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.
