Obama Pundit

by C. William Chattin

Below are pertinent portions of the comments made yesterday by President Obama addressed the goings-on in Iran.  Does anyone else notice the odd perspective from which these comments appear to emanate?

I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television.  I think that the democratic process — free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they’re, rightfully, troubled.

My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election.

But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I’ve always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad’s statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy — diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries — is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days.

And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.

Is President Obama speaking for himself as an individual, or is he speaking on behalf of the United States government and, by proxy, the American people (and even the people of the free world)?  I count more than 15 references to his own feelings, observations, thoughts, etc. in brief, under-600-word comments.  The frequency in reference to himself provides at least some support to notions that Obama is arrogant, if not a narcissistic. 

n.1. Incidentally,  it’s worth noting that President Obama made these comments without the assistance of a teleprompter.

n.2. Various people, including my old law professor, Jim Lingren, have raised issues about the lack of moral clarity voiced by the President.  For now, I’m giving the President the benefit of the doubt that being too vocal may be used as ammunition for the Mullahs.  However, I would have at least liked to have heard the President say, “America stands by the proud people of Iran.  The will of the Iranian people should prevail.”