And the president thinks he should personally negotiate with this regime with no preconditions?

I wonder if the president thinks that Ronald Reagan shouldn’t have “meddled” in the Soviet Union?

A musical photomontage, from Iran.

A debate.

I would say he has. Of course, some of his supporters would see nothing wrong with that.

…from an Iranian protester:

5:30 pm, the battle zone

“Ely………….., Hooman,….. bodoeen, Omid…” screamed Jaleh. The police and plain clothed militia had cornered Omid and were beating him. We ran towards him and attacked the dogs. Hooman charged towards the guards in the street, opened his arms wide and with his operatic bas voice screamed “Bezan, Bezan,..(hit me, hit me), maadar gh.. bezan (mother xxx hit me). The guard raised the club but his hands were shaking and then brought his club down. I arched over Omid as Jaleh was screaming “bee gheirat” (a man without virtue) and people started chanting “bee gheirat” to the guards and the police. I felt the burning on my back as I tried to shield Omid, he was crying “man faghat mikhaam beram khooneh (I just wanna go home). They were hitting me hard, my hands, and my legs and suddenly there was darkness as I felt a terrible pain on the back of my head and the sounds and vision blurred into oblivion.

All we can do is hope for the best.

Over at Gateway Pundit. Just keep scrolling.

Some interesting statements from Mousavi’s “external spokesman.” Jonah Goldberg has some thoughts:

It seems to me that this is at minimum a hint that Mousavi would be willing to put the nuke program on the table for negotiation — the complete opposite position of Ahmadinejad. Moreover, it hints or at least suggests that the way Iran meddles in other countries — i.e. financing terrorism, sponsoring terrorist groups etc — would not be locked in stone either. Now, of course, this could all be a ruse. Mousavi is no angel. But, again, these are not things the opposition would want to say if they wanted America to stay out of it. And yes, even if the opposition wants support, that doesn’t mean they’ve made the right calculation. The law of unintended consequences is universal as is the rule of thumb, “Be careful what you wish for.” But Obama supporters and others who think America should do nothing to help the opposition need to at least wonder whether they have a better grasp of the situation than the opposition itself does.

I’m sure they think they do, based on foolish statements by some of their supporters here.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from Pejman Yousefzdadeh:

Totten believes that it is possible that Mousavi has grown into less of a Khomeini-ist than he was in the past. One certainly hopes so, and I would pick him over Ahmadinejad as the lesser of two evils any day. But that is because Ahmadinejad is truly vile, while Mousavi’s past-at-least-semi-vileness may have been put in abeyance by events. Mousavi’s problem is that he remains wedded to a brutal and vicious regime. The protests he leads only have value and relevance insofar as they demonstrate that at long last, the regime must be swept aside. It’s nice if Mousavi wants to act as one of many vehicles and vessels for the revolutionary change that is so needed in Iran, and Obama was dead wrong to suggest that there is no real difference between him and Ahmadinejad. At the same time, however, it is equally ridiculous to think that Mousavi is the transformational figure that Kleiman thinks Obama is. Indeed, if Mousavi is Iran’s version of HopeAndChange, then the country of my ancestors is in more trouble than I thought.

Yes, let’s hope for their sake that they’ll be luckier than we have been in new leadership.

[Update a few minutes later]

Cracks showing in the regime? Let’s hope so.

I think that the next couple days will tell the tale, whether the Iranian people free themselves of these theocratic monsters, or their power is further entrenched.

…and victimology:

One aspect of the speech that hasn’t received sufficient attention is the focus on victimology: Israelis were victims of the Holocaust, Palestinians victims of dislocation after the founding of Israel, Americans the victim of the 9/11 terrorists, Arabs the victims of Western imperialism, and so forth.

That this appeals to Obama is not surprising. He and I attended law school at the same time, Obama at Harvard and me at Yale. Victimology was all the rage. It gave one not only moral standing, but, oddly enough (like Sotomayor’s “wise Latina”) a certain level of intellectual standing.

During our first year in law school, there was a one-day nationwide “student strike for diversity” at elite law schools, including Harvard and Yale. (I don’t know for sure whether Obama was involved in this “strike,” but he gave a speech on behalf of uber-diversity advocate, and Harvard lawprof, Derrick Bell.) At Yale, students gave speeches throughout the day. What struck me at the time was how eager, almost desperate, the various student speech-givers were to be perceived as victims.

As he notes, Obama ignores, or seems unaware of or indifferent to, the real reasons that we support Israel, relative to its despotic neighbors. But I guess western liberal democracies just aren’t worth defending any more. After all, it’s all culturally relative.

Oh, and speaking of Marty Peretz (about whom we’d still like to know who he voted for), he’s wondering if Dennis Ross was removed from his planned position of envoy to Iran because he’s too hawkish, or too Jewish.

…and voted “present.“

Maybe TOTUS is on summer vacation.

[Update late afternoon]

Speak for America, Mr. President:

Some argue that the brave Iranians demonstrating for freedom and democracy would be better off if the American president somehow stayed out of the fight. Really? But Barack Obama is president. His statement wouldn’t be crafted by those dreaded neocons who vulgarly thought all people would like a chance to govern themselves and deserved some modicum of U.S. support in that endeavor. It would be written by subtle liberal internationalists, who would get the pitch and tone just right. And the statement wouldn’t be delivered by the notorious George Bush (who did, however, weigh in usefully in somewhat similar situations in Ukraine and Lebanon). It would be delivered by the popular and credible speaker-to-the-Muslim-world, Barack Obama. Does anyone really think that a strong Obama statement of solidarity with the Iranian people, and a strong rebuke to those who steal elections and shoot demonstrators, wouldn’t help the dissidents in Iran?

I don’t believe it. I don’t believe Barack Obama believes it. As he put it in The Audacity of Hope: “We can inspire and invite other people to assert their freedoms;…we can speak out on behalf of local leaders whose rights are violated; and we can apply economic and diplomatic pressure to those who repeatedly violate the rights of their own people.”

Maybe someone else wrote that book. He continues to vote “present.”

[Late afternoon update]

The State Department refuses to condemn the crackdown:

Lefties keep assuring me on Twitter that western meddling will only make it easier for the regime to demonize the protesters, but (a) the demonization’s going to happen anyway, (b) no one’s asking Obama to send in the Marines, just to speak up, and (c) Angela Merkel managed to issue a statement earlier today calling the Basij thuggery “completely unacceptable” without killing the uprising in its crib. And still, from the White House, nothing. To think, some commentators are accusing The One of “cowardly silence.”

You’ll also be pleased to know that, according to no less than the New York Times, Obama didn’t bother holding any meetings or conference calls about this yesterday. Remember: Health care is a “crisis.” This is but a “situation.”

Well, to be fair, perhaps they want to avoid charges of hypocrisy when they may have to do the same thing here next November.