Can't We All Just Get Along?

President Barack Obama has sent a video to the Iranian people, telling them that the United States is interested in pursuing 'constructive ties' between ourselves, Iran, and the international community. He tells them, '...we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

It's not a bad turn of phrase, to be honest. I have to concede that I am not at all upset about this approach, either. Oh, I believe it horribly naive, to be sure. At least Mr. Obama had the foresight to add, "This process will not be advanced by threats. We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect." The President does appear to understand that, ultimately, threats and force must eventually be met with greater threats and overwhelming force if need be.

His approach surely gives him a bit of a moral standing to work from. By offering to talk he cannot so easily be seen as the belligerent on the matter. Still, no reasonable observer of foreign affairs could interpret the United States as the aggressor anyway. Not with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling Israel a 'cancerous tumor' while saying that Obama is merely continuing former president Bush's policies towards his nation (take THAT, liberal media!). It is thus easy to conclude that all Obama is doing is playing to the crowd. Read that: the international community and his own starry eyed backers.

I suppose the real issue here is whether the President actually believes that he can bypass the leadership of that rogue nation and speak directly to the people of Iran to any good effect. It's worth a try, I guess, but totalitarian nations rarely fall from within. Even the relatively peaceful fall of the Soviet Union came only after decades of unrelenting pressure from the outside, and grotesque equality on the in. I can't see Iran as it now stands going away overnight, without a fight.

Does the President have the willingness to address that question? Time, as she always does, will tell. In the meanwhile, Mr. Obama would do well to study how one of his Democratic predecessors handled similarly volatile situations, and hope he does not end up with corollary hostage crises and Sandinistas.