Barack Obama’s rhetorical stance of this video is absolutely asinine, and if Hallmark diplomacy is what we have to look forward to for the next four years, then I want Bush back.  If we are going to have a bumbling “donkey’s rear-end” (censored by Olivia) in the whitehouse, then let’s at least have one that will protect American interests.  Maybe we should take Obama’s multicultural approach to solving more of our problems.  We should send white cops to the streets of Compton and have them bust rhymes on the street corners to get gangstas to stop committing gang related crimes.  Or maybe we can have border patrol agents dress up in sombreros and ponchos on the Cinco de Mayo to reach out to the drug lords and cartels who are currently shooting up everything that blinks on the border.

For someone who has spent his life suckling the teat of multiculturist wolves, you would expect Obama to demonstrate blind faith in the multiculturist paradigm.  This video is proof of Obama’s dogmatic belief in multiculturalism.  He is assuming that if he engages Iran by invoking one of their national holidays and letting them now that he has read a culturegram, and if he ends the video with an arabic phrase, then maybe the leaders of Iran will forget 30 years of hostile relations and dismantle their nuclear program.  The problem here is that Obama wholeheartedly believes that he has engaged the Iranians through an Iranian paradigm.  Unfortunately, this multicultural gesture only reiterates the fact that Obama is engaging them through a Western paradigm, multiculturalism.  In a way, Bush’s policies towards Iran were more pure in a multicultural sense than this farce of Obama’s.  Bush didn’t ever have to condescendingly speak to the Iranians in Arabic to communicate with them.  Maybe Bush understood that Iranians don’t really want to talk to us.  By not talking to them, Bush did a better job of engaging them through their own cultural paradigms.

Not surprisingly, the Iranians were offended by the video.  Here is Khameini’s response to the video:

He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed.

Apparently, Iran’s leaders see right through Obama’s rhetorical gesturing.  It would be nice if the American mind could be so penetrating. 

Of course this naval incident in the Strait of Hormuz happened on the same day that Obama sent out his Hallmark video card to the Iranians.  Whether the President likes it or not, as Commander in Chief, the blame for an incident like this ultimately falls on his shoulders.  Incidents like this symbolize his attitude towards the military, and unfortunately an incident like this communicates messages that are far more profound than can ever be expressed in a “Discuss the Relationship” chat video.

If I were president, and my foreign policy strategy for dealing with hostile nations was to send them the equivalent of a Hallmark style Youtube video, I would have sent the video below.  However, instead of saying God Bless America at the end, I would say “Allah Bless America” as a gesture of mulitcultural acquiescence.