"Their voices should be heard and respected"

The President has, after a long delay, commented on the Iranian election:

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing
on television. I think that the democratic process -- free speech, the
ability of people to peacefully dissent -- all those are universal values and
need to be respected.

-- White House

But, ". . . I can't state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election." And, ". . . the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy -- diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries -- is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests. . . "

It sounds as if the President has decided not only to look the other way, but to signal that he shall do so, and without much effect on future "diplomacy".

This is entirely unnecessary. Even conceding we don't actually _know_ that Ahmadinejad stole the election, there is still a long bill of particulars to be brought against the Iranian regime, a list of political suppressions so long as to have long ago deprived them of any presumption of legitimate popular support. Pointing out their tyrannies would go a long way to depriving them of the legitimacy they hoped to obtain from these "elections". Instead we are promising them a return to stability, and silence on their claims for legitimacy, at the very moment when they are unbalanced and unsure.

I am well aware that criticizing the regime voluteers us for the role of foil for a regimen eager to change the subject. But these are exactly the moments where Obama's "gift" for communication should shine: surely there are ways to communicate that we regard this announcement as a sham, and to signal our support for the dissidents, without claiming to tell the Iranians what to do.

I fear this could be a very dangerous precedent. Mugabe has already stolen an election last year, and the President just gave Zimbabwe aid (through the offices of Tsvangiri, but still destined for Zimbabwe). There will be people who want to steal the coming election in Iraq, who must first wonder if doing so would cost them the support of the US. The answer seems to be that if you can stabilize your domestic position, yes, we will take a "hardheaded" look at your rise to power.

Lookee Here

Hmm.

President Barack Obama says he has lost confidence in the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs and has told Congress he is removing him from the position.

Obama’s move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin of Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star, into the misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group that Johnson headed. . . . The IG found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used
AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car.

AP, via Instapundit, via Gateway Pundit.

That doesn't sound good. IG Walpin referred the matter to the local U.S. attorney, who negotiated a settlement that retrieved over $424K from the recipient group but declined to prosecute. That, too, seems a little off -- Attorney Brown said the referral had open questions and had no audit stating the amount of misspent funds. But Attorney Brown also said the recipient group had a culture of "sloppiness", which would sort of complicate an audit, no?

Then again, IG Walpin's "office made repeated public comments just before the Sacramento mayoral election, prompting the U.S. attorney's office to inform the media that it did not intend to file any criminal charges." So maybe the IG had an ax to grind? Which would seem odd, the story details him a New York guy, so what scores would he have to settle in Sacramento?

IG Walpin was appointed in January 2007. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there is a lot of real sloppiness, and maybe some, er, "sloppiness", in the deployment of public service grants. Programs of this sort often have vague objectives and metrics, leaving lots of discretion to local officials. I doubt they've got kids handing out campaign literature, but they can hire administrators, influence the sort of kids hired, and decide whose neighborhood gets beautified. That sort of soft patronage that helps build a coalition. It's an inevitable part of any government program, and I suspect part of the real political motivations of these things, which doesn't necessarily mean they don't still try to serve their stated purposes, and doesn't mean necessarily mean that local officials are abusing the program. But it's easier for them to focus on their particular agendas if "sloppiness" confuses oversight of their compliance with the regulations directing activity to the stated purposes. An IG who insisted on commonplace compliance could interfere with the political purposes of these programs.

That's all speculative. The case ought to be researched. Apparently the White House has to advise Congress of the reasons for dismissing an IG, clearly that ought to happen. Someone ought to look at all the internal email and documentation on the Sacramento case. Also up for review: the cases IG Walpin had in the hopper, complaints about him from other Congresspeople, his record relative to predecessors, a second look at the U.S. attorney's decision not to prosecute. GAO is the logical investigator, but they aren't exactly hard-hitting, and they can take forever. So while they're working, all the documents ought to be available via FOIA, muck to be raked by the enterprising.

IG's who bust the President's buddies build credibility for the purposes of this massive spending increase. Firing them, not so much. We won't get, or believe, a straight answer from the Administration, so let's open the books and see what others may find in them.

Cairo

I hope President Obama's overtures lead to greater peace and stability. Because if they don't, he is laying out a basis for considerable future trouble. For a guy who talks so much about listening and dialogue, he seems to overlook a great deal of the nuance and complexity of his predecessor's policy -- and that neglect founds most of his unusually strong critique of that policy. Obama positions his policy as a dramatic break from Bush, but there really isn't much that is new, and much of the "innovation" are things Bush was doing that Obama won't acknowledge. Bush was differentiating Islam from terrorism three days after the World Trade Center was bombed. If Obama ever does anything controversial, he may want a better hearing for the complexities of his policies than he has afforded Bush.

I don't see how it is helpful to frame the Iranian nuclear problem as simply a formal deviation from treaty commitments; these wouldn't matter so much if Iran weren't a terror sponsor with a sizeable faction founded on the destruction of Israel. Is it really good idea to focus our complaint on Iranian compliance with a treaty that Israel hasn't signed? Doesn't that lead to an equivalence between Iranian nukes and Israeli, especially when the President is setting out the reduction of all nukes as a policy goal?

Nor do I understand how it helps to tacitly accept the criticisms of American policy. The CIA intervened in Iran fifty years ago; maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, maybe we needed to do it, but it was a long time ago.

I don't like the President very much. I think he vastly overestimates his own understanding, and attributes the apparent contradictions of others to their errors rather than his own incomplete knowledge of their views or the problem. He is far too quick to make declarative statements with little basis, and this leads him to some very questionable rhetoric. Barack Obama has very little basis to tell Muslims what their own faith commands of them. And while he might speak more with more authority on Christian values, he softens their clear statements with universal implications to uncontroversial and meaningless formulations like "progress". Obama is constantly telling people universal truths that are obvious to anyone who will drop their ill-conceived ideas in disagreement with him, but offers surprisingly thin arguments for those truths.

So perhaps I look too hard for the negatives and weaknesses in his rhetoric and policy. Perhaps he will convince our opponents that we are genuinely not in opposition to them, and sway the larger mass of Muslims to greater sympathy and cooperation with us. Perhaps these gestures of trust and openness will inspire reciprocal movement. I would happily rethink the lessons I've drawn from history to understand how we've arrived at a new vision of peace and harmony. I'm already obscure, I have no reputation to lose, and in any should rather lose a reputation to error than live in a world of warfare because I was right.

But if this outreach falls short, I'm afraid we may find that the President has strengthened the rhetoric of our enemies, confused our ability to argue against them, and undermined our credibility.