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Younghusband
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Younghusband

Date

February 27th, 2009

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Will Obama continue covert ops in Iran?

After revealing some cloak and dagger tales of American covert ops in Iran in recent years, New York Times Washington bureau chief David Sanger asks a great question: Will President Obama stop covert ops in Iran? Or will the weight of history push him to continue Bush’s legacy?

Is “legacy” an important factor in the calculus of being the POTUS? People said Bush was particularly conscious of his legacy. Can anyone provide historical examples of presidents choosing legacy over national interest that will let us gauge what President Obama will do?1

By the way, the clip resides on fora.tv, an online community that collects smart and provocative videos from across the interwebs for discussion and debate. It is a kind of an open source TED, or a thinking man’s YouTube. Check it out.

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  1. Of course this supposes that continuing covert ops in Iran is not in the interest of the US, which is definitely debatable, as I hope you will in the comments ↩

Comments to this entry

Munro Ferguson
February 28, 2009
10:39 pm
I think it depends on the aim of the covert ops. If they're designed to and are successful at perpetually setting back Iran's ability to develop a deliverable nuke then I'd say it's a better alternative than an all out preventive strike by Israel. I know there are readers who don't see that as a possibility but given the new gov in Israel I see it as nearly inevitable. Call me a cynic.

If the aim is regime change then I'd say it's a bad idea. One could argue that it was regime change back in the 50's that set Iran on the road to become the theocracy it is today.