The Obama administration announced Monday that it still hopes Iranian diplomats will accept the invitation to attend US embassy barbecues on the Fourth of July. The Iranian people are being killed, and Barack Obama's response is to invite their killers over for cheeseburgers. This is not realpolitik. This is real pathetic.
As Obama appeases murderers, statesmen are speaking with moral eloquence. Anyone longing to hear what a credible American president would now be saying need only reference Angela Merkel. Or Nicholas Sarkozy. Or Benjamin Netanyahu. Or Stephen Harper. These leaders have concluded that witnesses to depravity possess the obligation to condemn that depravity. From the liberal standpoint, they are hapless captives of the discredited good/evil paradigm. Conversely, Obama repeatedly selects moral relativism over the concept of justice.
A just president would help the Iranian protesters in deed and word. He would provide logistical support in the form of satellite and Internet access so that dissidents could circumvent the Islamic regime's information blockade. He would use diplomacy, not to befriend despots but to rally the world against them. He would impose severe sanctions upon Iran and those who do business with Iran.
Forcefully advocating freedom requires passionately believing in freedom
A just president would say what Ronald Reagan said when the dictatorship of Poland sought to quell a similar popular uprising. Reagan warned that the tyrants would be relentlessly opposed by America . He pledged that they would pay a “horrible price” for repressing their citizens. Bolstered by American rhetorical support, the Polish people prevailed.
But forcefully advocating freedom requires passionately believing in freedom, which explains why Obama temporizes. If those who crave liberty are awaiting support from an American president, the estimated time of arrival is January 20, 2013.
Until then, all freedom-loving people share a heavy burden. The Leader Of The Free World is morally absent without leave. He believes that violent aggressors must be coddled rather than defeated. As his envoy Jimmy Carter romances the genocidal maniacs of Hamas, Obama yearns to do the same with their bloodthirsty Iranian sponsors. The fact that someone so contemptible occupies the White House is like a bad dream, except when you awake he is still groveling before murderers.
As long as Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office, America will be neither the land of the free nor the home of the brave
Obama's media acolytes are attempting to obscure the enormity of his ethical default. The New York Times sanitized a speech by Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, redacting that part of the mullah's rant during which he blamed the Iranian revolt on the imaginary Zionist/British/American conspiracy. And the progressive Internet has been careful to present the conflict as pitting the people who won the election against the malcontents.
It is essential for Obama supporters to distort the facts, lest voters conclude that the obsessive presidential quest to reason with Iran's disordered totalitarians is a fool's mission. Absent subterfuge, the liberal foreign policy agenda dies aborning.
Progressives insist that establishing common cause with Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and North Korea and Venezuela is the way to create brand new friends out of erstwhile enemies. This fable is the refuge of those who lack the courage to confront reality. There is a reason that America has these enemies, and liberal cant notwithstanding that reason is a good one. The Iranian despots and their fellow travelers insist upon submission or death. They hate America because it has traditionally been the most vigilant opponent of their iniquity.
No longer. The Obama administration hopes to celebrate Independence Day with people for whom freedom is profane. It would have sent a powerful symbolic message had the president seen fit to invite Iranian dissidents to the July 4thbarbeques, but the message he did send is equally compelling. As long as Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office, America will be neither the land of the free nor the home of the brave.
David Podvin is a California-based commentator. For the past decade, he has analyzed politics in essays that have appeared internationally. Podvin is actively involved in the field of animal rescue. He can be reached at podvin@dslextreme.com. 
