TalkingPointsMemo.com’s Sunday roundup is a great one this week, but I wanted to flag out one specific side of the issue of the president’s response to Iran: ownership.
Beyond the politics of the last thirty years of Iranian/American relations, American involvement in foreign affairs tends to suck all the oxygen out of the room for all other parties. Once it becomes a reality that the United States has decided to get involved in an issue, even the least interested parties tends to suddenly shift their focus to us rather than to the issue at hand.
So, once we own the Iranian revolution, what do we do next? Especially since even the most reform-minded Iranians is completely disinterested in our involvement? Do we send troops? Do we impose sanctions that will inevitably hurt the people we supposedly support more than the leadership? Do we fire a bunch of missiles and act like nothing happened? Or how about another toothless UN resolution?
Apart from using this issue to call the Democratic president a coward to score parochial points, I’m not seeing much in the way of ideas on this issue from the Right.
