Category Archives: Iran

Updated: A-Jad

Only in America. And I mean it in a good way. I first came across this nickname for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Diana West’s blog. I see it’s commonly used by The American Thinker. Very funny. I know I’ll be scolded by neocons, who describe A-Jad as akin to Hitler, but all I see is a colossal clown.

In any case, a nickname is long overdue. Good wholesome disrespect is the best assertion of American superiority.

On a serious note, Andy Bostom, the exegete of Islam, has some must-read Iran analysis on his blog. Read “Perpetuating Iran’s Islamic Culture of Hate,” and “Mullah’s Milk.”

Update (June 23): A-JAD AND ISRAEL. The Christian Science Monitor considers the reasons A-Jad is preferred in Israel:

“[E]ven though Mr. Ahmadinejad has threatened the Jewish state with destruction, many officials and analysts [there] actually prefer the incumbent president because – short of the downfall of Iran’s theocratic system of government – he’ll be easier to isolate. Reformist leader Mr. Mousavi, by contrast, isn’t expected to alter Iran’s drive for nuclear power, but he would win international sympathy.”…

Update II: 'The Narcissism Revolution'

America, Democracy, Foreign Policy, History, Intelligence, Iran, Old Right, Propaganda

Richard Spencer of Taki’s Magazine makes astute observations about the cloying American coverage of what he dubs “The Narcissism Revolution.” “The blogosphere has been far worse. If Republicans are saying, ‘We’re all Iranians now!’ then with the bloggers it’s, ‘The Iranians are all Americans now!’ It’s the Narcissism Revolution, and everything that happens in Tehran is, pretty much, all about us.”

Richard captures the self-absorption madness. To apply his whipping words to McCain (they were meant for Jonah Goldberg): “Hate to break it to [you], but [Iranians] don’t like you, they really don’t like you.”

Does anyone think Iranians are hanging on the words of the sanctimonious moron who let loose with the ditty, “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran”? I don’t think so.

I don’t get the National Geographic Channel. My impression is that it’s stacked with skirts such as Lisa Ling, transmitting the propaganda du jour, as they travel through “dying” forests and straddle “dissolving” icecaps.

Now that Ling is preoccupied getting her sister free after the latter was caught nosing around in North Korea, they’ve allowed an intelligent man, in-the-know, to impart to a mind-numbingly ignorant people something of the history of American interference with Iran.

I believe Michael Scheuer is associated with “Iran and the West,” although I can’t see his name among the list of credits.

It should be worth watching.

Update I (June 22): “The Narcissism Revolution” is in full swing. Glenn Beck, indistinguishable from the neocons on foreign affairs, entertained a guest on his show, from one of the Spread Democracy think tanks. The man said, and I paraphrase, “the Iranians are holding up signs in English; they are speaking to us.” As Spencer observed, “It’s all about us.” The same contention I’ve heard made repeatedly by the Republican Mullahs.

Update II (June 23): A good post by Prof. Bainbridge, who conjures Russel Kirk in support of the paleo-libertarian, in my case, (paleo-conservative in Buchanan’s case) mitts-off approach to Iran:

Of Bush 41’s war on Saddam, Kirk wrote that: “Now indubitably Saddam Hussein is unrighteous; but so are nearly all the masters of the “emergent” African states (with the Ivory Coast as a rare exception), and so are the grim ideologues who rule China, and the hard men in the Kremlin, and a great many other public figures in various quarters of the world. Why, I fancy that there are some few unrighteous men, conceivably, in the domestic politics of the United States. Are we to saturation-bomb most of Africa and Asia into righteousness, freedom, and democracy? And, having accomplished that, however would we ensure persons yet more unrighteous might not rise up instead of the ogres we had swept away? Just that is what happened in the Congo, remember, three decades ago; and nowadays in Zaire, once called the Belgian Congo, we zealously uphold with American funds the dictator Mobutu, more blood-stained than Saddam. And have we forgotten Castro in Cuba?” To which one might now add Hamas in Gaza.

Kirk pointed out that the policies of Bush 41 resulted in a situation in which, “in every continent, the United States is resented increasingly as the last and most formidable of imperial systems.”

Bush 43 made that situation even worse by trying to impose democracy by military means.

And that’s what paleos despise.

Concludes Bainbridge: “I’ve changed my mind in recent days about Obama’s handling of this issue. On this issue, I think he’s being remarkably prudent in Kirk’s sense of the word.”

Update IV: Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants (Little Satan Strikes Daily…)

Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Iran, Middle East, Terrorism, The State

The excerpt is from my new column, now on Taki’s Magazine:

“Americans are still in the grips of a Bush foreign-policy hangover. Obama refocused a drunk-on-democracy country, by reminding it that ‘the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States; that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.'”

In other words, thumping majorities in the Middle East do not necessarily coincide with American national interests. …

Iran’s leading reformist, the mullahs-approved Mousavi, backs Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and has said he would not suspend uranium enrichment. Most Iranians concur. Like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mousavi doesn’t recognize Israel. Since the Holocaust appears to have become a centerpiece—and a precondition for diplomacy—in neoconservative talking points, they might be interested in this tidbit: on Holocaust denial, Mousavi and Ahmadinejad are on the same pseudo-scientific page.”

Read the complete column, previously on WND, and now on Taki’s titled “Fighting Tyranny Should Start at Home.”

Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.

(For the purpose of this column, Majnun is madman in Arabic.)

Update I (June 19): Bob’s comments hereunder about the Iranian Supreme Leader and his powers remind me of another Big Man in another country. What’s that place’s name again? Aha! The US! Have you counted the number of newly created, Messiah-appointed and supervised fiefdoms lately? Czars, anybody? We were supposed to have a government run almost directly by the people and their representatives. I bet we have a larger Managerial State than Iran has. We’re just so good at dubbing all that it does “freedom.” Oh, and we don’t wear towels. Please! We need to look in our own political plates.

How many people would die in the streets if Americans had the gall to protest in such numbers and at such a volume as the Iranians? We lose quite a few naughty citizens to Tazers—and other “necessary”—“discipline” almost daily, except these incidents are filed as “keeping the peace,” and “guarding our liberties” against those who would destroy them (such as Anne Gotbaum, the 100 pounder She Devil).

Update II: LITTLE SATAN STRIKES. So you think we can lord our freedoms over Iran. Again: look in your own backyard. Today, on behalf of Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty, The American Civil Liberties Union launched a suit against a lawful criminal gang: the Transportation Security Administration. What said bandits did to staffer Steve Bierfeldt the TSA thugs do daily, even hourly. The population complies. This time they got caught out “for the ‘illegal’ detention of the Campaign for Liberty’s treasurer in April at a St. Louis airport.”

“The ACLU damned what it called a ‘troubling pattern’ of aggressive invasions of privacy by the TSA.” Don’t we know it. Bierfeldt “recorded his confrontation with the airport security agents on his phone. The audio caused waves of indignation across the Internet, as he was seemingly harassed merely for carrying cash and Ron Paul campaign material.”

Harassed? The man was cussed, sworn at, and threatened.

On March 29, 2009, Steven Bierfeldt was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by TSA officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. Bierfeldt was carrying the cash in connection with his duties as the Director of Development for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization that grew out of Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

Bierfeldt was detained and questioned as he returned home from a Campaign for Liberty event transporting proceeds from the sale of tickets, t-shirts, stickers and campaign material. Bierfeldt repeatedly asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority to detain and interrogate him and received no explanation. Instead, the agents escalated the threatening tone of their questions and ultimately told Bierfeldt that he was being placed under arrest. Bierfeldt recorded the audio of the entire incident with his iPhone.

But we call this a minor issue in the greater cause of safekeeping “liberty.” Reality check: American airports and airlines are the scariest most oppressive in the world. Want a safe, civilized flight? Fly Emirates Airlines. Who are we kidding!

Update III (June 20): Pat Buchanan and I are on the same page (no surprise there). The following are excellent strategic policy points:

“This is another reason President Obama is right not to declare that the United States is on the side of the demonstrators in Tehran or the other cities – and against the regime.

Should this end in bloodshed, Obama would be blamed for having instigated it, and then abandoned the demonstrators …If Obama cannot assist the demonstrators, why declare we are with them? That would call into question the nationalist credentials of the protesters by tying them to a power not universally loved in Iran. It would play into the hand of the regime by confirming charges that the crowds are “rent-a-mobs” like the ones Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA used to dump over the regime of Muhammad Mossadegh in 1953.”

[SNIP]

On the other hand, here’s Chuck Krauthammer, pushing for some action.

Updated: Barack Gets Brownie Point On Iran

Barack Obama, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Iran, Neoconservatism

Barack Obama’s message is infuriating the left and right neoconnery, and that’s good for America. “The basic message is: We support the Iranian people and their democracy. Any change in how Iran is governed is their decision, not America’s. … What we’re seeing in Tehran is a reminder that millions of Muslims hunger for change — but they want to make it themselves.”

Now, let us hope the president sticks to this tack.

Update: “Foreign Policy as Social Work: The Obama foreign policy must now come down to Earth,” Mona Charin screeched. It’s satisfying to witness the neocons wander in the political wilderness. However, I worry that Obama’s own people are natural-born meddlers. I fear he’s on his own in leaving Iran to its own devices.

Mark Steyn writes equally predictably: “This election was stolen for reasons of internal survival and long-term regional strategy by a regime confident enough to snub not just a U.S. government promoting impotence as moral virtue but those allies in Europe who regularly jet in to offer cooing paeans to the vibracy [sic] of Iranian democracy.”

Don’t they sound ridiculous? The Megaphones of a crumbling empire…

McMussolini chimed in: “‘[Obama] should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election,’ Mr. McCain said in an interview Tuesday on NBC’s ‘Today’ show. ‘The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.'” I have news for the senator from Arizona (whom another Arizonian, Barry Goldwater, disdained): Look in your own political plate! The rights of Americans are also imperiled.

Good for Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana. “[T]he ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee said he agreed with the approach that Mr. Obama and his advisers had taken since the Iranian elections on Friday, which Iranian leaders have said Mr. Ahmadinejad won in a landslide against three challengers, including his nearest rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi.”

“For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us, really, to retain their power,” Mr. Lugar said in an interview Tuesday on the CBS News program ‘The Early Show.'”

In case you missed it, here’s PRESIDENT OBAMA statement in full: “Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran. And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football — or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television. I think that the democratic process — free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they’re, rightfully, troubled.

My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened with respect to the election. But what I can say is that there appears to be a sense on the part of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy who now feel betrayed. And I think it’s important that, moving forward, whatever investigations take place are done in a way that is not resulting in bloodshed and is not resulting in people being stifled in expressing their views.

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I’ve always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad’s statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy — diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries — is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.”

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days. And what I would say to those people who put so much hope and energy and optimism into the political process, I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.

And particularly to the youth of Iran, I want them to know that we in the United States do not want to make any decisions for the Iranians, but we do believe that the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected.”

The Heritage Foundation’s laments are THE ULTIMATE endorsement for the Obama stance: “President Obama has shown little interest in continuing President George Bush’s push for democracy in the Middle East.”

Yippee! Let’s hope Obama’s “disinterest” in democratic evangelism persists.