Obama! Obama! Either you’re with them or you’re with us.” --SNIP--

continued ...This exquisitely moral White House was unmoved. Incredibly, President Obama released a statement that very day commemorating (!) the 30-year anniversary of the kidnapping of America’s diplomats, taking the opportunity once again to abase himself and us. “Thirty years ago today,” the president recalled, “the American embassy was seized” — he did not say by whom. But because some anonymous agent seized the embassy, it “set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation” that Obama is determined to reverse. He wants to move beyond the past and seek “a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.”

The Marxist Muslim in the WH continues to reveal himself.

You are right. Jay Nordlinger had a great perspective on this topic as well today.

Earlier this year, I commented with some agony on President Obama’s Nowruz greeting — his New Year’s greeting — to “the people and leaders of Iran,” as he put it. There was much to comment on, agonizingly. And one of the aspects was this: He stated his desire for “engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.” I asked,

What is there about the Iranian regime to respect? Forget what Iran does in its foreign policy: its pledge to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, for example. (Just a small example, huh?) What about what the regime does to the Iranian people?

They stone girls to death for the crime of having been gang-raped. Think about that, if you can bear it. And, just a day before Obama sent his New Year’s message, we learned that a young Iranian blogger, Omid Mir Sayafi, had died in an Iranian prison: Evin, that torture chamber and graveyard for so many good people.

Anyway, you know all this. I just want to say, now, that President Obama has done it again: has said that he wishes “a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” I’m not sure I’ll ever have a chance to question Obama, but one thing I’d like to ask him is, “What about the Iranian regime can decent people respect?”

And did you get a load of what the democratic protesters in Iran were chanting? “Obama! Obama! Either you’re with them or you’re with us.” I’m with Mona Charen (as I usually am): Tough to know how the president can sleep.

I just wish we had ONE ‘journalist’ who would ask the tough question when Zero talks about mutual respect with Iran: Do you really think that Iran respects us??? The term mutual respect assumes that they have respect for us and-NEWSFLASH-even with Dear Leader (and TOTUS) in control of our beloved country Iran doesn't respect us. Zero is just biding his time until he is able to bring our country totally to it's knees. Then we will be subjugated by the Ayers crowd and our country will be lost.

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