John McCain, who relaxed during last year's campaign by improvising a "Bomb Iran" ditty, is back to lead a Republican chorus taunting Barack Obama as another Jimmy Carter.
The tune is familiar, but the words are all wrong. Three decades ago, Carter dealt with a vulnerable revolution in Iran by fumbling every move from allowing the deposed Shah into the US to watching American Embassy hostages in Tehran paraded on TV for 444 days with time out for a lethally inept rescue attempt.
Now, as Roger Cohen writes from Tehran, "Iran’s 1979 revolution took a full year to gestate. The uprising of 2009 has now ended its first phase. But the volatility ushered in by the June 12 ballot-box putsch of Iran’s New Right is certain to endure over the coming year. The Islamic Republic has been weakened."
Unlike Carter, who tried to placate and then was overwhelmed by forces he could not control, Obama has been firm and statesmanlike in denouncing tyranny in Iran without be seen as pouring gasoline on the fire in the streets, reiterating that "the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering with Iran's affairs.
"But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place."
The images of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman killed in the street protests, will endure as witness to a brutal regime but by themselves will not bring it down any more than the 1970 Kent State killings of four students unseated Richard Nixon back then. Yet four years later he was gone.
As a student of history, Obama understands the difference between an historical process and red-meat rhetoric, even if McCain and his GOP pygmy imitators don’t. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, those of us who knew Jimmy Carter in his prime can testify that Barack Obama is no Jimmy Carter.
Not even close.
Showing posts with label Iran election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran election. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Spy Hard
News from two-thirds of the former Axis of Evil raises questions about whether US intelligence services are doing their jobs. How much do they really know about what's going on in Iran and North Korea?
The meaning of election results from Tehran and insight into Kim Jong-il's successor are as opaque as they would have been in a world without air travel, computers, satellites and huge budgets for undercover agents.
As they defend themselves over torturing prisoners who may or may not have known anything worth knowing, how skilled can our spy services be if what we find out about the new dictator of a nuclear-armed North Korea comes from a photo of him at age 11 and the 2003 memoirs of a sushi chef who met him when he was 7?
In a New Yorker interview, the new CIA director Leon Panetta stresses the need for the agency to increase its foreign-language skills and recruit officers of more diverse backgrounds who can infiltrate hostile parts of the world, but he seems to be hamstrung by dealing with the fallout from the torture debate. How long will it take to clean that up and start concentrating on today's global threats?
The unrest in Iran is outwardly murky, but how much do our government insiders know about what's happening under the radar?
Vice-President Joe Biden says on Meet the Press that "there’s some real doubt” about the election result, but “the decision has been made to talk” about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The White House may know more about whom we will be talking to and under what circumstances than they are telling us. But given the state of our spying after eight years of Bush-Cheney law-breaking and bungling, what are the odds?
The meaning of election results from Tehran and insight into Kim Jong-il's successor are as opaque as they would have been in a world without air travel, computers, satellites and huge budgets for undercover agents.
As they defend themselves over torturing prisoners who may or may not have known anything worth knowing, how skilled can our spy services be if what we find out about the new dictator of a nuclear-armed North Korea comes from a photo of him at age 11 and the 2003 memoirs of a sushi chef who met him when he was 7?
In a New Yorker interview, the new CIA director Leon Panetta stresses the need for the agency to increase its foreign-language skills and recruit officers of more diverse backgrounds who can infiltrate hostile parts of the world, but he seems to be hamstrung by dealing with the fallout from the torture debate. How long will it take to clean that up and start concentrating on today's global threats?
The unrest in Iran is outwardly murky, but how much do our government insiders know about what's happening under the radar?
Vice-President Joe Biden says on Meet the Press that "there’s some real doubt” about the election result, but “the decision has been made to talk” about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The White House may know more about whom we will be talking to and under what circumstances than they are telling us. But given the state of our spying after eight years of Bush-Cheney law-breaking and bungling, what are the odds?
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Iran's Referendum on Crazy
Mamhoud Ahmadinejad is accusing opponents of tampering with his pronouncements to make him look loony but, as Friday's Iran election nears, that would be overkill.
Nothing could improve on his own YouTube classic claim that a halo surrounded him at a UN appearance in 2005 and that "the crowd stared without blinking during the entire speech.”
In what is shaping up as a close contest, the opposition is appealing to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei over the campaign debates, arguing that "millions of people were witness to lies and distortions of the truth, which were against religion, law, ethics and fairness and were aimed at the achievements of our Islamic System."
Meanwhile, thousands of young people have been filling Tehran streets with a symbolic green protest, holding green posters with green ribbons on their wrists and car antennas and holding up green fruit drinks.
The unspoken X factor in whether Ahmadinejad stays or goes could well be the ripple effects of President Obama's Cairo speech last week, which may have helped a pro-Western faction win in Lebanon.
Is Change in the air, even in the Middle East?
Nothing could improve on his own YouTube classic claim that a halo surrounded him at a UN appearance in 2005 and that "the crowd stared without blinking during the entire speech.”
In what is shaping up as a close contest, the opposition is appealing to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei over the campaign debates, arguing that "millions of people were witness to lies and distortions of the truth, which were against religion, law, ethics and fairness and were aimed at the achievements of our Islamic System."
Meanwhile, thousands of young people have been filling Tehran streets with a symbolic green protest, holding green posters with green ribbons on their wrists and car antennas and holding up green fruit drinks.
The unspoken X factor in whether Ahmadinejad stays or goes could well be the ripple effects of President Obama's Cairo speech last week, which may have helped a pro-Western faction win in Lebanon.
Is Change in the air, even in the Middle East?
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