Thursday, Susan Rice, the Obama campaign’s senior foreign policy advisor, appeared on America’s Election HQ on Fox News, ostensibly to clean up Obama’s mess and to spin President Bush’s remarks. Today, the Obama campaign sent out John Brennan to do more backfilling and spinning. to say that these Obama mouthpieces’ story is evolving is a gentle way of putting it. In this post, I pointed out what’s on Obama’s campaign website:

Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

Based on the Obama website, the official Obama position on Iran was President Obama meeting with President Ahmadinejad. He was scolded by Hillary and Sen. Edwards when he initially mouthed that policy in the YouTube debate.

Today’s position, as mouthed by John Brennan, is that an Obama administration would reach out to the Iranian moderates, not Ahmadinejad:

Brennan: Also, I think the concern that Sen. Obama has is that his position is being misrepresented & mischaracterized by the President & Sen. McCain.
MK: Tell us how precisely.
Brennan: We, he’s not in any way advocating appeasement. He has said repeatedly that we need to maintain a very strong foreign policy posture as far as protecting national security interests. But at the same time, he is not going to eliminate the possibility of sitting down with our enemies to make sure we have an understanding of what their issues & their concerns are.
President Reagan sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev in November of 1985, a full two years before the Soviets began to withdraw from Afghanistan.
MK: So let me ask you John, because people sit there & they say that Ahmadinejad is no Gorbachev.
Brennan: Well, that’s right. And Ahmadinejad doesn’t represent the Iranian people. Ahmadinejad, in fact, represents someone who discredits what the Iranian people have to offer & want to do in the world. We shouldn’t hold our future relationship with the Iranian people hostage to the bombastic rhetoric of a man like Ahmadinejad. His power, in fact, is limited as president of Iran by the Iranian Parliament and other organs of the Iranian government have much more power than Ahmadinejad and we shouldn’t be going tit-for-tat with him.
MK: OK John, but then why won’t Obama come out & say that “I won’t talk with Ahmadinejad. He’s a nutcase & the whole country knows it & I’ll talk with someone other than Ahmadinejad & send a message to the Iranians that we care about them, that we want to deal with them? Because Susan Rice was on this program yesterday and would not commit Obama to that position.
Brennan: Well, I’ll leave it to Sen. Obama what his position is on this but what I think we want to do is make sure that we send a signal to the Iranian people that the United States is not interested in confrontation with Iran. We want to see what ways we can move forward with Iran so that legitimate Iranian interests as well as United States interests can be advanced. It’s not a question of a zero-sum game here.What I think the senator wants to do is make sure that the Iranian moderates get the message that the United States is interested in pursuing peaceful relations with Iran.

Sen Obama’s initial position wasn’t about “reaching out to Iranian moderates” and telling them that we really didn’t want to go to war with them.

Either position, though, is pacifism personified. Anotehr term for pacifism is appeasement.

Let’s further debunk the comparison between Obama’s meeting with Ahmadinejad and Reagan meeting with Gorbachev. People criticized Reagan for not having a summit with the USSR during his first term. Reagan didn’t pay attention to those pundits because he believed in his plan. That plan was to let the USSR know that we were serious about countering any move the Soviets were thinking of. That meant installing Pershing II missile across Europe.

by the time Reagan and Gorbachev met, Reagan’s policy had scared Gorbachev into making unprecented concessions. Ultimately, those concessions led to the Soviet Union’s demise.

That doesn’t sound the least bit like what an Obama-Ahmadinejad meeting would sound like.

Watch Dr. Rice’s video here:

Then compare Dr. Rice’s statements with Brennan’s statements in this video:

After you do that, compare that with what Obama has posted on his campaign website:

Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

I’d say that Team Obama is in full spin mode because they botched the policy that badly.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Susan Rice, John Brennan, Ahmadinejad, Iran, Reagan, Gorbachev, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

1. Is this an indication of what his foriegn policy is going to be like?

   Comment by T. A. Gray — May 17, 2008 @ 7:15 am

2. Ok, let’s say that Obama is backtracking on this issue. But even then, it’s nowhere near as much as McCain has flopped from issues involving torture, now called interrogation techniques to the GI Bill to tax cuts. This will be great debate fodder.

   Comment by Liem — May 17, 2008 @ 10:03 am

3. Why?

   Comment by T. A. Gray — May 17, 2008 @ 12:16 pm