Right-Wing Media Strain To Compare Obama To Carter's Handling Of Iranian Revolution

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/research/201102030022

Right-Wing Media Attack Obama With "Dangerously Misleading" Egypt-Iran Comparison

February 03, 2011 2:06 pm ET — 11 Comments

Right-wing media have seized on the conflict in Egypt to attack President Obama by comparing him to former President Carter and the Iranian uprising in the late '70s. However, experts have noted that comparing the uprising in Egypt to the 1979 Iranian revolution is "dangerously misleading."

Right-Wing Media Strain To Compare Obama To Carter's Handling Of Iranian Revolution

Morris: Obama Is "Guilty Of The Same Mistake That Led President Carter To Fail To Support The Shah." In a January 29 post on his website, Fox News contributor Dick Morris wrote, "The Obama Administration, in failing to throw its weight against an Islamic takeover, is guilty of the same mistake that led President Carter to fail to support the Shah, opening the door for the Ayatollah Khomeini to take over Iran." Morris concluded, "We must not let the two most populous and powerful nations in the region fall under the sway of Muslim extremism, the one through the weakness of Jimmy Carter and the other through the weakness of Barack Obama."

NRO: "Apparently, Obama & Co. Have No Historical Understanding Of The Iranian Debacle." In a February 2 blog post on National Review Online (NRO), contributor Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

There are all sorts of unattributed quotes being reported in the press from "Obama administration officials" and "White House staff members" to the effect that we can work with the Muslim Brotherhood since it has "renounced violence."

[CBGLuthier]

1. Are Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney working behind the scenes

to sabotage a good outcome. That would make them truly Reaganesque, just like that traitorous bastard they all worship.

BTW, happy centennial you miserable dead traitorous old fuck ronald reagan.

[madrchsod]

2. carter could`t do anything to stop the fall of the shah

reagan could`t do anything in lebanon because bush and boys undermined his negotiations. obama can`t do anything either because it is up to the will of the egyptian people.

these guys are so wrong they make themselves look silly.

[gratuitous]

3. First, they're not very smart

Second, everything has to have some precedent, no matter how strained (remember last month how much like Martin Luther King so many Republicans were, or how Dr. King would doubtlessly endorse repressive Republican policies?). Third, while they accused liberals and progressives of "wanting the Bush administration to fail" when we were simply observing the catastrophe as it played out, they are openly and actively rooting for more bloodshed and chaos, and are not above doing what they can to bring it about. Fourth, they can speculate wildly and without consequence. Nobody will remember their yammering two news cycles after it happens, and when they turn out to be wrong, they'll still have their jobs, still get invited on the teevee, and still go to all the swell parties. Being right isn't a condition of their employment; being right wing is.

[blondeatlast]

8. Exactly. I didn't see the "liberal media" bending over backwards to

link GWB's handling of Katrina to anything.

[tanyev]

4. And if they would just take some American hostages, the 2012 GOP nominee

could make a disgusting back-room deal with the captors. Right-wingers are keeping their fingers crossed!

[WinkyDink]

5. Oh, this will increase MIGHTILY with Reagan's "100th" Sunday.

[RedCloud]

6. Fox wants it both ways. Spread hate. Then plead for sympathy.

Notice the side they hate is not the one beating them. Once again Fox is wrong with the news.

[bemildred]

7. Yeah, everything is always the same as something that happened before.

If they like it, it's like something Reagan did, if they don't like it, it's like something Carter or Bubba did. Lots of heat, no illumination.

[blondeatlast]

9. It's so predictable that as soon as the issue comes up, we can practically write the FOX news

stories and memes ourselves. :banghead:

[spanone]

10. they strain daily

[justiceischeap]

11. I called this days ago

The RW period is hoping this is something they can use against Obama, like they used Iran against Carter.

[JohnyCanuck]

12. And speaking of the Shah...

How many Americans are aware that he was a dictator installed in a CIA/MI6 sponsored coup against a secular, democratically elected prime mininster, and that the Shah had a feared secret police, The Savak, trained by CIA and Israeli experts to use torture tactics against the opposition to maintain the Shah's grip on power?

A 'great venture':
overthrowing the government of Iran
by Mark Curtis From Lobster 30

This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis's book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995).
* * *

In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran's nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture in a dictatorship that lasted until the 1979 Islamic revolution. The 1953 coup is conventionally regarded primarily as a CIA operation, yet the planning record reveals not only that Britain was the prime mover in the initial project to overthrow the government but also that British resources contributed significantly to the eventual success of the operation. Two first-hand accounts of the Anglo-American sponsorship of the coup - by the MI6 and CIA officers primarily responsible for it - are useful in reconstructing events. (1) Many of the secret planning documents that reveal the British role have been removed from public access and some of them remain closed until the next century - for reasons of 'national security'. Nevertheless, a fairly clear picture still emerges. Churchill later told the CIA officer responsible for the operation that he 'would have loved nothing better than to have served under your command in this great venture'. (2)

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l30iran.htm

Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington
by Jeff Cohen

snip

For decades beginning during the Cold War, U.S. policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left.

snip

In Afghanistan, beginning before the Soviet invasion and evolving into the biggest CIA covert operation of the 1980s, the U.S. armed and trained native mujahedeen fighters -- some of whom went on to form the Taliban. To aid the mujahedeen, the U.S. recruited and brought to Afghanistan religious fanatics from the Arab world -- some of whom went on to form Al Qaeda. (Like these Washington geniuses, Israeli intelligence -- in a divide-and-conquer scheme aimed at combating secular leftist Palestinians -- covertly funded Islamist militants in the occupied territories who we now know as Hamas.)

Most of this is not obscure history.

Except in U.S. mainstream media.

One of the mantras on U.S. television news all day Friday was: Be fearful of the democratic uprisings against U.S. allies in Egypt (and Tunisia and elsewhere). After all, we were told by Fox News and CNN and Chris Matthews on MSNBC, it could end up as bad as when "our ally" in Iran was overthrown and the extremists came to power in 1979.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-cohen/fear-extreme-islamists-in_b_815783.html

[Enthusiast]

13. If this doesn't perfectly

illustrate the hypocrisy of the right, I don't know what does.

Are they kidding? Reagan sold arms to the Iranians behind the scene while in public he used tough words against them. I guess this is why the Republicans worship Reagan because he was the MOST hypocritical of all presidents. Apparently they love and respect hypocrisy.

[Poll_Blind]

14. This meme has been coming out of Israel since the crisis began.

PB