"I should give you, the new US administration, this advice. Mr Obama came to power with the slogan of 'change', meaning the American people like the rest of the world want a change in the colonialism policy," Ahmdinejad told crowds in a speech broadcast live from Varamin, a city south of Tehran.
"Therefore it would have been imperative for him to take part in the world's most important conference of racism and denounce racism, (confirming) that the US is pursuing a changed policy in confronting racism," he added.
"But to sit at his place and condemn my remarks is not helpful in solving the issues," he added, amid the habitual slogans of "death to America and death to Israel."
Not helpful. That's pretty much the Americans' assessment of Obama to date, as a matter of fact. Indeed, Ahmadi-Nejad was a bit kinder than I have been on occasion.
And Shmuley Boteach (love that name, btw!) wonders, in the Jerusalem Post, why Obama smiles at dictators.
The picture of the president of the United States smiling broadly as he met President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela startled me. Our president is a nice guy. Chavez is anything but.
The State Department maintains that Chávez has attacked democratic traditions and has put Venezuelan democracy on life support with unchecked concentration of power, political persecution, and intimidation. Foreign Affairs magazine says that Chávez is a power-hungry dictator with autocratic and megalomaniacal tendencies whose authoritarian vision and policies are a serious threat to his people. In testimony before the US Senate, the South American project director for the Center for Strategic International Studies said that Chavez's government engages in "arresting opposition leaders, torturing some members of the opposition (according to human rights organizations) and encouraging, if not directing, its squads of Bolivarian Circles to beat up members of Congress and intimidate voters-all with impunity."
In spite of a presidential term limit of six years, Chávez has suggested that he would like to remain in power for 25 years. Hmmm. An autocratic dictator who abuses human rights and undermines democracy being warmly embraced by the American president. There's something wrong with that picture.
Then there was the incident of President Barack Obama seeming to bow before King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the G-20 summit in London. The president's people denied it was a bow, but it certainly was a sign of great deference from the American president to the dictator of a country who just six weeks ago sentenced a 75-year-old woman to 40 lashes for having been secluded with her nephew after he delivered bread to her home. This is the same Abdullah whom, when asked why Saudi Arabia prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam, said, "It is absurd to impose on an individual or a society rights that are alien to its beliefs or principles."
Obama is also pursuing a renewed relationship with Cuba, a country which engages in systemic human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials and extrajudicial executions. Censorship is so extensive that Cubans face five-year prison sentences for connecting to the Internet illegally. And not only is emigration illegal, but even discussing it carries a six-month prison sentence.
WATCHING ALL THIS, I was wondering what the new standards were. How oppressive must a leader be before we determine that he has not merited a hug by the democratic standard-bearer of the free world, the president of the United States? Yes, I get it. We have to speak to our enemies, and America has to push "reset" on its relationship with many of these countries. We should try and change them through charm. But who said the president himself, rather than a lower-level diplomat, must do so?
And if Obama feels that he has to be the one to greet a man like Chavez, must it be with the kind of ear-to-ear grin that one might show girl scouts selling cookies? It must surely be disheartening for those who suffer oppression in countries like Venezuela, Cuba and Saudi Arabia to see the American president backslapping their oppressors when these victims have always looked up to the United States as their champions.
In Turkey, Obama boldly declared that "the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam." But the person who was at war with Islam, Saddam Hussein, the man who killed nearly one million Muslims, was removed by a country which has already paid with the lives of 4,500 of its servicemen and women. The same is true of the Taliban, another group whom the Obama administration is considering talking to, who beat Muslim women in the streets of Afghanistan. Yet the president seems reluctant to publicly identify these real enemies of Islam.
LIKE MANY AMERICANS, I have been awed by our president's capacity to draw those who hate us near. He is a man of considerable charm and grace. But I have to admit that I am increasingly troubled by his seeming inability to call out rogue dictators.
[snip]
ALL THIS LEADS to one important question. Suppose Obama succeeds in building friendships with Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad and the Taliban. What then? Does America still get to feel that it stands for something? Will we still be the beacon of liberty and freedom to the rest of the world, or will we have sold out in the name of political expediency? And do any of us seriously believe that presidential friendship is going to get a megalomaniac like Hugo Chavez to ease up on the levers of power, or are we just feeding his ego by showing him he can be a tyrant and still have a beer with the president of the United States? Will the Iranians really stop enriching uranium through diplomacy rather than economic sanctions?
No, Shmuley, my friend, we will not still be the beacon of liberty and freedom. We will be just another weak, foolish, poorly managed socialistic nation that committed suicide on the sword of political correctness. Obama doesn't understand the role the United States has played in the world for over 200 years, and he cannot begin to grasp the critical importance of that role to oppressed nations.
In the world of community organizers it's all equivalent. There are no superior nations, no preferable forms of government. Freedom and liberty are just words to these people, ideas from a time gone by that no longer have any relevance in their enlightened universe. To the left, the American Dream amounts to no more than having a roof over one's head and sustenance. The source of these things is unimportant - the pride of accomplishment one feels having procured them irrelevant. They cannot empathize with the oppressed people of these nations who view the United States as the last best hope of the world, and are able to endure their miserable lives because they know that there is still one place on earth where the ability and dedication of the individual makes all things possible. Rather they see our great nation as selfish and make the mistake of assuming that other nations have less because we have much. This they perceive to be unfair, and reconcilable only by bringing us down to the global level, rather than encouraging the globe to come up to ours.
It is much easier to make apologies for our affluence than to convince other countries that they, too, can be strong and successful if they free their people and give them incentive to achieve. It is always easier to follow than to lead.
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