Biden, The Joint Chiefs of Gaffe, Speaks Out on Iran Before Obama
Biden, although a bit dimwitted and always good for a laugh, actually tends to tell the truth from time to time, which is not always a good thing.
I was taught that honesty is the best policy, and in most circumstances, that is the case. However, politics is an entirely different situation, especially when dealing with a foreign country. Politicians have to be more cognizant of not only what they say but when they say it.
So, although Biden was correct in his assessment of Iran’s election results, his candid statement today regarding the validity of the election was probably not the smartest thing to say. I’m sure Obama is not that happy about this:
Vice President Joe Biden, going further than any other high-ranking American official to date in questioning the validity of last Friday’s election, said Sunday that “there’s some real doubt” that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was legitimately re-elected as president of Iran.
It’s also interesting that on the same day as Biden’s statement, the European Union exclaims the following:
The Presidency of the Council of the EU closely followed the course of the Presidential elections held on 12 June 2009 and notices Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected for the second term as the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Presidency is concerned about alledged irregularities during the election process and post-electional violence that broke out immediately after the release of the official election results on 13 June 2009.
The Presidency hopes that outcome of the Presidential elections will bring the opportunity to resume the dialogue on nuclear issue and clear up Iranian position in this regard. The Presidency expects the new Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take its responsibility towards international community and respect its international obligations.
The EU, in essence, is recognizing the legitimacy of the Iranian elections and the new administration of Ahmadinejad. However, it calls the protests irregular, not Ahmadinejad’s win. This is one of the reasons I don’t ever want America compared to Europe – we are much better.
Biden may not have been politically correct and may have upset his boss, but I happen to personally agree with him on this one. This is technically a gaffe, because Obama has not come out in support of Biden’s statement or opinion on this issue. Obama, being the Commander in Chief is Joe Biden’s boss and should speak out on Iran’s election first. A politician has to always watch what he or she says… something that Biden has long forgotten how to do. If we find that yet again this administration contradicts itself by saying two different things, it certainly looks bad and shows a real lack of knowledge and/or leadership on how to manage a country.
The individual that we should be most concerned about is Obama – when will he say anything definitive about Iran?
Ahmadinejad Is Declared Winner – Arrests Rival Mousavi; UPDATE: Protests Still Ongoing in Iran (50-100 People Dead)
No surprise at all – Ahmadinejad (Immajihad) has been declared the winner of this year’s election in Iran. ACORN and the black panthers made their way to Iran to extend polling hours so dead people, non-citizens, Disney characters, and others could vote more than once. As much as Iran likes to tout the fact that it has a democratic election, it is more like North Korea’s election process where Kim Jong Il receives 150% of the vote.
The most alarming aspect of this win however, is today’s report that Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s opponent, has been arrested. Obama and Ahmadinejad seems to have something in common; they both don’t like dissent.
Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and charged that the result was the work of a dictatorship.
Mousavi’s arrest was reported by an unofficial source, according to whom the presidential hopeful was arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Nevertheless, there were a number of contradictory reports from Iran on Saturday, in large part due to the heavy restrictions imposed on the media in the Islamic Republic, in particular on foreign reporters.
This is one of the reasons Iran must be watched closely. We cannot continue to pander to volatile regimes or their dictators. Nobody knows if Mousavi would have been a better choice, and Obama cannot claim victory with his Cairo speech either. I hope that this pseudo election curtails some of the naivete of the current administration, but I fear that would just be wishful thinking.
UPDATE:
The protests are still continuing after the arrest of Mousavi and it has been estimated that somewhere between 50-100 people are dead so far.
Obama: “Iran Has a Right to Be Nuclear”
Well, there you have it folks – it’s settled. Not only is Obama expected to give a speech where he said he will reach out to the Muslim world, Thursday, in Cairo, Egypt, but he is also stating that Iran may have a right to nuclear power.
President Barack Obama suggested that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it proves by the end of the year that its aspirations are peaceful.
In a BBC interview broadcast Tuesday, he also restated plans to pursue direct diplomacy with Tehran to encourage it set aside any ambitions for nuclear weapons it might harbor.
Iran has insisted its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity. But the U.S. and other Western governments accuse Tehran of seeking atomic weapons.
“What I do believe is that Iran has legitimate energy concerns, legitimate aspirations,” Obama said, adding that the international community also “has a very real interest” in preventing a nuclear arms race.
The president has indicated a willingness to seek deeper international sanctions against Tehran if it does not respond positively to U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program. Obama has said Tehran has until the end of the year to show it wants to engage with Washington.
“Although I don’t want to put artificial time tables on that process, we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we’ve actually seen a serious process move forward. And I think that we can measure whether or not the Iranians are serious,” Obama said.
Iran is now a friend and ally!?, never-mind Ahmadinejad’s incendiary remarks during the UN race summit or his previous statements about the West and Israel, they do mean well and really only want nukes for energy purposes. A third world country always wants to go right to nuclear energy not start with the basics./sarc!
President pantywaist sure is giving us change – sometimes I’m not sure if he is doing this on purpose or not but it sure is starting to look suspicious. I’m sure Obama’s scary, hollow rhetoric will really make those Iranian leaders shake in their boots!
I also noted above that Obama is reaching out to the Muslim world. I have to question why his administration continues to reach out to Muslims and not the Arab world. The Arab world is much greater and encompasses the entire region, whereas Muslims do make up a majority, they are not the only citizens living there. Israeli’s are still considered Arab and there are other individuals who do not technically classify themselves as Muslim. Please pay attention to his words. Obama stated that he does not want any further settlement in Israel and Netanyahu has fervently disagreed with such remarks and requests, while Obama tries to make amends (which I think are completely unnecessary for what the Muslim world has done not only to Israel, but to us, to Europe, etc.) with those trying to destroy the West.
So long to our one and only ally in the Middle East, Israel. I’m sure Netanyahu is taking notes as well as umbrage at Obama’s words and actions. He knows that the U.S. is no longer supporting Israel the way we used to. At some point this probably has to happen, but not when you have all these rogue countries acting up, one of which is Israel’s prime enemy, who has called for the extinction of Jews on multiple occasions.
A couple of other random notes/thoughts:
Iran can have “nuclear power” (so says Obama) but the United States when it comes to energy policy, cannot…
Iran needs nuclear power when it already sits on tons of oil?
Liberals are congenitally incapable of comprehending the fact that there are some people on this Earth who are unreasonable and with whom you cannot negotiate and reasonably expect to achieve anything but your own defeat. Barack Obama is the leader of this chronically naive cadre. He is incapable of comprehending the truth about people like Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad.
Liberals, or at least Democrats, will hopefully, one day face the fact that not everyone on this earth is good and decent. Human nature can be very dark at times – but it is only through that darkness that anybody truly knows light. It’s important and imperative to separate the two.
Israel; Obama’s Red-Headed Step Child
In the past couple of days, more has come to light with Obama’s stance, or lack there of, for support of Israel, compared to the rest of the Middle East and in particular, Iran and Palestine.
The Obama administration, namely Rahm Emanuel, also holds similar beliefs, which may strike some as odd, due to the fact that Rahm is Jewish. However, Rahm insisted on Monday that the only way to thwart Iran’s nuclear threat and resolve relations with the Middle East would come to fruition through Palestinian-Israeli talks.
Israeli TV stations had reported Monday night that Emanuel had actually linked the two matters, saying that the efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. The remarks were reportedly made in a closed-door meeting previous day with 300 major AIPAC donors on Sunday.
Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem’s commitment to the peace process.
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state.
He called US President Barack Obama’s program of engagement with Iran a “fantasy,” and his Middle East policies “very dangerous for Israel.” He summed up Obama’s approach as “the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.”
And Newt is right, we should have learned our lesson after Carter, but we didn’t. One could then argue that we should have learned it after Clinton tried this same peace treaty mumbo-jumbo between Palestine and Israel. (The Oslo Accord in 1993 and the Wye River Memorandum). Later we came to find out that Yasir Arafat spoke out of both sides of his mouth and eventually was caught speaking at PLO and Hamas engagements/rallies. (But by then he had already received the Nobel Peace Prize)
If liberals are so adamant about the United States staying out of the business of other nations (their biggest qualm for the last 8 years was Iraq and forcing democracy) then why is forcing a treaty, peace, or a recognized state on a nation ok?
What causes those that are so progressive to think that Iran and other nations, that have continuously ranted and raved about the Jews and Israel, would ever want peace? Middle Eastern history has a very large Nazi influence and therefore, they have called for the extermination of Jews, and the West. There is something seriously wrong with a situation in which people cannot call a spade a spade and see the threat that is in front of their very eyes.
Take for example the latest; Ahmadinejad went on another tirade about Israel yesterday:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed Zionism as “occupation” and “aggression” Tuesday as he delivered his latest diatribe against the Jewish state on a visit to key Middle East ally Syria.
Zionism is merely the recognition of the Jewish state based on biblical times. The state of Israel was promised to the Jews before WWII and before others in the Middle East occupied the region. Israelis do not try to force themselves onto other nations by attempting to conquer the rest of the Middle East or enforce their religion on others – that’s the main difference and the reason why Ahmadinejad cannot be taken seriously.
“The Zionist occupiers are destructive microbes, because Zionism itself is occupation, aggression, the use of assassination and annihilation,” he told a joint news conference with President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian capital.
“Zionism was created to threaten us. To support the Palestinian resistance is a humanitarian and popular obligation,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks in Farsi that were translated into Arabic.
“Syria and Iran are united in supporting the Palestinian resistance.”
The Iranian president’s comments came barely two weeks after he sparked a European walkout from a UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by equating Zionism with racism.
This intolerance does not help the cause in the Middle East and it only raises more eyebrows from the majority of the public who do not define themselves as progressive or liberal. This is not the way to show you are ready for peace. Even if some peace accord was met, it would be hard for me to believe that Iran and others would not continue to hold their “thousand” year grudge against Israel and have the same anti-Semitic sentiments.
Ahmadinejad asked why it was the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza that is blacklisted by the European Union and the United States, and not Israel after its devastating offensive against the territory at the turn of the year.
“They’ve attacked Gaza, killing people in their own land and massacring women and children… and yet it’s the Palestinians they accuse of terrorism,” he complained.
Maybe because Israel didn’t initiate attacks? Maybe they retaliated in a more powerful way to stop the thousands of missiles from entering their country and endangering their citizens? Hamas sent over 3,000 missiles into Israeli airspace over the course of last year.
Israelis have also evacuated the Gaza strip and it is Palestinians that use their own for propaganda purposes reporting deaths in the region and accuse Israelis of those crimes. The main difference between Hamas and the Palestinians and the Israelis is that Israelis do not use women and children as shields, they use themselves to shield their women and children – I respect that more than the prior.
The United States “has put pressure on Syria and Iran, but it needs us and wants to develop relations,” he said.
The scariest statement by Ahmadinejad is the following:
“Circumstances are changing rapidly in our favour. We are on the road to victory.”
That should give you the chills!
The appeasement and call for universal nuclear disarmament is another alarming policy change on the horizon. This step to disarm would include Israel’s nukes, which would cause an inevitable disaster, leaving Israel completely vulnerable to any and all attacks on their soil by countries like Iran who are not a party to the United Nations or any other international treaties.
President Obama’s efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel’s nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.
The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.
Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.
“Universaladherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters.
She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty.
A senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated “apples and oranges.”
Apples and oranges? The weapons programs may be different as far as quality and caliber, but if you continue to let Iran build up its nuclear facilities, centrifuges, and uranium/plutonium supplies, it will be sure to catch up – especially whilst Israel is vulnerable and doesn’t have the weaponry to defend itself anymore.
AIPAC, the strongest pro-Israeli lobby in the nation and on Capitol Hill, is on the case and working to fight the urgent push from the Obama administration to create a Palestinian state.
US congressional leaders and the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US are attempting to forestall a significant shift in the White House’s Middle East policy.
The move comes amid growing signs that the US president, Barack Obama, intends to press for urgent efforts to be made towards the creation of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is visiting Washington later this month amid growing expectations that Obama is preparing to take a tougher line over Israel’s reluctance to actively seek a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians.
It will be the first time that Netanyahu and Obama have met since both were elected.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) this week sent hundreds of lobbyists to urge members of Congress to sign a letter to Obama.
The letter, written by two House of Representatives leaders, calls for Israel to be allowed to set the pace of negotiations.
I would agree, that the pace of negotiations for an international issue be set by the countries involved, not the United States.
Maybe the issue here is that too many progressives have gotten the jihad hip-hop bug. I hear it’s hard to ignore!/sarc.
Don’t Democrats Care About Human Rights?
With so much turmoil in the Middle East and the recent reports of the horrible infringements upon human rights and common decency it makes me wonder if Democrats even care about human rights anymore?
Obama thus far, believes that Iran is full of gumdrop mountains and chocolate falls, but yet they make statements like the one earlier today in which they say that “it will take 11 days to wipe Israel out of existence!?”
Afghanistan has violated various human rights protocols and most recently shot and killed a man and a woman whom they felt were committing adultery and flogged another woman for some other sexist law.
Saudi Arabians don’t allow women to make eye contact or even drive cars, but we still conduct plenty of business with them and feminist liberals don’t seem to have as much outrage when it comes to crimes that are committed by these regimes.
There are other countries that also have human rights issues (China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.) and lately it seems like the majority of these cruel dictatorships are now on Obama’s ally list.
The latest act that violates human rights took place in Iran over the weekend, where a 23 year old girl, convicted of murder as a juvenile, was hanged. Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman Friday in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003.
Which leads me to this op-ed written in the Boston Globe of all places:
ARE HUMAN RIGHTS still a Democrat priority?
To Democrats of a certain age, such a question might seem incomprehensible. After all, it was a Democrat, John F. Kennedy, whose inaugural address proclaimed “to friend and foe alike” that Americans would resist “the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed.” It was another Democrat, Jimmy Carter, who made support for human rights an explicit foreign-policy concern, declaring at his inauguration: “Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” It was Senator Henry Jackson and Representative Charles Vanik – Democrats both – whose landmark Jackson-Vanik amendment helped win freedom for tens of thousands of Soviet dissidents and refuseniks.
But somewhere along the way, Democratic priorities seem to have changed.
For example: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have used her recent trip to China to vigorously defend human rights – to make it clear to those who rule the world’s largest dictatorship that the new administration in Washington cares about the liberty and dignity of China’s people. Instead, she more or less announced in advance that talking to Beijing about human rights was pointless, since “we pretty much know what they’re going to say.” Besides, she told reporters, human rights must not “interfere” with more important issues, such as the economic crisis or climate change.
China got the message. As Clinton arrived in Beijing, dozens of pro-democracy dissidents were placed under virtual house arrest. True to her word, the secretary of state made no fuss about the regime’s brutality.
[...]
Closer to home, President Obama last week relaxed US policy toward Cuba, making it easier for Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to relatives living there. The president’s order was titled “Promoting Democracy and Human Rights in Cuba,” but in fact it said nothing at all about democracy and human rights in Cuba. Nowhere did it mention the Communist tyranny of the last 50 years – there was nothing about the denial of free speech; the abuse and murder of political dissidents; the persecution of journalists, librarians, and human-rights activists; the relentless surveillance and secret police; the regime’s stranglehold on property and employment.
Unfortunately, I think that over the years the priorities of the Democrat Party have become power and control. This in turn has lead to less freedoms, liberties and more infringement upon our basic values like freedom of speech.
The party of JFK, it is not.
