Tough Talkers Get Windy Over Iran

Right now would be a good time for President Obama to install some gigantic fans outside the White House so he can blow away all the hot air coming from critics who think he's wimping out on the Iranian election conflict.

Obama has called for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government to "stop all violent and unjust actions" against protesters, but some members of Congress want to hear much tougher talk.

Over the weekend Senator Lindsay Graham said Obama has been "timid and passive" in his public statements about the situation. So here we go again. "Timid" is another word for "weak" and Republicans have been accusing Democrats of being weak and soft on foreign policy for decades.

My personal favorite example of this tactic occurred during the 1952 presidential campaign when Richard Nixon described Adlai Stevenson as a man with "a Ph.D from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of communist containment." Weak people are cowards and cowards are losers, right?

Note to Senator Graham: If you really want to get some traction with this tactic you should consider your own updated version of the Nixonian academic invention. How about "Barack Obama's Useless University for Extremist Enablers?" Run that up the flagpole and see who salutes.

For everyone else who thinks the US needs to talk tough and "send a message" my question is: What is all the tough talk supposed to accomplish? I'm pretty sure President Ahmadinejad isn't going to suddenly slap his forehead and exclaim, "Oh my gosh! Look what the Americans are saying! I better get moving right now and schedule a new election so they'll cool down!"

Lindsay Graham apparently thinks tough talk from America will be appreciated by Iranians who oppose the current government. Last weekend he also said, "The young men and women taking to the streets in Tehran need our support. They are basically asking us to speak up for them."

Senator, are you sure about that? Given the amount of unpleasant political baggage this country has piled up in Iran during the past sixty years, pumping out lots of tough talk in favor of the protesters would be giving Ahmadinejad more fuel to fire up his supporters.

"Look!" he'll say, "the people who oppose me are getting help from the Great Satan, the country that supported Iraq in our long war, and said nothing when Saddam used chemical weapons against us. The Americans have done this before. They toppled Mosaddeq in 1953 and put the Shah back on his throne, and now they want to topple me!"

Barack Obama knows all about this kind of international blowback. It happened to him back in April 2008 when Ahmed Yousef, a political advisor to Hamas, told a New York radio station that "we like Mr. Obama."

The John McCain campaign quickly sent out an e-mail saying Obama's foreign policy plans "have won him praise from Hamas leaders." Conservative bloggers and talk show hosts trumpeted the idea that Obama was enthusiastically supported by tyrants and terrorists around the world.

Do you think that's an unfair comparison? I'm sure there are people who would say the US has a right to lecture other countries on their internal affairs because we're the leader of the free world, and it's our global obligation to stand up on behalf of democratic principals and fair elections.

This argument would also be very unwise to use against President Ahmadinejad because he could immediately toss it back in our faces by saying, "Wait! Maybe our election wasn't perfect, but at least we had one. If you Americans are so committed to promoting democracy in this region, why don't you go put some heat on Saudi Arabia? They didn't have elections of any kind until 2005, and those were just for local councils, and last month the government announced the 2009 local elections were being pushed back at least two more years. What's up with that?"

Is anyone in the House or Senate willing to get tough with King Abdullah and send him a strong message? Who wants to introduce a resolution telling the king he needs to shape up and get the next round of municipal voting underway without further delay? Since Saudi Arabia is a longtime ally and we depend on the oceans of oil they sell us, I have a strong feeling no such resolution will be voted on anytime soon.

We just finished eight years with a president who loved to swagger and say things like "Bring 'em on" and "Absolutely we're winning." Those statements came back to haunt George W. Bush.

The best message President Obama can send out to the country right now is this: we're facing a number of serious foreign policy issues in the middle east and Asia, talking tough and declaring ultimatums will not help resolve any of them, and perhaps most important of all--avoiding harsh rhetoric and empty posturing in dealing with our adversaries is absolutely not a sign of weakness, timidity, or appeasement.