So the latest trend in right-wing outrage is to blast Obama for not doing enough to support the Iranian protesters. This ranges from Ron Hart (in his upcoming Saturday column) saying he should give them “a shout out of support” to the Conunderground blog asserting that “Obama and his staff should be dragged to the Hague for crimes against humanity … Failure to act in support of liberty and freedom, the basic condition of human existence, is a crime against humanity.”

While Hart’s position (ditto other conservatives who’ve said the same thing) is a reasonable one, I don’t agree with it. I think antiwar.com is probably correct that it will do more harm than good. For one thing, the American government is hardly a friend to Iran: We overthrew their previous democratic government in 1953 to impose the Shah, backed his Saavik secret police, signed off on Saddam’s use of poison gas on Iranians in the Iran-Iraq War and have within the past few years labeled them part of an “Axis of Evil” and made noises about regime change.

Under the circumstances, I think antiwar’s Daniel Luban makes the right comparison: “Consider the following thought experiment. In 1963, as King delivers his famous speech to the March on Washington, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev delivers a public message of his own to the protesters. ‘We would like to tell these brave voices of freedom,’ Khrushchev says, ‘that they have the full support and solidarity of the USSR. The Soviet Union and the United States Communist Party are ready and willing to perform any measures within our power to help our American brothers and sisters obtain their rights from this oppressive regime. And although Dr. King pretends that he holds no hostility toward the American capitalist system of government itself, and wishes only to secure the ideals of the American founding for all of its citizens, we all know that he and his supporters really yearn for complete regime change in Washington. We in Moscow will do whatever it takes to help you achieve this goal.’

Let us ignore the question of Khrushchev’s intentions here: whether he is motivated by genuine sympathy and desire to aid the civil rights marchers, or a more cynical hope of destabilizing a rival government, or a narcissistic and self-righteous wish to take credit for the marchers’ achievement in order to feel better about himself and appease his domestic critics. (And before anyone gets up in arms about “moral equivalence,” let me note than I am not equating Obama’s America and Khrushchev’s Russia, merely noting that Obama and Khrushchev occupy structurally similar positions as leaders of distrusted rival powers.)

Let us focus only on a simple tactical question: would Khrushchev’s statement aid the civil rights movement? Would it be welcomed by King and his associates? Why or why not?”

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