Up until now I’ve remained largely silent on the recent goings on in Iran, partly because I, sitting in my living room watching the news on CNN and Fox, am hardly any sort of expert on that nation. (Unlike so many other self-styled pundits across the sphere, sitting in their living rooms watching this on CNN and Fox, who apparently are experts on Iran.) Iran is one of those places where we have pitifully small intelligence resources and it’s sometimes hard to know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. But some of the rhetoric making the rounds right now is flying well past the point of being disturbing. Some of the real damage, of course, is coming from elected officials such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain when they call the President’s response tepid, timid or passive. (This week provides me with another moment of relief to thank all the Powers That Be that Senator McCain is not occupying the Oval Office right now. We could be opening up our third or even fourth front in hot wars rather than just having two with one of them winding down.)

The bloggers are out in full force as well. You can see a wide spectrum of them chiming in at Memeorandum, and it will be informative. Of course, one that really caught my attention was our friend Ed Morrissey, who referred to the Obama administration as stupid for the response we’ve seen thus far. Today I would like to put forward a few questions and comments on this unfolding situation for the bomb bomb Iran crowd.

1. Who won the election? No… not our election. The one in Iran on June 12. Tens of millions of ballots were cast on paper. Even if there was some sort of honest effort going on to count them all accurately, I highly doubt they would be done by now. According to many reports, Mousavi certainly had some strong support, particularly among younger voters and in the urban centers. But at the same time, as much as many Americans might not wish to think it, the incumbent president had more than his fair share of support also. This was particularly strong among the older, more conservative voters and those in the rural areas. It seems that many of these people were raised their entire lives on a diet of state run media feeding them the “America as Satan” pabulum and some of them feel great pride in their nation and their fight against the “evil west.” Do any of you know what the exact, correct vote count is? And if the answer to that question is “no,” then let me ask you this.. what if Ahmadinejad actually got more votes? Then are we not in the position of supporting a potential bloody coup against the legitimate winner of a popular vote? As usual, we Americans love it when other countries have elections instead of dictatorships… until they elect somebody we don’t like. I don’t want to mention the names of any people or organizations here, but one that begins with “HAM” and ends with “AS” comes to mind.

2. Who are we supporting, anyway? I may not know much about Mousavi, but it’s my understanding that he was one of a handful of “allowed” candidates who were hand picked by the Supreme Leader. He has also made repeated statements that Iran is absolutely entitled to their nuclear program. I’m sorry, but I get the feeling that he wasn’t exactly the Iranian Barack Obama, running on a platform of throwing down the minarets and inviting the Southern Baptist Church in to redecorate the country. True, we’re now seeing statements where Mousavi seems to be remaking himself into a popular leader of the revolution. He said something about the events leading him, rather than him leading the revolt. But how sincere would he be in the long run? Does America really want to be in the business of taking sides and backing this guy as a new leader? Didn’t we do that that last time Iran had a revolution? And haven’t we done that with with a bunch of other dodgey leaders around the world over the years? Some guy next door to there comes to mind. What was his name again? Saddam something or other? How did all that work out for us?

3. Who will we have to deal with in the future? Ed Morrissey went to great lengths to ridicule the idea that President Obama wanted to “preserve the possibility” of having direct talks with the current leaders of Iran. Guess what? Bloody revolts don’t always succeed. Great, bold moments don’t always lead to the outcome some might prefer. How much has really changed in China since Tienanmen’s Square? As happy as some of us might be to see the current Iranian government thrown down, there is a very real possibility that they will quell the current uprisings by hook or by crook, and then where will we be? We’ll still be across the table from the same group of maniacs, only now we’ll be there with them knowing we were backing an attempt to get their heads chopped off. Who’s taking the more reasonable course here?

4. Let’s all have a revolution! Is that what we’re cheering for? Would you prefer change in Iran which takes place at the ballot box, even if that takes a lot longer, or for the mobs in the streets to roll out the tumbrils and bring Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs to the steel lady? Revolutions are bloody affairs with uncertain outcomes. And if you think a lot of people have died there now, wait till you see the death toll of a full blown civil war, with faction upon faction, army attacking civilians, brother against brother. The country will be thrown entirely into chaos. But of course I would never be so cynical as to suspect that some of our more hawkish voices here in America would actually want to see Iran thrown into chaos.

I see the response from the Obama administration thus far as being measured, careful and intelligent. Pushing for our President to recklessly throw in with a possible revolt, to make us part of the story rather than oberservers of history in a country which we do not control, and the rest of the hard boiled hyperbole I’m seeing is reckless and dangerous in my opinion. If I have to choose between the responses to the situation in Iran from Obama or the Graham / McCain crowd, I believe I’ll stick with the President, thank you.

UPDATE: In response to a new question from Ed, yes. E.J. Dionne is equally off base if he thinks that it will be impossible to resume diplomacy “any time soon as if nothing had happened.” Diplomacy has been lacking for so long with Iran that it was never going to turn magically productive overnight, no matter who is in charge. But that doesn’t mean you throw in the towel. That’s how we got into several messes around the world today.

UPDATE 2: As I so often do, I’ll direct those interested to a bit more sane response to the situation from Bob Barr in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution. A brief taste for you:

Loud calls for extreme action may please constituents back home, and make for popular sound bites on the Sunday talk shows. However, Obama apparently understands that behind-the-scenes actions (likely being conducted by certain agencies of the U.S. government), coupled with more measured public criticism, may reduce the chances that the Teheran regime will decide to crack down massively on the protestors, as did China 20 years ago, and snuff out a promising move toward reform.