Charles Krauthammer takes the president to task for not criticizing the foreign countries we're trying to engage harshly enough:A CIA rent-a-mob in a coup 56 years ago does not balance the hostage-takings, throat-slittings, terror bombings and wanton slaughters perpetrated for 30 years by a thug regime in Tehran (and its surrogates) that our own State Department calls the world's "most active state sponsor of terrorism."Here's the thing, though. An observant reader might ask how that "thug regime" come to power -- might it have had anything to do with the CIA helping overthrow a democratically-elected Prime Minister in favor of a U.S.-supported autocrat whose capricious rule and brutal secret police drove even Iranian liberals into a revolutionary alliance with Islamist Theocrats? It sure might have. I'm certainly not saying the United States is to blame for the actions of the Iranian regime. But it's hard to imagine Khomeini and company coming to power on a wave of anti-Western sentiment if Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh wasn't deposed for, essentially, nationalizing the oil industry. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. Ironically, Krauthammer's broader point was that Obama distorts history. In some ways he does; diplomacy is, after all, the game of artful distortion. But Krauthammer's a journalist (snicker) and perhaps he should have the independence to look honestly at the past and say, well, we could learn a thing or two about the unintended consequences of trying to impose our will on foreign countries.
-- Tim Fernholz
