President Obama told a Pakistani newspaper that he is not sure whether the elections in Iran are fair:
"Obama told Pakistan's English-language "Dawn" newspaper in an interview published on June 21 that the United States has no way of knowing whether the election at the heart of the Iranian crisis--which official figures awarded to incumbent President Mahmud Ahmadinejad by a wide margin over his closest competitor, Mir Hossein Musavi--was fair or not, AP reported."
On its face, this is absurd. The elections were not fair. To start with, the candidates had to be chosen by the Ayatollah in order to run in the first place. No matter the outcome from Iran, be it Ahmadinejad or Mousavi, the United States should not have recognized the election results. But now that citizens in Iran are pushing for a fair electoral process, through mass protest, there should be no question: We must stand in favor of freedom.
On "The Early Show" this morning, Obama said that "what we can do is bear witness and say--to the world that the, you know, incredible demonstrations that we've seen is a testimony to--I think what Dr. King called the--the arc of the moral universe. It's long but it bends towards justice."
Perhaps this is so, but Martin Luther King didn't "bear witness" to the civil rights movement in America--he was a courageous participant. Obama now has a choice: Will he be a courageous participant or a weak witness? Will he declare that the elections in Iran were rigged, or will he continue to say that he does not know?
Barack Obama ran for president in part to try to restore America's moral standing in the world. His inability so far to recognize fair elections from rigged indicates that, if anything, we are losing our moral standing in the world.
