Category Archives: Iran

John Murtha: Traitor Or Madman?

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(Those returning to this post might note that I changed the title, to better reflect the theme of the post.)

Representative John Murtha (D – PA), an honored ex-Marine, and “Cold War Hawk“, made headlines a few months ago, with his call for an “immediate” “redeployment” of our troops in Iraq. With all due respect for the service he has done for this country, it seems he’s doing a slow-burn Cindy Sheehan – with his mutterings growing steadily more outrageous each time he is in front of the camera.

Today, on NBC’s Meet the Press, I lost track of all his self-contradictions when discussing Iraq. But this really stuck out in my mind: “[The] President has no military option in Iran.” E-phucking-gad!!! The Executive Branch has exclusive purview over foreign policy. But, whatever military action we are capable to, or might wish to, take against Iran, Murtha takes it upon himself to remove it as a negotiating tool.

By the paradigm of the GWOT, we are “at war” with Iran; our mutual adversary status has been proclaimed by the leaders of both nations. Today, John Murtha has “given aid and comfort” to the enemy. He should be prosecuted, or at least committed.

Update: Mark Kleiman’s reaction (via email) reflects that of some of my commenters:

Have you lost your mind? Taking a foreign policy position you disagree with ought to be prosecuted as treason?

I assure you all, I am in full possession of my faculties, and merely reflecting the rather conventional wisdom that, “American politics ends at the water’s edge.” None the less, had Murtha stated something like, “I don’t feel President Bush should take military action against Iran,” that would be another matter. However, stating as matter-of-fact that we don’t have the capability for military action might further embolden the Iranians to thumb their noses at us.

Perhaps it might be useful if you went to Meet the Press’s website, and watched the whole Murtha interview in context. He really does seem to be going over the edge.

Iran To Enrich Uranium In Russia

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This from Reuters:

Busher, Iran – Iran has reached a “basic” agreement with Russia on a joint venture to enrich uranium and will continue talks in coming days, Iran’s nuclear chief Gholamreza Aghazadeh said on Sunday.

My other sources believe the enrichment will be performed, at least partially, by Iranian personnel, but in Russian facilities. My only opinion, at this point, is: trust, but verify.

Diplomacy By Other Means

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Scott Wickstein at Samizdata blogs on European ineptitude in dealing with Iran:

Of course, the real negotiating tool is the United States Army, Navy, and Air Force. With American troops still in Iraq, Iran knows that it has to tread warily, but the cunning men in Tehran may well be counting that the US will not feel able to take decisive action before the 2008 Presidential elections change the political landscape in a possibly decisive way.

I personally am very pessimistic about these developments.

Of course, there’s always Israel to consider; they won’t feel restrained by the realities of American politics.

Update: Europe is giving up on diplomacy:

BERLIN (AP) – The British, French and German foreign ministers said Thursday that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program had reached a “dead end” and the Islamic republic should be referred to the U.N. Security Council.

The ministers did not specify what action should be taken by the Security Council, which could impose sanctions. They called for a special session of the International Atomic Energy Agency to decide the referral.

No Nation Is An Island

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I have just watched a program on one of my local PBS stations, KLCS, called World Business (sorry I can’t offer any more info).

But they are saying the international capital markets are evacuating Iran, like rats from a sinking ship, due to their nuclear ambitions, and belligerent rhetoric. It would seem, to the layman, as though an oil-rich nation could fund their expansion strictly on retained earnings. But it ain’t that simple – particularly when 17% of your population is on the payroll of the secret police.

It’s In The Cards: Israel To Bomb Iran

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According to this Sunday Times article, it’s all go for March:

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.

I wonder if Israel has the weapons systems to accomplish this without considerable collateral damage?

Of Chablis Socialism, Tailgunner Joe and a Hunger Strike

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The poor moth-eaten ghost of Joe McCarthy has gotten as much mileage in the op-eds of the wise in the last couple of years as zombie movies have in the multiplex these days. When in doubt, drag it out, shake it around and yell “Oooogah-booogah! Red-baiting! Black-list! It’s a new McCarthyism! Save the women and children! Oooooga-boogah!” It has always struck me as amusing, how the significance of McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign, the HUAC hearings and the whole Hollywood blacklist thing loomed over the chic intellectual set. In retrospect, it’s almost as if a child’s balloon magically expanded over time to the size of the Hindenburg. Popular memoirists and movies describe the whole period, as if Joe McCarthy was blotting out the sun, casting dark shadows over the land of the free, while everyone cowered behind the doors of their houses, afraid to speak above a whisper for fear of the dark, jackbooted minions of the (cue scary music here!) HUAC would break down the door and drag them away to an unspecified but horrible fate in some barbed-wire gulag.

Oddly enough, my parents who were in college at the time don’t remember anything of that kind. In fact, they remember Joe McCarthy being pungently described as a headline grabbing blow-hard politician and all-around scumbag who never managed to come within a country mile of a Russian spy, or keeping his stories straight. They remember him being denounced in no uncertain terms— everyone they knew had McCarthy’s number down to the third decimal place, recognized him for just another self-serving, glory-hunting pol, attaching himself like a remora to the issue of the moment. And, as we now know through the Venona transcripts, there was something, underneath all the popular hysteria; there had indeed been an assortment of Communists, fellow travelers and paid Stalinist stooges wandering at will over the home of the free and the land of the brave for decades.

Some of them were politically naïve and hopelessly gullible, the kind of people these days who respond to Nigerian spam, who believed (against every indication to the contrary) that Russia under Lenin and Stalin was the last, best hope for mankind, the shining light of the future, the brave new world. Others were genuinely anti-fascist, who had the misfortune to become politically aware during the hungry Thirties; revolted by the excesses of Italian and German fascism, they took refuge in the arms of what seemed like it’s political polar opposite, only to be brutally disillusioned by the brutal realpolitik of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, and whiplashed once again by Stalin’s volte-face in 1941. Still others were indeed dedicated but conflicted Communists, cheering on the brave new Marxist world from the comfort and security of Brentwood or the Upper East Side, and seeking absolution and permission to lie about it in court.

McCarthy generated a great deal of headline noise, but not much useful light on the subject, aside from afflicting the comfortable Chablis socialist set. My parents’ contention that he was a paper tiger, expanded by bombast and hubris to a towering but fragile edifice is supported with the speed and thoroughness of his deflation and collapse… a collapse initiated by a single pin-prick of a question asked by a soft-spoken and gentlemanly lawyer, in front of a television camera. He was seen for what he really was, and in a remarkably short time, the cruel jest was that it wasn’t “McCarthyism” it should be “McCarthywasim”. But it surely must inflate the egos of those who ran afoul of him and the “red scare”, to paint McCarthy bigger, crueler and more dangerous in hindsight, to burnish their own heroism in opposition. The other thing that strikes me, besides the fragility of the McCarthy red-baiting machine, is the willful cluelessness of so many of the alleged “reds”, so in love with their fantasy of the perfect Marxist new world, they managed to entirely overlook the varied horrors of Stalin’s rule… the famines, the purges, the show trials, the gulags and all. Either that, or what is most reprehensible, they worked overtime to justify and excuse them, so in love with the fantasy were they.

In love with a seductive, rose-tinted glasses fantasy; not the first to do so, and lamentably, not the last to fall for the heroic vision of the brave freedom fighter, even to see oneself as one. But the subtle danger of fantasy is that it turns our eyes from the real, messy, grubby and corrupted as it might be in comparison; the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Our heroes and great ones ought to be—as the military cliché goes— ten feet tall and bulletproof, served up to us on the front page of the major media outlets, with a book and movie deal to follow after. And yet, in Iran there is a man, a writer and reporter, who is on a hunger strike— near death, it would seem— in defense of the freedom to think and communicate what he sees as the truth. Here is a person who values freedom of thought, freedom of communication, freedom of the press, so highly, he would give his life for it… and yet all the traditional defenders of the free press seem to look in the other direction.

We heard enough about the alleged targeting of journalists in Iraq by the American military; I have heard nothing about Akbar Ganji on NPR, nothing in my local paper. I wouldn’t know anything at all about Mr. Gangi if it weren’t for e-mail and the internet. A quick google search this Wednesday afternoon goes to three pages before listing a story about him in the major Western media sources. I can only assume that one set of stories favors the fantasy, the other doesn’t. But this is reality, not the lovely fantasy— and this reality matters. I have a computer, a blog, a collection of readers, and a facility with the written word— and the freedom to put my words out there, without fear or favor. Michael Moore, the staff of the Wall Street Journal— a million or two others, great and small also have that freedom, although most of us do not have the income to show for it. Like oxygen, we wouldn’t notice it, until it was not there— as the oxygen of a free press is not there for Akbar Gangi. We have heard a great deal in the last couple of years about freedom of the press. Let’s hear how much it matters for Akbar Gangi and the people of Iran… and everyone else who values freedom of the press and heroes in the real world.

Although, candidly, a hunger strike (and a strict program of excercise) would do Michael Moore no end of good.

(Links courtesy of Ron Wright and Instapundit)

Quagmire!!!

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It looks like all the channels in the basic TV package are on repeats, and of stupid, intelligence-insulting, mind-numbingly boring programs that looked like twenty years of repeats even upon first airing; watching them in repeats one more time would be like root canal work with not much in the way of painkillers. Sooo… this summer, it looks like I am watching stuff on VHS and DVD, things I bought because I liked them, or taped off the broadcast channels— odd-ball things like “Due South”, various impeccably written and filmed stuff from “Masterpiece Theatre”, “Crusade” and “Babylon 5”…. And if my science fiction jones really gets bad, I have all of “Blake’s 7” (taken from the KUED, the Utah Public TV channel, in the early 90ies, when the broadcast that and Dr. Who at midnight on Saturdays. Note: “Blakes’ 7 was the British analogue to the original “Star Trek”, but with better writing, more interesting characters… but special effects that were…ummm… even more cheesy, and trust me, this is possible. And the dramatis personae only added up to 7 on occasion and only if one counted the computers, but against that… Paul Darrow, brooding in black leather and studs. Yum. Trust me on this. Yum.)

Oh, where was I? TV nostalgia. Back on topic. In the interests of 60ies nostalgia, a topic in which a great many of our media and duly elected officials seem lately to be mired down, I revisited my own memories, and some of my televised Vietnam memorabilia, a number of movies like “84 Charlie Mopic”, and the complete runs of “Tour of Duty” and “China Beach”, as they were broadcast on EBS-Zaragoza, complete with EBS TV identifiers, and a selection of cheesy AFRTS spots. Both programs were enormously popular among overseas military audiences at the time, to judge from the feedback that I remember, and from the number of small boys who borrowed BDUs, fatigues and flight-suits from their elders for the yearly Halloween parade at the DODs school. Those with first-hand memories of the Vietnam experience had more complicated reactions, like the husband of one of my friends in Korea. At that time he was the deacon of the Episcopal congregation, but he had served a combat tour as a very young infantry officer. His wife commented once that she always knew when he had watched “China Beach”, or some such, while she was out at choir practice, because he would be so white-lipped and silent for the rest of the evening.

But equating Vietnam to Iraq is a terribly strained analogy, and there are more differences than similarities. Some of them small and seemingly insignificant, some are written off as trivial, but to military veterans those differences posit a gulf of enormous difference… and some are just… well, differences. In no particular order;

1. Vietnam: a long, narrow south-east Asian country, once known as Cochin-China, or French Indo-China, of which practically no one in America had ever heard of, prior to about 1950. After WWII, we let the French take back their colony, although we could just as easily have pressured them into giving the Vietnamese their independence. A bad decision, but exactly how bad would not become apparent for many decades.

Iraq: a large, centrally located Middle-Eastern country, also known as the “Cradle of Civilization” (western division), Mesopotamia or the Land Between Two Rivers, the Fertile Crescent. It encompasses the birthplace of Abraham in the city of Ur of the Chaldees, of ancient cities, and the first recorded set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi, the earliest written epic, the story of Gilgamesh. The tower of Babel was supposed to have been built there, and the wonder of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The ancient names of cities, Ninevah, Babylon, Ur… resonate in western history and religion, a fountain-source, and a wonder.

2. Vietnam, to judge from the memories of friends like Xuan-An, and from the cameras of everyone who turned away from war and atrocity, and recorded the countryside itself is— from the mountains to the seaside and in the tended farmlands and the forests between— mainly green, lush and achingly beautiful.

Iraq— to judge from pictures posted by pro and amateur photog— is…. Ummm. OK. With careful lighting and creative shooting, Iraq can look… umm, interesting. Striking, even. Certain bits of it can grow on one, if one has a taste for the austere, and an appreciation for contrasts— which can also be said of much of the American West.

3. There doesn’t seem to be much impenetrable jungle in Iraq. Lots of desert, though; wide-open, no-much-of-a-place-hide desert, with excellent lines of sight.

4. The American troops are not draftees, this time. I will repeat this for the benefit of Prof. Churchill and the other SDS wannabees, milling around in the back and passing around… yo! Ward Baby! No smoking, ‘kay! You want to relive the glory days of 1968, you round up a bunch of your dopey friends and form a re-enactors’ group, just like normally nostalgic people do! THERE IS NO DRAFT! THEY ARE VOLUNTEERS! ‘KAY! Some 18-year olds choose to serve, others elect to sit in your classroom and pay for a couple of years of educational malpractice by flipping burgers at Mickey D’s. Free country, Ward… and that had better be a regular tobacco cigarette.

5. Which brings me seamlessly to the fact that the military has been… umm, rather stern for the last thirty years as regards the ingestion of mind-altering substances. They screen for it, at random, regularly and persistently… and they aren’t all that indulgent about alcohol, either, even outside of the Middle East. This isn’t Oliver Stone’s Army, and hasn’t been for years, although he himself is probably too whacked out to notice this.

6. American personnel rotate in-country as a unit, and rotate home again, en masse. They are not coming and going as single replacements… which makes it very difficult (not to say dangerous) for those who would hang around in international airports spitting on solitary members of the military. The old baby-killer accusation still gets traction, however.

7. Jane Fonda has yet to go over to the Sunni Triangle and pose with insurgent weapons. Yet, anyway.

8. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, skirted South Vietnamese territory as much as possible, running through neighboring countries, safe from interdiction, until the very last leg. The insurgency’s supply trail is vulnerable all the way from the Iraqi border.

9. The Viet Cong swam among the Vietnamese population, especially in the countryside like fish in a pond of water. The Iraqi pond seems distinctly unwelcoming to the insurgents. The fact that the most recent suicide bombers are either foreign jihadists, or local citizens either blackmailed into driving a car bomb or handcuffed to the steering wheel suggests that they are a considerable distance from the “winning the hearts and minds” ideal of a popular insurgency. It was supposed to be the Americans committing brutal atrocities on a innocent and defenseless population that would drive ordinary Iraqi citizens into supporting the insurgency; instead, it looks like the insurgents are committing the atrocities, and driving ordinary citizens away.

10. American troops in Iraq are armored-up, to a degree that makes their predecessors in Vietnam look positively undressed. And they seem to be amusing themselves without the local version of the “ville”, those notorious local districts just outside the gates of American bases which in days of yore provided loud music, cheap alcohol, and cheaper floozies to those members of the American military who were young and dumb and full of… erm, whatever. Mind you, any one knowing the location of a suitably Vietnam-style “ville” anywhere in Iraq will earn popularity undying by sharing that intelligence immediately… with members of the international press.

Feel free to add your own then-and-now observations in the comments.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

Iran’s Real Turnout: About 10%

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While the MSM continue to parrot Iran’s “official” claims of a high turnout in Friday’s election, Michael Ledeen at NRO reports on reality:

First, the numbers. The regime had made it clear that the size of the turnout would indicate its legitimacy with the public, so they had to come up with big numbers. After hours of hilarious confusion, during which the “official” numbers oscillated wildly and different vote totals were announced by the interior ministry and the Council of Guardians, the regime finally decided to claim that something like 65 percent of eligible Iranians had voted. But most clear-eyed observers with the freedom to move around the country and actually go to polling places, found very few voters. The Mujahedin Khalq, the longtime allies of Saddam Hussein who have long been a source of information on things Iranian, estimated that the real figure was about 10 percent. If you read The Scotsman, for example, you hear things like this:

…at a polling station in…an affluent suburb of northern Tehran, only 150 voters had arrived by mid-afternoon. “We have been given 1,000 ballot papers, so it seems the turn-out has been a lot lower than expected,” said Mohsen Jannati, the school’s headmaster, who supervised the voting.


The lowest participation — maybe as low as 3-5 percent — was in Khuzestan Province, where there had been bombings and protests in recent weeks. But anecdotal evidence from all over the country indicated a very low turnout, as of late afternoon. Despite this, the mullahs trotted out rosy reports of big voter turnouts, and even broadcast “live” TV coverage of voters queued up, waiting patiently to make their voices heard.

The only problem was that the pictures were from past elections. One woman called up a Tehran radio station to say that she was sitting at home watching the tube, and saw herself voting. Very droll indeed.

Iran: The Blogger’s Paper Chase Is On

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This Brian Murphy – AP report will establish the conventional wisdom for the moment. But my sources tell me it’s hardly the truth. More to come later:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iranian voters streamed to polling stations Friday, snubbing dissidents’ calls for a boycott in the closest presidential race since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Results will decide who inherits a long list of challenges, including nuclear talks with the West and demands for reform at home.

Turnout appeared stronger than expected and polls stayed open an extra four hours, with voting booths even set up at Tehran’s main cemetery for those paying weekly visits to family graves. But the contest could still end with no clear winner, forcing a runoff next week.

Some credited U.S. denunciations of the election for goading more Iranians to cast ballots after a Western-style campaign that has reshaped Iranian politics. A runoff would almost certainly include front-runner Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a political veteran and leader of the Islamic Revolution who now portrays himself as a steady hand for uneasy times.

On the contrary, I’ve heard of massive rejection of this election. Time will tell.

Survey: Iranians Feelings Similar To Americans

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As this press release shows, Iranians feel about the same about America’s presence in the middle east, and their own country’s nuclear aspirations as the people in “red state” America:

Historic Survey Finds Plurality of Iranians Uneasy
if Regime Were to Develop WMD’s

WASHINGTON, June 9 /PRNewswire/ — A recent public opinion survey of Iranians, conducted by The Tarrance Group, surprisingly found that a vast majority (74%) of Iranians feel America’s presence in the Middle East will increase the probability of democracy in their own country. The survey, which was the first of its kind, found two-thirds of Iranians believe that regime change in Iraq has been a positive for both neighboring countries: with 66% believing that it served Iran’s national interests, while 65% believed the Iraqi people will, in the long-run, be better off.

Commissioned by the Iran Institute for Democracy, the survey discovered that a solid majority (65%) of Iranian adults consider fundamental change in Iran’s system of government, especially its Constitution, a must to bring freedom and more opportunities to their homeland.

Validating reports of widespread discontent with the clerical regime, three-fourths of Iranians (73%) support the call for a national referendum through which Iranians are given a chance to choose the form of government of their choice. Significantly, almost all Iranians reject their government’s attempts to keep exiled Iranians out of the political and economic equation of Iran. Fully 84% of all Iranians say Iranians living abroad should have a role in shaping the political and economic future of their homeland.

Presidential Election:
Regarding the forthcoming Presidential elections, in a troubling sign for the regime, nearly four of every five Iranians (79%) say that the upcoming elections should not be held unless they are free, fair and transparent.

While more than 70% of Iranians feel the world is closely monitoring the June 17 election process, in a telling sign, 57% of the population would be inclined to support a boycott of the elections if conditions for a free, fair and transparent election are not met.

Demonstrating disinterest in the pool of candidates, only 39% of adults were able to choose a candidate representing their viewpoint, with Hashemi Rafsanjani only leading (32%) among those who could identify with a candidate. Hence, Mr. Rafsanjani only enjoys 13% support among all Iranians, including those who could not identify an acceptable candidate. That said, when asked to make a prediction, 42% of all surveyed predicted Rafsanjani would be declared the winner of elections, indicating a perception of a predetermined conclusion.

Nuclear Issue:
On the nuclear issue, a solid majority of surveyed respondents inside Iran (60%) feel that the international community’s worry about the prospects of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction is real. Further, a plurality (42%) says the Islamic Republic gaining access to nuclear weapons would add to their anxiety, discomfort and inability to sleep comfortably at night, while only 37% say it would not burden their peace of mind.

Methodology
Commissioned by the Iran Institute for Democracy, the survey was conducted among N=758 adults age 16+ (voting age) in Iran, from May 26 through June 4, 2005. Sample design, questionnaire design, and data processing were conducted by The Tarrance Group. Random digit dialing (RDD) was used to generate the sample, and interviews were conducted via telephone from a call center in the United States using Farsi-speaking interviewers. The margin of error associated with a sample of this size of +/- 3.6%, at the 95% confidence level. The average interview length was 24.6 minutes.

SOURCE Iran Institute for Democracy