Political Colors
Posted on June 15th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Andrew has an unusually bad suggestion for the President:
Oh, and the president should wear a green tie from now on. Every day. He need say nothing more.
A thousand times, no! Leave aside the political damage he would do to himself here at home by brandishing a tie with the color of political Islam, which is enough of a problem for Obama given the persistent, albeit fringe attacks on him on account of his ancestry, and just consider how inappropriate this is as a matter of relations with other states. I hope we would never suggest that the President deliberately wear the color blue or red before or after a British general election, and I hope no one would actually want the President to wear orange in solidarity with Yushchenko (though it could just as easily be misread as solidarity with the FPM) or yellow to side with the anti-Thaksin forces in Thailand. The President of the United States is not and must not be seen as a partisan in the elections of other nations. No matter the party and no matter the country, their cause is not and cannot be the same as his. For another thing, such a symbolic display of solidarity in the absence of action would be interpreted, correctly, as worse than doing and saying nothing. Nothing would please his domestic enemies more than to be able to mock his empty symbolism and falsely impute Islamist sympathies to him, and nothing would suit Mousavi’s enemies more than to be able to tie Mousavi to the United States through that symbolic identification. While we’re at it, it would be seen as an attempt to use worldwide sympathy for the movement in question to bolster himself politically while doing absolutely nothing for the people with whom he supposedly sympathizes. It would give the regime the pretext of treating Mousavi as an American lackey. They may do this in any case, but Washington need not enable or provide justification for this. The administration’s wait-and-see approach is the right one
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
It’s amazing how people can become so romantically involved in the affairs of other countries. I could understand a little if Andrew were himself Iranian, but he isn’t.
I think Andrew’s providing quite the public service, and he must be ecstatically happy doing it at his summer retreat. This is exactly what he went into blogging to do, presumably.
He actually started this particular post agreeing with Daniel, a little surprisingly. Though he spoiled it with his awful, awful tie idea. Perhaps Obama could keep winking at the camera and giving thumbs up signs? I think he’s got more dignity and sense though…
It’s amazing how many people here think that the US needs to stand for/vindicate/support something for it to be real. People asking for a strong US response have literally no idea that other cultures and countries, with vastly different perspectives from their own, actually exist.
“America = us = Good; therefore we must intervene for Good.” It just doesn’t go any deeper than that. A reasonably intelligent 12-year-old, familiar with rivalries among and between grades and neighborhoods, should be able to provide more intelligent commentary than almost any so-called conservative.
Sullivan has been quite a piece of work over the past few days. I think the post that took the cake however was when he treated us to the spectacle of a nominal christian gay-rights blogger shouting “Allahu Akbar!” from his blog. For a man that claims to be turned off by the smug multiculturalism of “liberals,” I can only say that I live 20 minutes from Santa Monica and there’s no question in my mind he’d fit right in handing out pamphlets on 3rd Street Promenade on a friday night.
On the other hand, his passion is helping get a lot of information out, and everyone, clearly including DL, is paying close attention.
I agree with Jamie that we shouldn’t be too hard on Andrew who is providing a crucial service. As is always the case with his blog there are aspects of his coverage that are over the top and ill considered – but what he is doing is getting information out and generating interest. Regardless of the result and regardless of the implications for the West what is happening right now in Iran is significant. But it is a sad indictment of Western political culture that we cannot take an interest in the affairs of other states without fitting them into the framework of our own partisan struggles – Andrew, obviously included. What is truly fascinating about Iran is the emergence of a mass movement that is strikingly indigenous and un-Western. And, at the risk of falling into the same error that I have criticized in others, it strikes me that it is precisely this kind of indigenous reform that is most likely to solve the ‘problems’ of the middle East.
We need to adopt a Buddhist approach: “Don’t just do something; sit there.” The worst thing we can do is stick our beak in their crisis. A few generalities about a peaceful resolution, etc. is the best approach.
Andrew is doing a lot of good work on this. Nothing in the above is meant to take away from that. Even so, more perspective and less enthusiasm would be better.
Passion and perspective rarely coexist, and never equally. It is in the arena of ideas where we, as individuals, communities and nations, apportion to each an appropriate measure. Fortunately (so far) we have passion on the wings and perspective at point.
Whereas in Iran they have just the opposite, and perhaps just as fortunately for Iranians.
Jake
The sodomite Andrew Sullivan obviously has been carried away by his desire for the President to make a fashion statement. Those people are into that sort of thing you know.
More worrisome than Sullivan’s occasional excesses are the responses of those on the right, like Glenn Reynolds, who are trying to accuse Obama of siding with Ahmadinejad, and say that he has dropped the ball by not coming out openly and aggressively in favor of the protesters. Glenn is saying things like, this is Obama’s 3 AM phone call, and he’s sleeping right through it. What they would have him do is beyond me. Send in the troops? It seems that anything other than a constant attitude of bellicose belligerance is considered to be appeasement, even if the event has nothing in particular to do with us directly, or even international affairs at all.