The extraordinary protests in Iran are captivating the world. The best way of following the fast evolving developments is via Twitter (Google report). Click here to do so.
Responding to the situation President Obama was careful not to be seen to be interfering but said that he was "deeply troubled" by the violence he was watching on TV. He also said that he was "inspired" by the Iranian people's belief in democracy and freedom. Describing many of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's views as "odious" he nonetheless said that his administration remained committed to a dialogue with Tehran.
Some American conservatives are furious with this stance. "He has given the impression," editorialises the National Review, "that he wants the dictatorship to stabilize itself so he can get back to the work of appeasing it." The British Foreign Secretary David Miliband backed Obama's careful statement, however. He counselled that intervention on behalf of the protestors could be counter-productive:
"The long thesis of the conspiracy of foreign powers against Iran is one that is deeply ingrained in the popular imagination and peddled vociferously by the regime. What is very, very important is that we continue to show respect for the Iranian people - that's what President Obama did yesterday - that we continue to insist that it is for them to choose their government."
If Ahmadinejad holds on to his country's presidency it could make life difficult for Obama. The BBC's Justin Webb describes "the result of the Iranian election [as] the worst possible outcome for President Obama":
"He could have coped quite cheerfully with an Ahmadinejad loss of course but also with a clean-cut win where he could have expressed respect for the government and moved on. But now it is difficult for him to deal substantively with a regime that seems so illegitimate - result: stasis. And the result of that could be growing pressure for any outreach to Iran to come to an end."
Israel's PM made the policy shift after pressure from Barack Obama. Mr Netanyahu insisted that recognition would have to be linked to Palestinian demilitarisation and, against the White House's wishes, he declined to change policy on Israel settlements on the West Bank. The Times:
"Binyamin Netanyahu threw down the gauntlet to the US last night, grudgingly agreeing to a limited Palestinian state that would be demilitarised and not in control of its airspace or borders. The hawkish Prime Minister insisted that Israel would never give up a united Jerusalem as its capital, and said that established Jewish settlements in the West Bank would continue to expand — despite explicit objections from Washington."
The President's speech received a standing ovation from its Cairo audience and this Huffington Post report indicates why:
"In a gesture to the Islamic world, Obama conceded at the beginning of his remarks that tension "has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear," said the president, who recalled hearing prayer calls of "azaan" at dawn and dusk while living in Indonesia as a boy."
A few immediate reactions from commentators:
James Forsyth: "Obama’s speech to the ‘Muslim world’ in Egypt was full of necessary fictions. But more substantively it set out what Obama sees as seven areas where progress must be made if tensions are to be eased: the fight against violent extremism, Israel / Palestine, Iran’s nuclear ambition, democracy, religious freedom, womens’ rights and economic development. Missing from the speech was a clear appreciation that violent extremism comes out of an extremist ideology. Violent extremism cannot be defeated until the ideology that lies behind it is tackled."
Janet Daley: "The White House presented this speech as "a beginning" and made it clear that it did not expect the problems of the region to be transformed overnight. The question is, what happens next? Mr Obama's requests for Hamas to lay down its arms, and Israel to accept a two-state solution are not going to be met (at least not in the immediate future). Violent extremism is not going to be roundly eliminated by Muslim governments. Islamic women are not going to be given equal opportunties for education, and Arab regimes are not going to embrace human rights, however universal Mr Obama believes their value to be. The White House is presumably aware of all this. Will the speech then simply become another symbol of the Obama moral superiority over his bellicose, tactless predecessor, and so serve purely the interests of domestic politics? Or could it be a useful pretext for justifying later military action on the basis that diplomacy had been tried and proved futile? Does the White House have a plan for what happens when the Muslim world applauds but fails to change course?"
Andrew Sullivan: "I think the last decade or so has shown the extreme limits of hard power and the desperate need for more public diplomacy, national re-branding and some shrewd maneuvering to advance the interests of the West and to help avoid what could be a catastrophic era in global politics. I still believe in the prudent use of military force, and the need to keep a threat of such force in diplomacy. But the great challenge of the war against Jihadist terror is shifting the psyches of countless young Muslims, from Pakistan to Morocco. That we have chance to do that with this president is itself testimony to democracy's capacity for correcting mistakes and the strength of its ethnic and cultural diversity in appealing to the wider world."
Ali Abunimah of 'Electronic Intifada': "He may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state "vision" aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end."
Michael Rubin: "Obama studiously avoids the word democracy. Instead, he declared, "That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people." Dictators of the world, relax: Stage a spontaneous demonstration to demonstrate popular adulation; don't worrt about those pesky votes."
President Obama chose an interview with the BBC's Justin Webb to begin his outreach to the Muslim world:
Webb, the BBC's departing North America Editor, is positive about the interview on his blog, except in one important respect:
"I asked him straight whether Hosni Mubarak (the Egyptian leader for 28 years!) was an autocrat. Mr Obama told me he was a force for stability and good."
In Saudia Arabia he paid tribute to the country's leader King Abdullah as "wise and gracious." He continued:
"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East."
David Frum hopes the President uses his speech to address the need for greater freedom within the Muslim world:
"The Pakistani scholar who wants to be free to study the origins of the Koran without fear of violence if he reaches an unorthodox conclusion – isn’t he part of the Muslim world too? The Saudi woman who would like to wear jeans in public? The Iranian youth who would like to convert to the Bahai faith? The Senegalese merchant who prefers the movies to the mosque? The French student who celebrates Ramadan with his parents and Christmas with his girlfriend? Or his boyfriend? Will the President talk to them? If not – it would be better to stay home."
Talking about the British media, Mr Gibbs said: "If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it'd be the first pack of clips I'd pick up."
Nile Gardiner of the Thatcher Center in Washington DC commented:
"Robert Gibbs' completely unwarranted rant against the British press
is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An
unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.
For all its talk of
"raising America's standing" in the world after the Bush years, the
Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out
to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America's public
diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the
Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs - you've just made an enemy out of the
entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of
selling the President's message."
In the debate about the closure of Guantanamo Bay perhaps the most interesting contribution was made by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Mr Gates, who was appointed by George W Bush and retained by Barack Obama, said that the Guantanamo detention facility was one of the best prisons in the world but its name was too potent a cause for America's enemies and critics:
Yesterday, in clashing speeches President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney set out competing visions on national security and human rights. The table below has Obama's words in blue and Cheney's in red (click on the graphic to enlarge):
Despite the rhetorical differences between Obama and Cheney the Wall Street Journal suggests that recent administration decisions owe much to Bush era doctrines:
"Yet for all of his attacks on the Bush Administration, which he accused of making "decisions based upon fear rather than foresight," Mr. Obama stuck with his predecessor's support for military commissions, adding some procedural bells and whistles as political cover to justify his past opposition. For the record: Both the left and right, from the ACLU to Dick Cheney, now agree that the President has all but embraced the Bush policy."
In contrast David Brooks in the New York Times writes that the Cheney policy ended her Bush:
"The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats... By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear."
As candidate Barack Obama was pledged to release photographs of abuse of prisoners by the military and to end the mililtary commissions that George W Bush established to try the inmates of Guantanamo Bay.
In recent days President Obama has reversed both of those positions.
He has decided that the release of abuse photographs will only risk inflaming opinion towards America and towards US forces in particular. He has also reluctantly decided that military commissions - with reform - are the only effective way of trying prisoners who were captured in theatres of war.
Rich Lowry of National Review welcomes the White House's double shift:
"To the extent Guantanamo Bay has stoked terrorist recruitment, it probably has more to do with the photos of the facility from its earliest days — with captives bound, in orange jumpsuits — than anything that happened there. The most infamous photo from Abu Ghraib — of a man with a black hood over his head, his arms outstretched — has negatively branded the War on Terror for millions, no matter how sincerely we hope to protect Muslims from the depredations of the vile murderers in their midst. Obama isn’t going to subject us to another self-inflicted disaster in the information war. At least not yet. If he wants to keep the photos permanently under wraps — and show he’s truly willing to buck the loudest faction in his own coalition — he can’t rely on the courts, where he’s now appealing the decision to release them. He’ll have to issue an executive order exempting the photos from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."
Barack Obama may have overturned President Bush's abortion-restricting policies but Americans as a whole are becoming more "pro-life" according to a new Gallup survey. Asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice 51% say the former, 42% the latter. "This is the first time," reports Gallup, "a majority of U.S. adults have identified
themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995."
76% of Americans still say that abortion should be legal under certain (53%) or all (23%) circumstances but the trend is another example of American exceptionalism.
That's the conclusion of David Brooks as he surveys new polling data on American attitudes to their country.
Key quotes:
"In a recent Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans said that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only 32 percent said big business. Those answers are near historical norms."
"When Gallup asked specifically about the current crisis, 44 percent of Americans said they disapprove of an expanded role for government during the crisis; 39 percent said they approve of an expanded role but want it reduced when the crisis is over; and only 13 percent want to see a permanently expanded role for government."
"When asked by the National Journal group more specifically where good ideas and financial solutions come from, 40 percent said corporate America and 40 percent said government. When asked what could best enhance income security, half of all Americans said it was a matter of individual responsibility, 19 percent said government regulations like increasing the minimum wage were most effective and 15 percent said government programs."
