Is Obama Pulling A Carter With Iran?

During his interview with Al-Arabiya, Obama said:

We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.

Now, it's perfectly possible that the same Obama that said there were 57 states in the US was not being precise in his desire to go back to the US of 30 years ago. Marc Steyn noted in an interview with Hugh Hewitt:

Well, thirty years ago, they were taking Americans hostage in Tehran. Thirty years ago, Jimmy Carter was communicating weakness to the world, and the Ayatollah rightly concluded these Americans are pushovers. And Obama shouldn’t be doing that message all over again.

But this goes beyond just the message that Obama sent to the Iranian leadership--which promptly demanded an apology from the US for the past 60 years. Obama's message was heard by others as well, who were being told that they would be ignored:

Well, you don’t have to be gay, an oppressed homosexual about to be executed. You don’t have to be a woman who’s being sold to an arranged child marriage. You just have to be a moderate, centrist Arab intellectual in, say, Cairo or Amman, and you listen to Obama sucking up to these creeps, and there’s nothing for you in it. What he’s doing is he says, he’s saying to hell with the Bush freedom agenda. We just want to get back to schmoozing the feted Arab dictatorships and the mullahs in Tehran all over again. And so if you’re a gay or a woman, you’re out of there. And as I said, if you’re a moderate Arab who just would like to have a free society in Cairo or Amman or wherever, you’re out of it, too. You’re on the Obama horizon. It was a pathetic, disgraceful Jimmy Carter speech.

Fortunately, Obama will not have to apologize--Clinton and Albright have beaten him to it:

The Clinton Administration tried this tactic. President Clinton confessed in "unprompted" remarks that "Iran...has been the subject of quite a lot of abuse from various Western nations. And I think sometimes it's quite important to tell people, look, you have a right to be angry at something my country or my culture or others that are generally allied with us today did to you 50 or 60 or 150 years ago."

Then in 2000, at a state dinner in Washington, Secretary of State Madeline Albright directly apologized for specific past American actions toward Iran, from our role in orchestrating the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, to our backing of the Shah, to our backing of Iraq in its war with Iran. Albright also highlighted President Clinton's personal belief that America "must bear its full share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations."

No need for groveling. 

Time to show some leaderhip.

Technorati Tag: Obama and Iran.