MALCOLM X, NOT MLK:

Obama's low-key strategy for the Middle East (David Ignatius, March 6, 2011, Washington Post)

Though the White House's response to these whirlwind events has sometimes seemed erratic, the policy, which has been evolving for many months, goes to the core of Obama's worldview. This is the president as global community organizer - a man who believes that change is inevitable and desirable, and that the United States must align itself with the new forces shaping the world.

An Israeli official visiting Washington last week sounded a note of caution: "We are too close to the eye of the storm to judge," he said. "We need to be more modest in our assessments and put more question marks at the end."

But the Obama White House doesn't feel it has the luxury of deferring judgment; history is moving too fast. Says one official, "It's a roll of the dice, but it's also a response to reality." If Obama has seemed low-key, he explains, it has been a calculated "strategic reticence" to send the message: This is your revolution; it's not about us.

Hopefully they really have thought it out this fully, because there is a great advantage to a people taking their rights rather than asking for them.

Of course, this is the strategic calculation that George H. W. Bush made at the end of the Cold War, and it worked reasonably well in Eastern Europe. But the recalcitrance proved disastrous in China, where we wasted the opportunity that Tiananmen afforded, and in Iraq, where his son had to go in and finish the job of removing the regime.

Little about the UR would lead one to believe that he'll handle a Syria any better, if the movement spreads there.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2011 9:56 PM