Krauthammer's Take -- By: NRO Staff
By webmaster@nationalreview.com (NRO Staff)
From Fox News last night:
On Janet Napolitano's performance as secretary of homeland security:
It's unfortunate, but whatever happens in her career, this will be how we remember her, the person who said two days after an attack that almost killed 300 Americans that the system had worked. She was a decent governor. She shouldn't be in this position. She has no experience, and her reaction was entirely inappropriate.
But the president also -- it's his reaction. The reason he showed up again today [is] because yesterday he just looked cool and detached and unconcerned. He shows up without a tie, and then he says in his statement "We will not rest until we find those involved" -- and then he hops into a golf cart and continues his game.
You know, this is serious stuff. You have to demonstrate seriousness.
And the fact that he continually avoids speaking of the nature of the enemy, which is jihadism, is a sign of him not willing to acknowledge what every American understands is reality.
On whether the demonstrators in Iran present an existential threat to the government:
They do. I'm with you in thinking that it is more likely that the regime will prevail, but I think it's not at all impossible that the regime will fall.
And it happens in a moment. It happens always unexpectedly when the troops out there in the streets refuse orders and don't shoot. And when that happens, that regime is dead.
And remember how entrenched we had assumed the Shah was? And that happened to him. The troops in the streets wouldn't shoot. Exactly [the same with Marcos in the Philippines].
And that's why it is a possible historical inflection, and we ought to be pushing as hard as we can to increase the odds of it [regime change] actually happening. ...
The administration has said we don't want to say anything inflammatory. Remember in June, Obama had defended himself in saying if we support the demonstrators, they will pin this all on us and associate the demonstrators with the West.
Well, of course, we were silent in June and the Iranian authorities implicated us in those uprisings as well. So it's going to happen anyway. In other words, why not actively support [the demonstrators] if we're going to be blamed one way or the other? |
