The Washington Independent - Latest Comments in Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

John — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:07:40 -0000

And though I'll concede that the demographic composition of the demonstrators likely differs from past movements in ways that complicate the lessons of non-intrusion, Trita Parsi's advice to let the demonstrators lead still holds. In addition to Spencer's point - that the U.S. should want to avoid being an albatross around the neck of a successful opposition - it can't be emphasized enough how little we know about the opposition in its current form. Yes, there have been calls for greater U.S. involvement. But those calls have been met with pleas just as persuasive for the U.S. to stay out. For all the signs printed in English, there have also hundreds, maybe thousands, of nightly chants shrouded in the spirit of 1979. Joscelyn's argument focuses entirely on whether the U.S. could wind up empowering the regime. Yet that is only one of many possible unintended consequences U.S. interference could bring. Given how little we know that the demonstrators and what motivates them, there are almost definitely others.
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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

man — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:43:37 -0000

its about time , our place is not in east we have enough problems home.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

sampatriot — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:17:25 -0000

NO we need to mind our own business and focus on what we can fix in this country. We are hated all over the world because of our involvement in other countries, we have been bombing other countries for years and then paying to build it back up, we buy weapons for opposing countries. Not one taxpayer dollar should be going to other countries for any reason until we can do something to fix our own country

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

DeltaBoseEinstein — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:03:04 -0000

I am not an American citizen but coming with a Persian background as a researcher active in science, I humbly like to give my services to those in need for fighting terrorism.
So please find the following letter relevant to those people suffering under tyranny in Iran, I as a concerned person asking on their behalf:
We hereby declare that we are in favor of strong words upon the current crisis in Iran against the very-illegitimate regime of I. R. Iran.
We must add and question that, those who kill the innocent based on strong media images and confirmed reports, how must they be judged and treated by the global community? ...
Thinking about just the nuclear issue is not the remedy for global peace announced by the democrats and the respectable US president, B. H. Obama...
What is the current US position on Iran?... The current US policy is too soft indeed... To be marginally silent at this very moment not aiding people seeking for democracy, calling for peace in Iran, just for the sake of US national interest, is truly illogical!...
This is a rightful claim from the Human Rights constitution which originally came from the first Persian King "Cyrus the Great", in form of a cylinder held at UN headquarters, Ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... ...
One must separate the peaceful Iranian community from the Taliban-i Type Dictators i.e. the totalitarian regime of Tehran employing monsters from other middle eastern countries, Chechnya with an unequivocal support from former communist states to beat and kill defenseless people in Iran: "the innocent crying for peace and basic human rights, defying the regime itself"... How does President Obama respects the sovereignty of I. R. Regime boarders whilst this regime considers Israel to be wiped off the map and triggers events in Iraq to rule Middle East based on barbaric fanaticism...!?
We must prevent terrorism and those unfolded events that are being spread across the Middle East region, mostly fueled and advocated by the Ayatollahs in Tehran including the Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself (current events occurring in Iraq).
We must not let the cry for democracy rest in Iran. The momentum must continue its course and “US must represent democracy and not just follow it” until the corrupt fanatics are brought into justice. Killing an innocent defenseless human is simply a crime against humanity.
One last thing, does the world want to be conquered by the insane elements of the regime integrated within the I. R. Fanatic regime's body (they always want to implement this according to their Friday prayers' speeches since the last 30 years of their reign)?

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

peyman — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:25:34 -0000

Free the Iranian people from these cruel, non-human, nasty, filty Ayatollas. USA and England helped to bring these ayatollas to power in 1979 (It was all about the OIL). It’s all about the money as usual! Obama here is your chance to set things right for the Iranian people just like Bush did for the Irakian people by elimanting Saddam Hussein (Note that USA helped to bring him to the power). Bush would not hesitate for one second!

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

rosha — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:32:33 -0000

hi
I'm roshanak from Iran. you don't know what happened here and you don't have any imagination about what's going on here. i wish that i could talk with Mr. Obama.
I just can come to this website cuz the others are filter, to tell the people all around the world to help us, support us, and if someone can connect with M.r Obama at first i wanna tell him that we like him a lot, then i want him to support us against violation.
they exactly steal our vote. they kills lots of people and arrest the others.
each night we go to the roof and say down with Dictator and something like that.
they don't believe us. they wanna kill us until the last person who is a fan of Mousavi.
:((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
People all around the world heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Joseph — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:12:52 -0000

Really? Are people really this dense? Obama CANNOT say what it is he wants Iran to do or the Iranian opposition to do, because the democratic choices are obvious to everyone in the world. Once he says them, if they make any moves in that direction, the credibility of the opposition will be comprehensively undermined within Iran. Those people marching don't get their power from Washington; they get it from the basic ideals of democracy, which are universal. Obama demanding that the opposition leader be seated as president will provoke a brutal authoritarian regime to make war on its own people; that is not what you or I or any reasonable person wants.

All this attacking Obama for not being loudmouthed enough about principles he has espoused virtually every day in public speeches for the last 2 and a half years is just anti-Obama opportunism, an attempt to use fear-mongering and falsification to smear Obama with the crimes of a regime that is his enemy as much as it is yours. It is dishonest, and counterproductive, and all those who are trying to distort this into a story where the blood of Iranians is less important than your reflexive contempt for a principled president, should be ashamed of what you are doing.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Joseph — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:05:48 -0000

Kathy: 1) The lobbyists behind filling your head with the lie that Obama is trying to undermine doctors' salaries work for the insurance companies. They are the ones who might suffer reduced profits if you pay less for your healthcare. The doctors will be compensated as they are now.

2) Would you pay the full 100% price of your medical expenses? Or does someone pay it for you? An employer? A relative's employer? I know people who have suffered for years and/or died, because insurance-company paper-pushers wouldn't let them be treated; would you like to pay for their treatment in order to save the insurance companies' profit-margins? or would you prefer they die? or would you prefer a solution where they pay their own way, because it's actually affordable to buy insurance?

3) If there is an affordable option in the marketplace, and everyone is covered, the efficiencies of the marketplace would dictate that: quality of care must increase (because the insurers who deliberately lower it by denying treatment or underpaying doctors to turn a profit will see their customers flee in droves), and as quality of care increases, doctors' costs (read: malpractice insurance) will come down, raising their profits.

4) Obama wants results: we can't save the tens of thousands dying from flawed or non-existent health insurance every year by letting doctors and insurers fight it out; the insurers will continue to rob the doctors blind, reducing the amount of time they can spend with each patient, reducing the quality of care, driving up the number of medical errors, and thus gaining for themselves a windfall in the form of malpractice premiums...

And we can't help the Iranian opposition movement to empower average Iranians if we make it look like they're our puppet. If the US government were run by fascist fundamentalists who think Iran is "Satan", would you go out in the streets to risk your life in support of a candidate Ahmedinejad said was "his guy" in Washington? Or would you think: oh no, it's hopeless, this guy's just a puppet of the foreigners, and the regime is going to attack us with tanks anyway, might as well stay home?

Think a little bit about this; Obama is not president of Iran, and he is not technically president of the world. He can't just order people around; if we want Iran to move in the direction we favor, we have to be smarter than Bush, Cheney, Tenet and Rice; we actually have to think about what works and not just go shooting our mouths off. If Obama came out and said "The election was a sham! The government are Islamofascists and must be brought down! The American policy is regime change!" in the midst of this crisis, the immediate result would be the blood of innocent pro-democracy demonstrators running in the streets of Tehran.

So far, the opposition has only gained in force, because "soft power" actually works; they know that they are rallying in the spirit of Obama's democratic principles; they know that he is not a friend of Ahmedinejad. It's unthinking fools over here who don't seem to get that.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Joseph — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:52:07 -0000

Sorry Bruce. The country is not a "center-right" country. It's a centrist country that has long and storied traditions of principled conservatism and principled liberalism. 2nd, MoveOn.org is not a "far left" group; it's a progressive organizing team. They get people in touch with each other, they communicate, they help people pressure Congress, and their agenda is not pro-Republican. That doesn't make them suspicious "far left" conspirators; it just means they do not favor voting for Republicans or the Republican party platform.

That said, MoveOn is much more left-leaning than Obama. The ONLY reasons Obama was listed by ONE conservative political group as "the most liberal senator" was because of his opposition to the Iraq war and his support for abortion rights. Despite what some on the far right would like everyone to think: neither of those is a "far left" position; they are both center-left mainstream positions. And neither is ideological in nature; they are both about the rule of law and constraints on executive power.

If you paid attention to the news, you would find that every week there is another issue where committed liberal organizations differ with Pres. Obama, because he is too centrist, even right-of-center on some issues of public policy. He won 17 million more votes than Bush won in 2000 not because McCain's campaign was dismally bad, but because that many people wanted Obama to govern, and because he actually motivated people to get out and vote.

Your ACORN accusation discredits your entire argument. The big secret about ACORN, the thing that is kept all-too-quiet when the media are obsessing about whether O'Reilly's deranged ranting is based in fact or not, is that the US attorney's fired illegally, for not engaging in political prosecutions, had been asked to look into "voter fraud". They found that where individuals working as independent contractors for ACORN had falsified voter-registration forms, they had done so 1) without ACORN's permission (ACORN reported them to federal authorities in every case) and 2) in order to steal from ACORN by not doing the work of getting legitimate voter registrations.

The only reason you ever hear about ACORN from the "far right" is because the people at the top of the pseudo-conservative movement were caught, in what is still an ongoing criminal investigation, trying to falsify charges against innocent people, with the explicit purpose of preventing real citizens from being registered to vote. A federal judge found that there was ZERO evidence of any "voter fraud" across the US and that the handful of isolated cases where individuals had falsified records were cases of individual misconduct or cutting corners.

Raising the ACORN issue as you did, demonstrates your bias and your proclivity for consuming information from grossly inadequate sources.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Joseph — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:34:34 -0000

There is a shocking amount of promotion of the idea that one can only achieve anything in this world by brute force in these comments. Maz, I'm afraid your angry hostility toward Obama falls into the category of the kind of unimaginative and cowardly thinking that is afraid in a deep way of using intelligence and reason to solve problems. No one in the US government approves of the Iranian regime, and no one is coddling or appeasing anyone over there: the problem is no matter how much we might get a rise out of doing so, ordering an authoritarian regime to obey us doesn't work. Communism in Europe fell apart almost by surprise, because the people living in the oppressed countries stood up for themselves. If we don't let that happen here, we'll just perpetuate the tyranny. It sounds like some anti-Obama commenters might have been big fans of the Bush administration's "we hate you" rhetoric... they certainly made sure to perform for you and for me and for everyone, so that no one would doubt that they hate the Iranian regime, but that's not a foreign policy, it's adolescent posturing. And the result was, they helped to bring Ahmedinejad to power, by threatening and hardening an already hardline regime. The result of Bush's boyish (and impotent) threats was that the clerics banned the reformists from competing and essentially handed the election to Ahmedinejad. If we follow the logic of those among us who are all about swearing obscenities in the face of the ugliness of the world's tyrants, instead of actually using our heads, we will do what Bush did, and promote the spread of radical fundamentalism and the rise of thugs like Ahmedinejad.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

lou — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:08:40 -0000

Kathy, Michelle Obama made $350,00 for an affrimitive action job at the hopital I believe that income is much higher than most Doctors

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

lou — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:06:31 -0000

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Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Philip — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:09:04 -0000

Do you Americans remember the 2000 elections Bush won? Did you expect the rest of the world not to recognize Bush. You guys are such hypocrites.

Re: Obama’s Iran Policy to Focus on Human Rights, Not Election

Maz — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:01:18 -0000

Hussein Ibish is a front-man for Bashar al-Assad and hardly a note of objectivity.