Conservative Columnist George Will calls right-wing attacks on Obama’s Iran response ‘foolish criticism.’

THINK PROGRESS

Since turmoil broke out in Iran over the country’s disputed elections last week, conservatives have been forcefully criticizing President Obama for not doing enough to intervene on the side of those protesting. Their criticism comes despite numerous expert opinions — even from Iranian human rights activists — that the U.S. should not meddle in the situation. This morning on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued the attacks. “He’s been timid and passive more than i would like,” he said of Obama. Later on the program though, conservative columnist George Will called such criticism “foolish”:

WILL: The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient, rhetorical support for what’s going on over there. It seems to me foolish criticism. The people on the streets know full well what the American attitude toward the regime is. And they don’t need that reinforced.

Watch it:

In her Wall Street Journal column yesterday, Peggy Noonan, another conservative columnist and former speechwriter for President Reagan, denounced the right-wing attacks, particularly those from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous,” she wrote, adding that “the ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as mindless lackeys of the Great Satan Cowboy Uncle Sam, or whatever they call us this week.”