President Obama On Iran

While I know that folks like Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol would love to use the crisis in Iran as an excuse to drop some more bombs and spread "peace," it seems that President Obama has taken the right approach and is again, with his words today, right on point in terms of the escalating violence and appalling behavior of the 'government' of Iran:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples' belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

One of the saddest things I can remember is that when George W. Bush ran against Gore, his supporters - thinking of the scandals of the Clinton administration - said things to the effect of, "Now we'll have grownups back in the White House." That didn't turn out so well. If you want to know what a leader says and sounds like, read the above quote again.

I am fearful that things are really not going in the right direction in Iran, but cool heads in some way must prevail.

As the President says (emphasized above by myself), 'suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away.'

That's something we can all do well to remember.