Too clever by half

What is it about a good speech that makes a man willing to die for you?

That's the question I kept coming back to as I re-watched Kenneth Branagh's wonderful production of Shakespeare's Henry V recently. Henry's "band of brothers" speech at Agincourt justly takes pride of place, but nearly as famous -- and nearly as good -- is his rallying cry at the siege of Harfleur:

"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility.
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage...
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on you noblest English,
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought,
And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument.
Dishonor not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture. Let us swear
That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not,
For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble luster in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot!
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"

To watch Branagh's performance is to realize that such speeches are not mere rhetorical frills on Shakespeare's part; they're as essential a military asset as any cannon. The bit to the peasantry about the "noble luster in [their] eyes" is especially interesting. The play is full of instances where Henry invites -- acknowledges? -- such social levelling as a consequence of action in which death plays the ultimate equalizer.

It's hard not to think about the power of this kind of rhetoric in light of the current unrest in Iran -- and, specifically, the debate over what President Obama should be saying about it. I'll concede at the outset that I don't know what, specifically, he should say, but what I simply don't understand is all the hand-wringing going on about how any statement in support of the protesters would simply "play into the regime's hands."

I'll leave it to others to size up precisely what's lacking in Obama's current approach. My question's a simpler one: Assuming that Khameni, Ahmadinejad & Co. would try to exploit any message of support for their own purposes, why is everyone just assuming they'd succeed?

The case could be made (though I'm in no position to make it) that invoking the "Great Satan" in the face of hundreds of thousands of people in the street would just look desperate -- while expressing solidarity with the protesters is an important move for us to get on the good side of the country's new pro-Western power base.

What I think it clear, though, is that the "don't meddle" crowd fundamentally misunderstands the power and purpose of rhetoric. Theirs is an incredibly static analysis: If we say this, they'll say that, so let's just not say this in the first place. You saw the same sort of thing, in part, with Obama's "Address to the Muslim World" in Cairo a few weeks ago, where he went so far as to apologize for the CIA's interference in the Iranian coup of 1953. To what purpose? Well, they have a grievance, the thought goes, so I need to clear it out of the way before we can all move on.

This is all very sophisticated and "historically aware," but really, it's too clever by half. Politics, even international geopolitics, has always been a question of "what have you done for me lately?" The folks on the streets aren't likely to spurn our goodwill just because we did some sketchy things in their country 30 years before they were born. History is simply too fluid and unpredictable to keep playing catch-up like that. (And go figure: Khameni wound up denouncing our "meddling" anyway.)

The power of rhetoric, rather, is in shaping a narrative. Henry's arguments at Harfleur and Agincourt were essentially the same: In this battle, you're just like a king. Fight to claim your rightful honor. Our job now, it seems, is simply to articulate a principle -- that we stand with the peaceful, democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. We won't know how this ends until the dust settles, but the advantage of having a solid, noble position on the whole thing -- if we're convincing about it -- is that it gives us much firmer ground from which to act when we see our opening.

Plus, solid principle and goodwill, resolutely expressed, have their own gravitational pull. If that past seven days of protests have reminded us of nothing else, it's that the higher longings of the human soul can be a huge force in politics. After all, if reports of a coming crackdown are true, a large number of Iranians are getting ready to die for their country tomorrow. They need all the reasons they can get -- and I doubt a kind word from the President of the United States would hurt.