Thursday, June 18, 2009

Smart and Stoopid

Back from vacation in Puerto Rico, and I find that the smart people remain smart, and the stoopid people are still predominantly and breathtakingly and staggeringly stoopid - and also mostly repuglican.

'Just the beginning' in Iran June 17: Reza Aslan, senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, explains to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow what we can expect to happen in Iran in the coming days based on the history of the nation's key players.
Recalibrating U.S. relations with Iran June 17: Joe Cirincione, president of The Ploughshares Fund talks with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow about the way post-election protests in Iran are having an impact on the balance of power in Iranian leadership beyond the presidency that will likely change the dynamic for international relations as well.

Joe Klein: McCain Unhinged

For two years now, John McCain has been entirely consistent on Iran: every last statement he's made--at least, those that I've seen--has been (a) fabulously uninformed and (b) dangerously bellicose. He's still at it, apparently. There is no question that President Obama's more prudent path is the correct one right now. There is also no question that the neoconservatives are trying to gin up this situation into an excuse for not engaging with the Iranian government in the near future--and also as a rationale for their dearest, looniest dream, war with Iran. I've come home more pessimistic that much can be accomplished in negotiations with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad government, but we certainly should continue to make the effort to lure the Iranians into the civilized world. It may even be the case that Khamenei decided that Ahmadinejad's reelection was a pre-requisite for negotiations.

Meanwhile, Pete Wehner has a post at the Commentary blog comparing Iran in 2009 to the Soviet Union of the 1980's which, of course, is completely ridiculous. I visited Russia back in the day and I've now visited Iran twice. There is no comparison. The Soviet Union was the most repressive place I've ever been; its residents lived in constant terror. I'll never forget my first translator in Moscow telling me that his parents had trained him never to smile in public--it could easily be misinterpreted and then he'd be off to the Gulag. There was no internet in those days, no cellphones, no facebook or twitter.

Iran, by contrast, is breezy with freedom. It is certainly freer now, despite Ahmadinejad, than it was when I first visited in 2001. There are satellites dishes all over the place, which bring accurate news via BBC Persia and the Voice of America. The place is awash in western music, movies and books. The Supreme Leader has a website; ayatollahs are blogging. You can get the New York Times and CNN online. (I was interested to find, however, that most blogs except those, like this one, that are associated with a mainstream media outlet, are filtered by the government.) There is, in fact, marginally more freedom of expression in Iran than in some notable U.S. allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia--although the danger of imprisonment always exists if a journalist or politician takes it a step too far for the Supreme Leader's watchdogs. It is not even clear that Ahmadinejad--who has significant backing from the sort of people who support Republicans here (the elderly, the religious extremists) plus a real following among working-class Iranians--would have lost this election, if the votes had been counted fairly. (I tend to believe that they weren't counted at all, but that's just my opinion.)

The point is, neoconservatives like McCain and Wehner just can't seem to quit their dangerous habit of making broad, extreme statements based on ideology rather than detailed knowledge of the situation in Iran and elsewhere. This was always the main problem with McCain's candidacy--he would have been a trigger-happy President, just as Wehner's old boss, George W. Bush, was. We are well out of that.

  • hilzoy: There But For The Grace Of God ...

    Charles Brown at Undiplomatic picks up a gem from John McCain that I missed yesterday (Brown's emphasis):

    "DAVID GREGORY: Let's get right to it on Iran. How does the U.S. deal with an emboldened Iranian President Ahmadinejad?

    SENATOR JOHN McCAIN: Well, we lead; we condemn the sham, corrupt election. We do what we have done throughout the Cold War and afterwards, we speak up for the people of Tehran and Iran and all the cities all over that country who have been deprived of one of their fundamental rights. We speak out forcefully, and we make sure that the world knows that America leads -- and including increased funding for part of the Farda, Iranian free radio.

    Ah, yes: our celebrated Cold War concern for the rights of the people of Tehran and Iran! I wonder which of those golden moments McCain wants us to relive. Maybe the one where we overthrow Iran's democratically elected government and install a dictatorial monarch? Or maybe one of these:

    "In 1957, with the help of the CIA, [the Shah] set up SAVAK, the notorious secret police, to crack down on dissidents.

    Documentation of its activities is still difficult to come by, partly because SAVAK spread an atmosphere of terror so intense that victims -- those who survived -- were long afraid to talk. International investigators tell of families beseeching them to try to find out what had happened to relatives who had disappeared months before, but simultaneously begging them not to let the Shah's government know they were asking.

    The number of SAVAK's victims is also difficult to establish. In 1976 Amnesty International, a London-based organization that keeps track of "prisoners of conscience" around the world, estimated that 25,000 to 100,000 political prisoners were being held in Iran. (...)

    There is no longer any dispute that SAVAK practiced systematic torture. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of Khomeini's Revolutionary Council, described to TIME'S Raji Samghabadi how SAVAK agents in 1964 lashed the soles of his feet with electric cable: "The flesh was torn apart, and the bones jutted out. There were multiple fractures." The agents, he says, also held a knife to his throat for hours, making small nicks and telling him to guess "when the blade might go all the way down and sever my head." Amnesty International in the 1970s described other methods of torture: electric shock, burning on a heated metal grill, and the insertion of bottles and hot eggs into the anus. Last spring Anne Burley, an Amnesty International researcher, was shown by the government a SAVAK file that she deems authentic, containing pictures of victims who had been tortured to death. Several were women, she says, and "in each case the breasts were mutilated."

    William J. Butler, a New York lawyer who investigated SAVAK for the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, spoke to Reza Baraheni, an Iranian poet who was held for 102 days by the secret police in 1973. Baraheni told of seeing in SAVAK torture rooms "all sizes of whips" and instruments designed to pluck out the fingernails of victims. He described the sufferings of some fellow prisoners: "They hang you upside down, and then someone beats you with a mace on your legs or on your genitals, or they lower you down, pull your pants up and then one of them tries to rape you while you are still hanging upside down." Baraheni himself was beaten and whipped, and released only after agreeing to make a statement on television condemning Communism. Many other SAVAK victims were tortured briefly and then released, after the secret police satisfied themselves that they would no longer oppose the Shah."

    At least the objects of our concern would be able to listen to Radio Farda while they are having hot eggs shoved up their anuses -- and I'm sure that would make it all worthwhile.

    Seriously: this guy might have been President. National security was supposed to be his strong suit. On the most charitable interpretation, he is completely ignorant of the history of our relations with Iran, but this fact does not prevent him from pontificating about what we ought to do. Think about that, and thank the deity of your choice that he lost.

  • More Joe Klein on: Matt Duss on Robert Kagan's op-ed today in the Washington Post. I have nothing to add to that.
    Open Letter To Robert Kagan Dear Mr. Kagan,
    First, let me just express sympathy for your situation. These last years have been extraordinarily unkind to your grand theories about the transformative potential of American explosives. President Bush’s “global war on terror,” the invasion of Iraq, his so-called “freedom agenda,” turned out to be a real carnival of bad ideas, for which you were a key intellectual barker. It’s hard out here for a neocon.

    But I have to say, Mr. Kagan, your op-ed this morning is really beneath you. You can’t actually believe that President Obama is “siding with the Iranian regime” against the Iranian people, or that Obama’s outreach to Iran depends upon keeping hardliners in power, can you? You’re far too intelligent to buy the brutishly simplistic “realism” that you attempt to hang upon President Obama’s approach. These sorts of claims are better left to your friend and occasional co-author Bill Kristol, who uses his series of valuable journalistic perches (with which he inexplicably continues to be gifted) to launch an endless stream of comically transparent bad faith arguments. You’re better than that. You’re the smart neocon.

    Aren’t you? While it’s nice that you recognize that “it’s not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” — though that was the stated preference of a number of your fellow neoconservatives — your claim that President Obama’s “strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of” Ahmadinejad is the kind of thing I thought we had left back in 2003, when opponents of the Iraq invasion (that is, the people who turned out to be right) were tarred as being “objectively pro-Saddam.” It doesn’t smell any better six years later.

    You state that President Obama’s “goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.” How then to explain his State Department reaching out to Twitter and asking them to delay their scheduled maintenance, in order to allow the continued use of this technology that has proven so important to enabling communication within and out of Iran? That one gesture neatly encapsulates, I think, the difference between Bush and Obama on “democracy promotion.” Bush believed in America bringing the gift of freedom to the people of the world. Obama believes in practical steps to put the tools of freedom in the hands of the people themselves, and then creating the space for people to use those tools.

    Just to be clear, most of us who “railed against the Bush administration’s ‘freedom agenda’” did so not out of any hostility toward freedom or democracy, but out of the belief, now completely vindicated, that strong, stirring words in favor of democracy mattered little if the policies behind them were counterproductive to the actual cause of democracy, as Bush’s policies were. By backing pro-democracy rhetoric with American war and occupation, President Bush and his conservative supporters cast the cause of freedom and democracy into disrepute, from which it must now be rescued and reclaimed by more responsible hands.

    Very best,
    Matt

  • Benen: PENCE'S POOR PLAN....
    George W. Bush's top negotiator with Iran, Ambassador Nicholas Burns, believes President Obama has shown sound judgment by showing restraint in the midst of developments in Iran. Burns told NPR, "President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see aggressive statements, a series of statements, from the United States which try to put the U.S. at the center of this, and I think President Obama is avoiding that, quietly rightly."

    Leave it to congressional Republicans to try step in and give Ahmadinejad the rhetorical life-preserver he's been waiting for. Here's a statement this afternoon from Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the #3 leader in the House Republican conference, on his new congressional resolution on the Iranian election.

    "Today I'm introducing a resolution that ... express its concern regarding the reported irregularities of the presidential election of 12 June, 2009. It will condemn the violence against demonstrators by pro-government militia in Tehran in the wake of the elections. It will affirm our belief in the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections. And lastly, and most importantly, it will express the support of the American people for all Iranian citizens who struggle for freedom, civil liberties and the protection of the rule of law."

    Adam Blickstein's response was spot on.

    There is nothing that the very people Pence is decrying would like more than to show how this is an "us versus America" battle and paint the dissidents and Mousavi as tools of the American government. And creating at least an appearance of disunity in the American government provides ample ammunition for the regime and Ahmadinajad government to do just that. Pence is treading on some pretty dangerous ground, and he will invariably become a talking point for the thugs and Iranian officials who are attacking the opposition and embarking on violent suppression of dissident Iranians. I just hope Pence understands that political posturing like this should stop at the water's edge, especially when thousands of lives and the future of a nation are at stake.

    This note, from an Andrew Sullivan reader, also reinforces the sense that Obama has it right, and his detractors have it wrong: "I'm an Iranian living in Canada. A few hours ago I talked to my brother who is a student at Sharif University, he was at the big rally yesterday and they were only feet away from Karoubi when they marched from the university entrance to Azadi square. He asked what had Obama had said and I started reading the transcript. When I got to 'the United States can be a handy political football, or discussions with the United States [can be]' my brother sighed and said thank God this guy gets it."

Benen: ALWAYS PLAYING THE VICTIM...
It's never been clear to me why Republicans present themselves as members of the "tough" and "strong" party. Given all the time they spend feeling sorry for themselves, the GOP seems to send the opposite message.

Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), for example, is annoyed about the number of amendments considered in the House to appropriation bills. He's so annoyed, in fact, that he's tweeting about the similarities between House Republicans and Iranian demonstrators.

"Good to see Iranian people move mountains w social media, shining sunlight on their repressive govt - Texans support their bid for freedom"

"Oppressed minorities includeHouseRepubs: We are using social media to expose repression such as last night's D clampdown shutting off amends"

I see. Iranian dissidents are protesting a presidential election that may have been stolen from them by an oppressive regime, only to face threats and violence. At least eight Iranians have already been killed. They're using Twitter to shine a light on developments in a country that's cracking down on free press and free speech. House Republicans, meanwhile, want more amendments considered on appropriations bills. I can't believe I didn't notice the "repressive" similarities.

It's not just Culberson. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), who's gearing up for a gubernatorial campaign in Michigan, had a similar tweet.

"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Remember, these guys aren't kidding. This isn't satire, and it's not sarcasm. These House Republicans see Iranian demonstrators being beaten for standing up for their rights, and they think they're in a comparable situation. The GOP is made up of oppressed victims, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Hill's Eric Zimmermann noted, "...I think protesters in Iran, who are using Twitter to compensate for a crackdown on foreign media, would take issue with the comparison."

Seems like a safe bet.

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