President Obama today issued some of his strongest words about the situation unfolding in Iran. Opening his 378th press conference, the president said:

The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost….

[W]e must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society…. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests [sic] of justice….

This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this:  Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect those rights and heed the will of its own people. It must govern through consent and not coercion. That’s what Iran’s own people are calling for, and the Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government.

You have to admit, it’s getting better. But it’s interesting that President Obama continues to eschew words like “freedom” and “liberty.” He gets right up to the edge there, near the end, kind of sketching out what freedom and liberty consist of – right to assembly and free speech, will of the people, government through consent – but he doesn’t go all the way.

Why? Is there a diplomatic reason President Obama doesn’t like to talk about freedom and liberty? The Iranian people clearly are not free. People typically aren’t beaten and killed by their own government in free countries. And it’s within the realm of reason that they want to be free – it seems unlikely tens of thousands of people are protesting to replace one tyranny with another.

While no serious person is suggesting the need for “two-bit tough talk tailored for the evening news,” it would be helpful to hear the president of the United States articulate the importance of freedom, rather than simply doing a read-out – an eyewitness account – of the current violence.

Unlike Vinca, I do think it’s necessary for the president of the United States to reiterate our country’s commitment to freedom for people around the world, especially in the Middle East. For too many years, US leaders saw a gap between our national interest and the promotion of liberty.

George W. Bush insisted that the United States would not passively accept servitude for large swaths of humanity. Such a commitment doesn’t require endless warfare, but it does require that when freedom faces assault – as it does today in the streets of Tehran – the United States articulate the reasons freedom is an essential attribute of human dignity.

While the election of Barack Obama may have been, as Paul suggests, a testament to American values, the witness we bear cannot end there. At some point, this president has to be more than a symbol; he has to be a leader – a leader who unashamedly voices America’s timeless support for freedom.

Vinca points us to a Washington Post article in which an Administration official gets to the heart of the issue, perhaps unwittingly: “We’re trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves.”

The president’s foreign policy rhetoric is most assuredly not meant to make us feel good about ourselves. Rather, it seems designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. The president receives praise from all the usual corners for talking about America’s failings and foibles, while simultaneously making sure everyone knows that he, personally, had nothing to do with them.

Meanwhile, he risks repeating one of the worst foreign policy mistakes in US history – favoring regime stability over liberty.

Perhaps President Obama believes that concepts such as freedom and liberty are too closely aligned with the aggressive foreign policy of his predecessor, and that it would therefore be gauche to mention them. If so, it’s a shame.

The kernel of John Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s and George W. Bush’s strength was not their ability to project power militarily – history will judge each man’s capacity to effectively do that. Their strength was rooted in their unwavering commitment to being champions of liberty.

Whether you call it toughness or simply an understanding of core American principles, the president of the United States must be comfortable making freedom a central part of his foreign policy agenda and rhetoric. No exceptions.