GOP congressman Dana Rohrabacher blames Obama for bloodshed in Iran

June 23, 8:39 PMObama Administration ExaminerKaren Harper

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In an interview with MSNBC's Ed Schultz, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher said that had President Obama spoken out earlier in the week against the "mullah's" in Iran, there might not have been bloodshed and murder in the streets of Tehran.
 

Meanwhile, as GOP mouthpieces like Rohrabacher, Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham are taking advantage of a history-making rebellion taking place in Iran to take pot shots at President Obama, real crisis is shaping up in the form of North Korea's latest adventures in nuclear proliferation. 

Yesterday, North Korea boasted that it is a "proud nuclear power" and has intimated it is ready to launch a nuclear missile that could reach Hawaii.  South Korea's YTN news network has detailed reports of a U.S. Navy destroyer (the U.S.S. John Mccain) following a North Korea ship that is thought to be carrying nuclear missiles to Myanmar (Burma), testing the newest U.N. sanctions against North Korea.

Yet McCain, Graham, Rohrabacher and others are too busy opposing their own president to weigh in on the North Korean crisis.

Rohrabacher's claims that President Reagan single-handedly ended the cold war by telling Mr. Gorbachav to "tear down that wall" are absurd.  In truth, as James Mann of the NY Times pointed out in a 2007 op-ed, the 'Berlin Wall' speech served to define Reagan's foreign policy and legacy but little else. 

Remarks such as Rohrabacher's to Ed Schultz merely highlight the growing divide within today's Republican party.  As conservative columnist and former speech writer for President Reagan, Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ last Friday:  

John McCain and others went quite crazy insisting President Obama declare whose side America was on, as if the world doesn't know whose side America is on. "In the cause of freedom, America cannot be neutral," said Rep. Mike Pence. Who says it's neutral?

This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else's delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.

Mr. Obama was restrained, balanced and helpful in the crucial first days, keeping the government out of it but having his State Department ask a primary conduit of information, Twitter, to delay planned maintenance and keep reports from the streets coming.

It became quite obvious last week that the GOP was taking cheap political shots at the President of the United States while the freedom and very lives of Iranian reformists were at stake. 

North Korea has nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction.  But the knowledge that they do doesn't seem to concern Lindsey Graham, John McCain or Dana Rohrabacher.  They and others continue to tirade against the U.S. President for the rebellion taking place in Iran as if they genuinely care about the people of Iran.   It is shameful to see elected politicians taking advantage of the Iranian crisis to oppose their own president. 

It should come as no surprise then to learn that in a Gallup poll released today, the approval rating of the U.S. Congress went from 39% in March to 33% this month.