The Washington Monthly

June 15, 2009

KRISTOL'S ADVICE TO CONSERVATIVES.... In a post this morning at the Weekly Standard's blog, Bill Kristol encourages conservatives to be constructive in their concerns about the Obama administration and U.S. policy towards Iran.

[Obama] is our president. We could be at an historical inflection point in Iran. The United States may be able to play an important role. The task now is to explain what the Obama administration (and Congress) should be saying and doing, and to urge them to do what they should be doing. Presuming ahead of time that Obama will fail to exercise leadership, and cataloguing this episode pre-emptively as another in a list of Obama failures, would be a mistake. The U.S. has a huge stake in the possible transformation, or at least reformation, of the Iranian regime. If there's some chance of that happening, and some chance of U.S. policy contributing to that outcome, we should hope Obama does the right thing, and urge and pressure him to do so -- because then the United States will be doing the right thing, and the United States, and the world, will benefit.
This too is the role of a loyal opposition.

At first blush, this seems like gracious sincerity on Kristol's part. His post, in effect, encourages the right to not root for failure -- a habit conservatives have embraced with some enthusiasm since Jan. 20. Indeed, by criticizing the right's reflexive position of "cataloguing this episode pre-emptively as another in a list of Obama failures," Kristol is indirectly slamming the insulting rhetoric we heard from Mitt Romney yesterday.

The concern, though, is what Kristol has in mind when he's "explaining" to the president and lawmakers what they "should be saying and doing." On Fox News yesterday, for example, he recommended that the West press for "international observers to review whether this was a fair election," and then possibly having the U.S. and Europe demand "another election.'"

As Spencer Ackerman, following up on some fine reporting over the weekend, re-emphasized this morning, that would be a mistake.

I don't presume that the Iranian opposition speaks with one voice. But what's been very, very striking about following the #iranelection hashtag on Twitter is how few tweets from Iran are calling for U.S. involvement. In my piece today, I report that U.S.-based Iranian human rights activists believe that Obama should speak up for human rights in Iran and say little else, out of fear that greater U.S. involvement will risk delegitmizing the Iranian opposition. Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council told me that every non-Iranian needs to be "two steps behind the opposition and not two steps ahead," as the Iranians "have tremendous pride in doing this themselves." [...]
[A]n American voice is more likely to be counterproductive than helpful.... For the United States to weigh in on what Iran ought to do can't possibly help. It's time to treat Iran in terms of what aids the opposition, not what makes us feel good about ourselves.

I get the sense that Kristol, his courteous post notwithstanding, would be far less polite in recommending a different course of action.

—Steve Benen 11:20 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (11)

Comments

Does Kristol realize that he has been wrong about everything for the past 8 years? Is Mr. Wrong really expecting Obama to listen patiently while he "explains what he should do"? Maybe Kristol should be an NFL cornerback, he seems to have a very short memory after he's burned by the deep ball.

Posted by: ckelly on June 15, 2009 at 11:28 AM | PERMALINK

One of the ongoing issues Americans have -- of all ideological stripe -- is a lack of knowledge and understanding of history.

Iran's population, whether they tilt left, right or center, would not want the US to "intervene" because of what happened in 1953. To fail to take that into consideration when mulling over "the right thing to do" (right for WHOM exactly?) is foolishly short-sighted.

Posted by: zhak on June 15, 2009 at 11:31 AM | PERMALINK

Is this the same Kristol that, a few short weeks ago, said the U.S. should air mail a few missiles to North Korea???????????????????

Posted by: DAY on June 15, 2009 at 11:35 AM | PERMALINK

Kristol is right. It would only be fair since Iran sent some observers to the US in 2000 who observed our flawed election and demanded we hold another.

Oh wait, that never happened, and no sane American would allow it to happen. Gee, I wonder why Kristol thinks the average Iranian would welcome such external meddling?

On the other hand, perhaps Iran did have some people auditing the 2000 elections...as a how to.

Posted by: doubtful on June 15, 2009 at 11:45 AM | PERMALINK

It's Bill Kristol. You know he thinks that the proper US response to an Iranian election irregularity is either bombing or invasion.

Posted by: dp on June 15, 2009 at 11:51 AM | PERMALINK

Kristol realizes, as do we all, that Iran is at the crossroads of a POTENTIALLY revolutionary moment, just as when students and the young were in the vanguard of the revolution against the repressive Shah in the late 1970s. Kristol isn't sure where this revolution, if it is one, is going and so he isn't sure what to do or say in order to be on the right side of it -- always a problem in judging the direction of a revolution as it develops. Witness the problem for our own founding fathers when it came to figuring out where the French Revolution was going. That revolution defined our early politics, even as the growing radicalism of the French Terror among other developments caused an anti-French American consensus to grow. Kristol feels that this may be the beginning of a spontaneous democratic or freedom-striving revolution and he does not want to spoil, or put the neo-conservative movement on the wrong side of what could be a positive development, by trying to score a few political points against the president.

Posted by: Ted Frier on June 15, 2009 at 12:06 PM | PERMALINK

Does Kristol realize that he has been wrong about everything for the past 8 years?

I dont really care whether Kristol knows this or not. I do think that Homeland Security should have sewed his mouth up months ago, just in the interest of national security.

What if, comme le blind pig, Mr. Kristol discovers an acorn? We'd be all "the little boy who cried wolf" on his ass... only in reverse. or something.

suffice Kristol is an embarrassment to himself, his family, his nation, the world, and the human species.

Posted by: neill on June 15, 2009 at 12:39 PM | PERMALINK

One can only hope that Obama gives Kristol all the respect he truly deserves.

Posted by: qwerty on June 15, 2009 at 1:34 PM | PERMALINK

Is this the same Bill Kristol who panned Obama's Cairo speech? The speech that was so well-received by the students in Iran?

Posted by: John Dillinger on June 15, 2009 at 1:46 PM | PERMALINK

Of course if Obama doesn't do what Billy wants he'll have another brat fit.

But at least he is on record as saying that the RepoTaliban are not helping American by calling failure when there is none.

Posted by: Marnie on June 15, 2009 at 2:37 PM | PERMALINK

Kristol is playing Lucy and hoping Obama will play Charlie Brown and try to kick the football she is holding. We will get behind a good policy, sez Kristol, but who's willing to bet he ever will?

Posted by: Frank H. Logan on June 16, 2009 at 3:15 AM | PERMALINK