Showing respect for what we don't know
The foreign policy sins of the United States fall into two categories: commission and omission. Commission includes wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and a one-time Latin American policy tailored to the needs of the United Fruit Co. Sins of omission are less well-known. They include the failure to redeem promises to various subjugated peoples - the Hungarians of 1956, the Shiites of 1991 - that America would come to their aid. In Iran, the Obama administration is intent on not adding to this list.
The current policy, much criticized by prominent Republicans, vindicated Barack Obama's boast in his Cairo speech that he is a "student of history." The student in him knows that the worst thing the United States could do is provide the words to paint the opposition as American stooges - or, even worse, suggest to protesters that some sort of help is on its way.
Some of Obama's critics have faulted him for not doing what Ronald Reagan (belatedly) did following the fraudulent election in the Philippines in 1986. After some dithering, Reagan virtually forced President Ferdinand Marcos into exile. Marcos was, to exhume a dandy Cold War phrase, an "American lackey." The Philippines was a former American colony. We knew the country.
In contrast, not a lot is known about how Iran is governed. If, for instance, the White House asked the State Department to send over someone with on-the-ground experience in contemporary Iran, the car would arrive empty. The last American diplomats left Iran in 1979.
But information is not experience. It cannot substitute for the feel of the country - a sense of what happens next. This sort of knowledge was what the U.S. did not have about Iraq, and we have learned the hard way that satellites are no substitute for human intelligence. The Obama White House respects what it does not know.
For instance, right now a crucial question is: What is the role of the former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani? He presumably is in the opposition to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and, like other supposedly reformers, opposed increasing power and influence of the military. But, as with others, to call this deeply conservative and anti-American figure a reformer gives the word a new meaning.
Little of these nuances made much of an impression on certain Republicans. As in the Cold War, they yearn for liberation rhetoric - strong statements with a Jeffersonian flourish. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are notable proponents of this line of criticism, wondering why Obama did not initially condemn the crackdown in more forceful terms, as did Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany. "The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it," Graham said.
Good point ... usually, but not this time. Neither Germany nor France has America's history in Iran. It was America that staged the 1953 coup that ousted Mohammed Mossadegh and returned the shah to the Peacock Throne. It has not been France or Germany that has been the object of Iranian vituperation since the 1979 revolution and neither country felt obliged to respond in kind: the axis of evil formulation of the Bush years.
Still, if McCain, Graham and others have a valid complaint, it is not with Obama's words but with his music. The President of Cool seems emotionally disconnected from events in Tehran. This is a quality that will cost Obama in coming years. He can acknowledge your pain, but he cannot feel it.
Iran, the first foreign policy "crisis," alerts us to what to expect in the future: a tightly controlled message from the White House (Anyone heard from Hillary Clinton lately?), a deliberate consideration of the options and no shoot-from-the-hip remarks. This is how Obama ran his campaign. This is how he'll run his foreign policy. As McCain should know, it works.
© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group