Joe Klein Scores Off McCain, Gets Praise from Progressive Bloggers

by Damozel | And he deserves it.  At Swampland, he elaborates at further length on his remarks last night on Larry King Live.

[W]hen King asked me what John McCain should do right now, I said, "Be quiet."...McCain, who spent the entire 2008 election making misleading statements about the nature of the Iranian government (I wonder if he still thinks Ahmadinejad is more powerful than the Supreme Leader), has been at the forefront of this. It is very unseemly. I have yet to hear what possible good it would do for the President of the United States to encourage the protesters, except to give the Iranian regime a better excuse for killing more of them.

To put it as simply as possible, McCain--and his cohorts--are trying to score political points against the President in the midst of an international crisis. It is the sort of behavior that Republicans routinely call "unpatriotic" when Democrats are doing it. I would never question John McCain's patriotism, no matter how misguided his sense of the country's best interests sometimes seems. His behavior has nothing to do with love of country; it has everything to do with love of self.

He also calls out the Republicans on the fallacy of the yank-loving moderate Iranians, which is a point that needs to be articulated more often.  This business of conflating every revolution is flat-out disrespectful as well as ignorant, and Klein says so.

[T]he crucial fact about the protesters is this: they may hate the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime--who wouldn't?--but that doesn't make them particular fans of the United States. I have yet to meet an Iranian who does not believe that the United States gave poison gas to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, gas which injured thousands upon thousands of Iranian men, who still live, incapacitated, in the shadows of that society. (Indeed, the attention Ahmadinejad has paid to the Iran-Iraq war veterans and their families is a major source of his extensive support among the Iranian working class.)

The protesters admire our freedom, but they are appalled--and insulted--by our neocolonialist condescension over the past 50 years. The reformers, and even some conservatives, consider Ahmadinejad the George W. Bush of Iran--a crude, unsophisticated demagogue, who puts a strong Potemkin face to the world without very much knowledge of what the rest of the world is about. This was an anology that came up in interview after interview, with reformers and conservatives alike.

Certainly, Bush the Younger, McCain and the rest of that crowd have absolutely no idea who the Iranian people are. The are not Hungarians in 1956. They do not believe they live in an Evil Empire. They still support their revolution. They shout "Allahu Akbar" in the streets, which was the rallying cry of 1979. They are proud of their nuclear program, even if many have doubts about the efficacy of weaponizing the enriched uraniam that is being produced.  (Swampland)

Atrios:

[I]t’s because John McCain is a severe narcissist. He certainly doesn’t think he’s putting himself ahead of country, he’s just not really able to distinguish between the two.

Annnnnd....that's got the hallmark on it. 

For further commentary, refer to the following: Political Animal,  No More Mister Nice Blog, Obsidian Wings and Balloon Juice

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