US Political Idiocy About Iran

Just poking my head out for a quick survey of the Monday morning landscape.

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

A couple of short ‘quote’ for discussion items from an AFP article via RawStory this morning about Iran and US Politicians ‘suggestions’:

The showdown in Tehran was the top topic on weekend television talk shows in the United States, with Republicans criticizing Obama for timidity in the face of the most serious upheaval in Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said officials responsible for US clandestine operations had given assurances this week that they had not interfered in the Iranian elections or the ensuing protests.

“I don’t think our intelligence candidly is that good,” she said in an interview with CNN.

“I think it’s a very difficult country in which to collect intelligence right now. So I think our ability to get in there and change the course of human events is very low, to be very candid with you,” Feinstein said.

Iranian leaders blamed meddling by the United States and Britain for a week of post-election unrest that has put its country’s clerical leadership to an unprecedented test.

Feinsteins thinking is that the measure of having good intelligence capability  is the ability to “get in there and change the course of human events“?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Feinstein and other Democrats, however, said Obama had struck the right balance between affirming the rights of protesters while staying out of an unfolding, unpredictable internal upheaval.

“It is very crucial, as I see it, that we not have our fingerprints on this. That this really be truly inspired by the Iranian people,” Feinstein said.

“We don’t know where this goes. And I sure wouldn’t want to be responsible for thousands of people being killed, which is a distinct possibility,” she said.

Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, said Obama “does not have the luxury of just thinking about the next couple of days. He’s got to be able to think about the short-term, the long-term, tactical moves as well as long-term strategy.

“I think he’s gotten it right,” Casey said.

He added, however, that the US Congress should give Obama authority to impose sanctions on Iran if necessary.

Casey doesn’t “want to be responsible for thousands of people being killed” in Iran, so his answer is to impose sanctions on Iran. Sanctions on any country have never affected the ‘leadership’ of any country (see Iraq) on which  they have been imposed, but instead directly affect and hurt the people of the countries on which they’ve been imposed, and in many if not most cases result in the “thousands of people being killed” that he says he doesn’t want to be responsible for.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Obama, meanwhile, has not given up on his goal to engage Iran in a dialogue on its nuclear program and other issues.

But Senator Richard Lugar, an influential Republican voice on foreign affairs, said holding talks with the regime now was “totally improbable.”

“And the reason is that this regime now is under fire. This is not a stable regime in which people suddenly sit down with the United States. They may not be able to impose their will. This is all about (what’s happening) in the streets,” he said on CNN.

Lugar’s idea of good leadership from politicians is the ability to “impose will” on their people?

What’s wrong with this picture?