Matt Duss has done an excellent job deconstructing Ferguson’s argument Niall Ferguson’s Phoned-In Obama Bashing
Others have already criticized but I want to specifically address Ferguson’s suggestion that Obama has “just missed — again — …the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy“:Read more here
It seems to have become a bit of conservative campfire folklore that, by failing to say just the right things at just the right times in June 2009, President Obama somehow aborted the second Iranian revolution. Understand, the next person to describe a plausible scenario in which Obama could have actually effected a different outcome than the one that occurred in June 2009 will be the first. Ferguson accuses Obama of doing “nothing” — which is untrue — but what is the “something” that President Obama, or any U.S. president, could have done to prevent “the thugs of the Islamic Republic” from “ruthlessly crushing the demonstrations”? Ferguson doesn’t say. Because, of course, he doesn’t know.
And his "Letter from Herzliya" was published earlier this week in "The Nation" magazine online.
