JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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yabits
And the Republicans make it sound as though they dictated and got terms of unconditional surrender.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
This is not only rather ignorant, but an affront to the thousands of Iranians who would not take down the current regime merely to replace it with another one dictated to them from the outside, a la 1953.
In reality, this may turn out more like the Philippines of the 1980s and 90s: A U.S. client-dictator was overthrown by "people power" and a new government came in which eventually represented the will of the people in evicting the U.S. from the military bases it maintained. Strategically, the U.S. lost a lot more from that than the U.S. did when the Shah was toppled -- and yet Reagan did no more for Marcos than Carter did for the Shah.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
toguro: I agree with you on that. Definitely.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
Because of the history of U.S. meddling in Iranian affairs, the U.S. has to make extra efforts to appear not to meddle further. Caring about the demonstrators means owning up to this tainted legacy and not giving the regime any excuse to tie the U.S. in to the actions on the streets.
We Americans have to accept that the face that most of the world sees comes not from ordinary American tourists, but from the corporate-military aspect of U.S. society. People living in other countries have every right to their cynicism about American motives.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
As one of Gorbachev's ministers told the Americans during the height of glasnost: "We are going to deny you an enemy."
Naturally, this has the hardliners running around chasing their tails, in Iran and in the U.S. What they are most afraid of is that the soft power approach will pay big dividends. That is why every attempt to exercise soft power is met with accusations of appeasement.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
toguro's question: "Seeing that we already have our plate full with Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly what more can we do to add teeth to any threats of consequenses Iran will suffer if the violence continues?"
Iran's economy is suffering under the mismanagement of the current regime. Its populace is young and yearning for better ties to the West. It is not so much a stick ("teeth") that the United States now wields, but carrots: By dropping the bellicose rhetoric and threats of the past, our willingness to enter into a new relationship with the Iranian people is something that has captured the imagination of many millions of them.
This reflects a division within the U.S. as well: Those who believe that "hard power" is the only way to go, and those who see "soft power" has being able to provide superior benefits at a fraction of the costs.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
You actually believe it was the weakened, discredited Republicans who caused Obama do harden his response? You don't think that the escalation of the violence against the demonstrators by the Iranian regime had anything to do with it?
I guess we can thank Republicans for the fact that the sun rose this morning too.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
Well, anyone can make anything up in order to suit their fantasies. Every U.S. president since Reagan has been tough on Iran, and so, at the first sign of a true rapproachment by a U.S. president in 30 years is overlooked in favor of the cowboy approach.
Here is how a vastly superior analysis puts it: "By reaching out to Iran, publicly and repeatedly, President Barack Obama has made it extremely difficult for the Iranian regime to claim that it is battling an aggressive America, bent on attacking Iran. A few years ago, this was a perfectly plausible claim. George W. Bush had repeatedly declared that the Iranian regime was a mortal enemy, that Iran was part of the Axis of Evil and that a military assault on the country was something he was considering.
"Obama has done the opposite, making clear that he views the Iranian people with warmth and would negotiate with whichever leaders they chose to represent them...The fact that Obama has been cautious in his reaction makes it all the harder for Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to wrap themselves in a nationalist flag. (Fareed Zakaria, writing in the latest issue of Newsweek.)
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
Don't know about foreigners, but the Americans here dismiss them as coming from a source, having gone through multiple names, with no credibility or intellectual integrity whatsoever.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
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yabits
The comment I made about Obama's non-promise specifically relates to the topic at hand: Iran. It was never meant to apply outside of this topic, since any discussion on the points you raised would certainly be struck down.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
Your suggestion of telling them we've "got their back" when the United States has no intention or means of doing is simply not very bright.
Secondly, some of those you call "good guys" may be every bit as anti-American as the ones supporting Ahmadinejad. Would that President Obama not been starting from the deep hole dug in Iranian-US relations by his predecessor and his "axis of evil" cowboy rhetoric. The wedge inside Iran did not begin with Obama's Cairo speech. Had the U.S. had a smarter president and smarter foreign policy in the post-9/11 period, the transition within Iran would be much farther along now.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
If that really bugs you, go back and take a good, hard look at Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand.
Where you are DEAD wrong about Iran is that any "deals" reached with a regime whose very legitimacy is under a cloud will be highly conditional and tentative. You conservatives act as though Obama is going to give away the whole store to Ahmadinejad.
Up to this point, and there is nothing to indicate anything different, President Obama's conciliatory gestures towards the nation of Iran has revealed the serious split within the regime itself.
Right now, you've got one mullah ordering the arrest of the familiy members of another mullah. Just wait and see how this gets sorted out. With each and every martyr that the current regime creates, the force for certain, positive change becomes all that much greater.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
It's like that old story we heard as children about the Wind making a wager with the Sun about which one could get a man to take off his coat first. The harder the Wind blew, the tighter the man wrapped the coat.
What frustrates the blowhard conservatives more than anything is the high probability that Obama's approach will bear fruit in the short term, and will provide better long term results as well.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
I understand how the right wing wants their presidents to lie to the world. The fact is that the United States does not, never has, will never have, and should never have, the backs of protestors in this type of situation.
There are ways within the bounds of international law -- treaties the United States has signed and is honor-bound to observe -- to deal with the kinds of human rights violations that are taking place in Iran. For the United States to play cowboy and disregard the law usually ends up getting FAR more innocent people killed in other countries, as well as gives up any moral authority the US claims to have.
We understand the hysteria and rhetoric of the cowboy mentality, but America has had enough of that. It's time for cooler, calmer heads to prevail. And if the drugstore cowboys -- who never are the ones to sacrifice their sons or daughters to the "action" they try to incite -- claim that the cool, calm approach be "timid," intelligent people can live with that.
As the outlaw Bush regime was eventually replaced by a much better government, so too will the current regime in Iran be replaced.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
Oh, LOL!! I've never thought that those who refuse to use critical thinking abilities were necessarily idiots. But I guess if you're self-conscious and defensive enough to align your thoughts that way, you'll find insults everywhere.
You yourself even admit to refusing to use critical thinking when you say "my point was not to analyze" or "I leave his reasoning for you...to work out." Someone who refuses to analyze or leaves the reasoning to others to work out is a pretty good description of a "dittohead."
Obama, by the way, made no "promise" that he later "went against." You appear to make these things up as you go along. Maybe Obama said something that you misinterpreted as a promise -- just as you perverted the meaning of my comment about refusing to use critical thinking skills into somehow the same thing as "telling someone they're an idiot."
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
Yes, to sit and discuss issues. What is the harm in that? You actually like war better?
Where is the insult?
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran
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yabits
This was a train I rode daily, getting off at Takoma Park to exercise at the nearby aquatic center. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.
The METRO is a great system and has moved millions upon millions of people safely for years. Would that the same could be said of our highway systems.
Posted in: Investigators probe fatal DC rail transit collision
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yabits
I'm certainly happy that in most Western countries, and certainly in the U.S. now with young people flocking to the Democratic Party, the trend is against fundamentalist nuts.
Posted in: No annulment of vote; Ahmadinejad won, says Iran's electoral body
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yabits
First of all, you put words into Obama's mouth that he never said. No American president has ever said that other countries have to meet our expectations of them. And so, to claim Obama to supposedly to be saying the opposite -- he actually never said anything of the sort in his Cairo speech -- is quite disingenuous. Conservatives appear to read anything they want to in Obama's words.
Too much Rush Limbaugh; too little indepedent critical thought.
Posted in: Republicans call Obama timid on Iran