This is the best possible outcome, not just for the West, but for Egypt and the Middle East. Mubarak's fall was inevitable when the Army refused to fire on the demonstrators well over a week ago.
It is coming across the news now that Mubarak has stepped down. The Pharoh is gone. A military panel is now in control, along with Suliman. This from the NYT:
The mob in Cairo is celebrating like its New Year's Eve and the apple just dropped. The real work begins tomorrow. To keep Egypt from going the way of Iran (see here), real economic and political reforms need to occur, and Obama needs to work with Egypt's military to buy enough time for secular opposition to organize itself in Egypt. Perhaps as important, the doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood need to be fully exposed throughout Egypt. Whether this will be enough will take a decade to answer.
Two years ago I pointed out at this blog that all of the non-nuclear green energy Obama and the left were pushing as substitutes for coal and oil were not merely economically uncompetitive, but that they were untested at scale. Shannon Love, in a brilliant essay at Chicago Boyz not long ago expounded on why alternative forms of energy could not be relied upon to substitute for coal and oil at scale.
None of that has mattered thus far to the radical greens. Obama is deconstructing our energy infrastructure and warring on both coal and oil. Obama and the far left have legislated that increasing amounts of highly subsidized green energy must be used in our energy production. All well and good - until reality strikes. This from Alex Salkever writing at Daily Finance:
Boy, that was fast. Only five years into the world's renewable energy push, many utility companies are so concerned about grid instability that they're saying they can't accept any more electricity from intermittent sources of power. Translation: Solar power only runs in the day time and can't re relied on for so called "baseload" capacity. Wind power primarily produces current at night and, likewise, can't be relied upon for baseload capacity. Geothermal, meanwhile, is perfect for providing baseload. But geothermal projects take an excruciatingly long time to build out. And then there have been the recent spate of earthquake scares around geothermal sites. The upshot: Utilities such as Hawaiian Electric in President Obama's home state are voicing concerns about plans to integrate more solar and wind power into the grid until they develop methods to more effectively absorb intermittent sources of power without destabilizing the whole shebang. In Europe, Czech utility companies are concerned that "feed-in tariffs," which require power companies to repurchase all home- and business-generated renewable power at elevated rates, might wreak havoc on the Central European grid.
This growing push-back from utilities could prove to be shock to energy project developers, lawmakers and homeowners. In the U.S., project developers and state lawmakers have assumed that the ambitious laws mandating as much as 40% of some states' power come from renewable sources within the next few decades would ensure huge demand for green power as utilities scaled up their use of such resources from low single-digit levels. Likewise, homeowners have tended to assume that if they could put a panel on their roof (or a windmill on their property), they would be guaranteed a market for the extra power produced. . . .
This is only a shock if you haven't been paying any attention to the issue beyond listening to the green propaganda machine. But expect the left to do absolutely nothing about this while our existing coal and fossil fuel infrastructure declines, leading to much higher energy prices in the medium term.
So now lets pivot to something else in the news - the revolution in Kyrgyzstan that occurred the other day. Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked Islamic majority nation that sits on the border of China and to the north of Afghanistan. It was annexed by the Soviet Union around 1920, then gained its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. It became a democracy, but the government has been unable to stem rampant corruption. Given that short history and its location, one could well imagine a host of reasons for the violent coup that occurred the other day, from Islamic radicalism to Russian or Chinese involvement. Nope, none of that. The reason for the violent overthrow of the government - rising energy prices attibutable to government intervention. This from Dr. North at EU Referendum:
Covered widely by the media, the reports of the rioting in Kyrgyzstan yesterday vary widely in tone and content. But, even if you have to drill down into the piece, not even The Guardian can conceal the reason for the unrest, which has seen protestors beat a Cabinet minister to death.
"The violent rolling protests appeared to be largely spontaneous rather than a premeditated coup," it says, eventually telling us that a "leading expert" has said the government had triggered the protests by imposing punitive increases on tariffs for water and gas. . . .
There is much more to it than that, as The Daily Mail indicates, but even on 23 February the Institute for War & Peace Reporting had Timur Toktonaliev in Bishkek writing: "Soaring energy costs anger Kyrgyz", with prices for electricity having risen 100 percent and the cost of central heating shooting up by 500 percent. Clearly, energy prices have been the primary trigger of current events.
And therein is a lesson. For a country with a violent past, not too much can be read into it, but every society has its limits of tolerance and, where we have our own government determined to drive up energy costs, this could become a factor in triggering open dissent in this country as well.
Here, the crucial issue in Kyrgyzstan was that the prices were driven up by government fiat, albeit following a decision to remove subsidies which had enabled energy to be sold at less than the cost of production. It can be assumed, from this, that where government action is directly responsible for price hikes, governments will take the flak.
It is far too extreme to suppose that we will any time soon see a Cabinet minister beaten to death on the streets of London, although there are not a few who would leap at such an opportunity if it was presented. But it is not a happy or a stable government which relies only on constant police protection to keep its members alive and safe.
Ministers, therefore, would do well to note the events in Kyrgyzstan. Even remote possibilities are still possibilities and, the way our politicians are behaving, they could yet become probabilities and then certainties.
As I pointed out here, we are not quite a decade behind Britain in the mad push into alternative energy. Britain has already seen vast spikes in energy prices and is expecting much more. We are set on the same path now with Obama's war on our fossil fuel powered energy infrastructure and our own mad push towards alternative energy to replace them. For us, the real economic effects of this madness are several years out, when our own costs spike. And while I don't expect blood in the streets over it at this point, I do expect very substantial unrest indeed.
After eight years of popular rejection, political cajoling, and endless hand-wringing, the EU has finally ratified the Lisbon Treaty without a shred of democratic legitimacy or public support.
The Treaty contains all the essential components of an EU superstate, including a single legal personality, a permanent EU presidency, an EU-wide public prosecutor, and the position of foreign minister in all but name. The Lisbon Treaty shifts power away from nation-states to Brussels in critical areas of policymaking -- such as defense, security, foreign affairs, criminal justice, judicial cooperation, and energy . . . It restricts the sovereign right of EU member states to independently determine foreign policy and poses a unique threat to the Anglo-American Special Relationship. Above all, it is a treaty that underscores the EU's ambition to become a global power and challenge American leadership on the world stage.
Testimony of Sally McNamara To The Committee on the Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe, of the U.S. House of Representatives, 15 Dec. 2009
The EU Superstate -the result of the world's slowest coup - became official within the past month. As I have written before, it is the world's largest experiment in anti-democratic socialism. It is an experiment that is destroying the UK demographically and, quite likely, irreparably, through open borders immigration. Britain's socialist Labour government has further contributed to the mass immigration in order to shore up their power base and, through multiculturalism, to destroy the traditional foundations of British society. Melanie Phillips, in an article a few months ago, called Labour's acts nothing less than "treason." That said, both Labour and the "conservative" Tory party have been fully complicit in Britain's national suicide. And as recent as last month, the Tory leader, David Cameron, all but announced that he will not challenge Labour's coup in transferring British sovereignty to the EU without a promised referendum of the British voters. For the rank and file of Britain, neither major party offers actual representation. There is a near complete disconnect between the ruled and the rulers that British democracy, as currently constituted, is systemically unable to cure.
But the deal is done. We no longer can deal individually with the UK, France, Germany, or any of the other 24 EU members. All are now provinces of the EU - (and as an aside, the UK has actually been subdivided into two separate provinces). This is problematic on many fronts. First and foremost is the fact that this EU superstate is no more a legitimately elected democratic government than is the Ahmedinejad regime in Iran. And that is the tip of the iceberg, as Ms. McNamara, quoted at the top of this post, explained in her testimony to Congress:
The Lisbon Treaty was born from the twice rejected European Constitution, which was voted down in public referenda held in France and Holland in 2005. The Lisbon Treaty itself was rejected in a referendum held in Ireland in 2008, until Dublin was forced into holding a second referendum in October 2009. Ireland's EU Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy stated that if the Lisbon Treaty had been put to a public vote across the European Union, it would have been rejected by 95 percent of EU member states.
In one of the biggest acts of political betrayal in modern British history, the Labour Party denied the British public a long-promised referendum on the Treaty, despite overwhelming support for a public plebiscite. The widespread lack of public support and legitimacy suffered by this Treaty should be of concern to all institutions who uphold the democratic values of openness, honesty, rule of law and transparency.
As with past EU treaties, one specific policy area has been heralded as critical to further European integration. The Single European Act brought about the Single Market and the Maastricht Treaty instituted the single European currency. Undoubtedly, the major success of the Lisbon Treaty will be the EU's power-grab of foreign and defense policy, which is vital to realizing the EU's ambition of becoming the world's first supranational superstate.
The EU boasts that the Lisbon Treaty compels member states to speak with a single voice on external relations, and with a single legal personality Brussels will now sign international agreements on behalf of all member states. The Treaty formally abolishes the EU's pillar structure that provided for nation states to maintain the lead role in foreign affairs. Brussels' elites are claiming to finally have one telephone line to Europe.
All of this may sound enticing to the United States, which has long called for Europe to shoulder a greater share of the burden for global security. However, it is worth considering what has taken place to date as a forewarning of what is to come.
Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the EU already had an extensive sanctions arsenal through the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) but has repeatedly chosen not to use them. The EU has consistently frustrated the prospect of tougher sanctions against Iran, and has acted, in the words of Joschka Fischer, as a "protective shield" for Tehran against the United States. The EU even rolled out the red carpet for brutal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe in 2007, officially suspending its own travel ban to welcome him to Lisbon. In Afghanistan, the EU has been nothing more than a bit-part player with a police training mission criticized by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly as too small, underfunded, slow to deploy, inflexible, and largely restricted to Kabul. . . .
The Lisbon Treaty's ability to rein in its members from taking independent action should also concern Washington. Under the Lisbon Treaty, EU member states are now required to consult the other members before undertaking international action and to ensure that their decisions are in line with EU interests. Giving the EU the ability to supersede the autonomy of its member states in areas of foreign policy--such as the decision to join the United States in military action--will seriously impair the ability of America's allies in Europe to stand alongside the United States where and when they choose to do so. It will see America isolated and facing hostility from an organization which is designed to serve as a counterweight to American "hyperpower."
The Lisbon Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War. It erodes the legal sovereignty of European nation-states and hands power to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and foreign-service officers far removed from member states. It duplicates NATO's role and function and decouples America from Europe, killing the concept of indivisible security which has kept the peace in Europe for 60 years.
The institutional and political constraints imposed by the Lisbon Treaty will severely limit Britain's ability to build international alliances and independently determine its foreign policy. The biggest damage would be done to Britain's enduring alliance with the United States. . . .
Further, the imposition of qualified majority voting in 40 new areas represents a significant loss of sovereignty for member states, and a removal of Britain's ability to block the most egregious aspects of EU policy. For example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully removed the EU's policy commitment to free and undistorted competition from the Lisbon Treaty. Sarkozy did not even attempt to hide his intention in doing so: "The word 'protection' is no longer a taboo," he said. The EU has already been described by the International Herald Tribune as the "global antitrust regulator." The Lisbon Treaty confirms the EU's move away from the Anglo-American free market economic model, toward a statist sclerotic Rhineland model.
It is vital that the United States recognize the value in dealing with its enduring allies on a bilateral level. On issues of foreign affairs, defense, security, justice, and home affairs -- including counterterrorism cooperation and intelligence sharing -- bilateral relations are especially important to the U.S. However, in its desire to create a United States of Europe, the EU has pursued policies which downgrade the possibility of traditional alliance-building by the United States. Replacing individual European allies with a single EU Foreign Minister means inevitably, even if unintentionally, American interests will lose in the discussions that matter most. . . .
Europe doesn't need a constitution. The European Union is not the United States of Europe. The EU is a grouping of 27 nation-states, each with its own culture, language, heritage, and national interests. The EU works best as an economic market that facilitates the free movement of goods, services, and people. It is far less successful as a political entity that tries to force its member states to conform to an artificial common identity. The Lisbon Treaty will bring Europe much closer to the French vision of a protected, integrated European Union than the British vision of a free-trading, intergovernmental Europe. It will do huge damage to American interests in Europe; and contrary to any democratic tradition it is a self-amending treaty which can aggrandize power not explicitly conferred on it by the Treaties. As Lady Thatcher states in her seminal book Statecraft: "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.
That the citizens of these 27 countries have allowed this coup to occur after repeatedly voting against it utterly mystifies me. I do not understand - and likely never will - why there is not blood filling the streets over this.
I don't know if I agree with PM Thatcher. The suicidal policies of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd - embraced by the EU as a means to accrete power (and even written into their constitution as settled fact) - may in fact give the EU a run for its money in the competition the most "unnecessary and irrational" projects of our era.
I would add a further note. Everyone should study how the EU coup came about. It was incremental movements towards the accretion of power over a period of decades. I see exactly the same thing being attempted by the UN through their "balls to the wall" push to see international treaties signed on AGW that are to be administered by and through the UN. I am anything but a conspiracy theorist. That said, my belief is based on the obvious parallels between how the EU accomplished its anti-democratic coup, slowly accreting power over six decades, and how the UN is pushing AGW. These people are dangerous.
Accross the pond, the United Kingdom, as a sovereign nation, passed from history today. The Treaty of Lisbon, the EU's Constitution, has come into force, creating a single European government with sovereignty over all member states. This was not the will of the people of Europe, and certainly not the will of the people of Britain. Despite promises from Labour, Brits were never given a say. Instead, this anti-democratic socialist empire came about as the result of the world's slowest coup.
Dr. Richard North at EU Referendum provides a short obituary for his once great country:
From today, as the Lisbon treaty comes into force, we are no longer masters in our own house. Our prime minister, as a member of the European Council, is obligated under this new treaty to promote the aims and objectives of the European Union, over and above those of the UK, and is bound by the rules of the Union.
Of course, this will make no immediate difference. It simply renders de jure what has been de facto for several decades, but the coming into force of the treaty marks an important symbolic turning point. We are no longer an independent country, de jure. Our prime minister and his government are now working for an alien government, based in Brussels.
In effect, that makes us an occupied country, . . .
The worst of it is that, in the streets today, nothing will appear to have changed. Everything will look much the same as it did yesterday. In No 10, a man by the name of Gordon Brown will still be calling himself prime minister. In the Houses of Parliament, there will still be MPs and peers, and the Union Jack will adorn the building.
But everything is different. We are a satellite state of the Greater European Empire, ruled by a supreme government in Brussels. And things will stay different until we have regained our freedom. Until then, as I remarked before, we owe this government neither loyalty nor obedience. It is not our government. It is theirs. It is our enemy.
Obama's continues to weigh in on the side of Chavez ally President Zelaya in the Honduran Constitutional crisis that Zelaya created and that threatened Honduras's democracy. This from the Washington Post:
The Obama administration has signaled its support for democracy in Latin America by condemning the coup in Honduras, reducing military cooperation and joining with other countries in the hemisphere yesterday in a rare suspension of a nation from the Organization of American States.
The problem is that democracy was what Zelaya was attacking. There is always the danger that democracies will elect a person who does not respect democratic rule and will try use his power to end democracy. Hitler did this in Germany. Chavez has followed a similar model in Venezuela. And when the Honduran Supreme Court ruled that Zelaya had no power to fire the chief of the Armed Forces for refusing to distribute ballots and that Zelaya could not hold a referendum on constitutional term limits, it was Chavez who flew referendum ballots and voting equipment into Honduras so that the referendum could go forward.
Further, Obama's continued choice to refer to the removal of Zelaya from power as "illegal," a "terrible precedent" and a "coup" utterly mischaracterizes what happened in Honduras. This from a Bloomberg interview with the head of Honduras's Supreme Court, Justice Rsoalinda Cruz:
Honduras’s military acted under judicial orders in deposing President Manuel Zelaya, Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz said, rejecting the view of President Barack Obama and other leaders that he was toppled in a coup.
“The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” Cruz, 55, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.”
Cruz said the court issued a sealed arrest order for Zelaya on June 26, charging him with treason and abuse of power, among other offenses. Zelaya had repeatedly breached the constitution by pushing ahead with a vote about rewriting the nation’s charter that the court ruled illegal, and which opponents contend would have paved the way for a prohibited second term.
She compared Zelaya’s tactics, including his dismissal of the armed forces chief for obeying a court order to impound ballots to be used in the vote, with those of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“Some say it was not Zelaya but Chavez governing,” she said.
The arrest order she cited, approved unanimously by the court’s 15 justices, was released this afternoon along with documents pertaining to a secret investigation that went on for weeks under the high court’s supervision. . . .
As to the legalities of what Honduras did, as Fausta points out in her post on Honduras today, there is precedent in the U.S. for using the military to enforce court orders and. Further, Fausta quotes from The Corner: "Article 272 of the Honduran Constitution gives the military the power to remove a president even without a court order, if he seeks to violate the term limits prescribed in the Honduran Constitution."
Obama is ignoring all of these facts and attacking Honduras even as it seeks to act legally to protect its democratic system against a united power grab from Zelaya and Chavez. I cannot for the life of me fathom his motivation. Once again Obama is choosing the wrong side on a major foreign policy issue. As Krauthammer pointed out several days ago, if Obama finds himself on the side of Castro and Chavez on a foreign policy issue, then it's time to reevaluate. Unfortunately, whatever Obama's motivation, what we are seeing is that Obama feels comfortable in the company Castro, Chavez and their ilk.
The democraticaly elected President of Honduras, Zelaya, makes an extra-Constitutional power grab even after the highest Court in Honduras rules it illegal. On the eve of that act, he is replaced during the final six months of his administration. That wasn't a coup. That was defense of democracy and the rule of law. It was ordered by a properly convened Court. It was supported by a democraticaly elected legislature. And now Obama is joining hands with Chavez, Castro and other enemies of the U.S. and of democracy to condemn the actions in Honduras and reinstate the President?
If you ever needed evidence that Obama should never have been let near the oval office, this completes the mosaic we saw begin over a year ago with Georgia, when their democratic regime came under assault from Russia. Obama did not come out in support of democracy then, not until he took a lesson from McCain. The lesson didn't stick. Two weeks ago, as Iranians were being brutalized and murdered in the streets by a regime that had just engaged in massive vote fraud, Obama sat silent and then, despicably, played down the importance of the revolt. Now, when a country acts to preserve its laws and Constitution against an extra-Constitutional assault from a rabid socialist following the Chavez model, Obama supports the one who was seeking to violate the constitution. Obama really does see the U.S. as the problem. He has no understanding of the intrinsic importance of democracy and the rule of law. He has embraced moral equivalence and is unable to discriminate friend from foe.
History is important, and true, the U.S. has been involved in more than one coup in Central and South America. History should inform all of our acts - but it should never hold us hostage. As Hot Air notes, it may be that, in some incredibly naive burst of deeply opaque motivation, Obama is trying to repair America's image by coming out on the side of Chavez, Castro et al. If so, it is inexplicably foolish.
This is bad - and holds the potential to get much, much worse. The last president that even approached this level of dysfunction was James Earl Carter, and he gave the world the Iranian theocracy. I do not know what Obama's legacy will be, but I fully expect it to be far worse.
For Obama's future reference on such matters, Charles Krauthammer provides a rule of thumb:
Left wing Honduran President and Chavez ally Manuel Zelaya has been arrested by the military pursuant to a Court Order in a Constitutional crisis of his own making. The radical lefties - Chavez, Castro & the Obama administration - weigh in to support Zelaya.
President Zelya was, until today, in his second term as Honduran President. The Honduran Constitution provides a two term limit on the Presidency. Further, their Constitution provides a single method for amending the constitution - a 2/3rds vote of the legislative body in two consecutive regular annual sessions. Zelya had attempted to get around this by calling a country wide referendum. Honduras's highest Court ruled such a move illegal. Zelya continued ahead with the planned referendum, firing officials along the way who refused to take part in this extra-constitutional act. Accordingly, the Court ordered Zelya's arrest today and the military complied. At his own request, Zelya has been flown to Costa Rica. Fausta has the whole story.
Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.
"What was done here was a democratic act," Mr. Micheletti, who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon, said to an ovation. "Our constitution continues to be relevant, our democracy continues to live."
It should be noted that Micheletti was also a member of Zelya's party. Although the Constitutional issue provided the impetus for this act by the Courts and military, underlying it was concern with the role of Venezuela's clown dictator, Hugo Chavez, in Honduran politics. The WSJ quotes retired Honduran Gen. Daniel López Carballo, who "justified the move against the president, telling CNN that if the military hadn't acted, Mr. Chávez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy." The WSJ further notes that this was "a common view Sunday."
All of the rabidly left wing governments are attacking this arrest and the installation of a new President. Chavez, for one, is threatening war. The Obama administration has, according to the WSJ, "called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn't recognize any other leader." And Sec. of State Clinton goes one further. This from the WP:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the action taken against Honduras' president should be condemned by everyone.
She says Honduras must embrace the principles of democracy and respect constitutional order. . . .
It certainly sounds like the Hondurans played by the Constitutional rule book. Yet the U.S. seems to want to favor the Chavista's unconstitutional acts. You know, honest to God, watching Obama foreign policy is like watching the Keystone Cops.
Chatham House has done perhaps the definitive study on the vote in Iran's Presidential election, finding vote fraud pervasive. Obama continues to give the protesters in Iran short shrift while holding out hopes of still engaging what is now a wholly illegitimate theocracy in talks over its drive for nuclear weapons. And yesterday, as protesters took to the streets again, suffering beatings and murder at the blood stained hands of the butchers of Iran's theocracy, Obama chose that time to assure the theocracy that they were invited to attend 4th of July celebrations. That is not merely immoral, its obscene and so contrary to our interests as to be inexplicable.
The revolt against the regime continues with a general strike called for today. There are several possible ways that this may be resolved, two of which would involve the end of Iran's theocracy. That is the best case solution for both Iran and Western civilization, yet Obama seems utterly - and ominously - oblivious. Is he seriously considering throwing the theocracy a life line over the bodies of the dead protesters so that the regime acquiesces on paper to his major demands? Is he really that amoral, narcissistic and detached from reality? ___________________________________________
As a threshold matter, whether Iran's theocracy engaged in massive vote fraud should have been beyond question the moment the Supreme Guide announced final vote totals two hours after polls closed in an election done with tens of millions of paper ballots. Any lingering doubt should be answered by the analysis done of the election by Chatham House, a left wing British think tank. You can read the analysis here. They found overwhelming evidence of fraud based on publicized election results and prior voting patterns. One snippet of their conclusions:
In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.
Obama has yet to acknowledge that actual vote fraud took place, nor to make a statement that actually supports the protesters. While I supported Obama's initially restrained response because of the popular belief in Iran that the U.S. underminded the Iranian government in 1953 and has been behind plots since, that restraint should have ended as soon as it became clear that this was a grass roots protest and that there was blood in the streets.
Bill Kristol documents the time line of Obama's responses to the protests at the Weekly Standard. Instead of a robust response, we were at first treated to days of silence as riots swept Iran, then tepid statements that reached their nadir when Obama attempted to answer criticism by claiming that the two Iranian Presidential candidates, Ahemedinejad and Mousavi, were "two of a kind." I am still not sure if that was raw political cynicism at its worst or whether Obama was that clueless about what was occurring in Iran. One hopes the former, as the latter would mean that Obama is a naif who will cause tremendous damage to our country.
During the Presidential campaign, Mousavi, despite having revolutionary credentials exceeding those of Ahmedinejad, advocated real and fundamental reforms that utterly energized the Iranian populace. Iranian specialist Michael Ledeen took note, writing on July 10, two days before the election, that Mousavi had lit a firestorm in Iran by offering reforms, particularly in the area of women's rights, that threatened "the whole structure of the Khomeinist regime . . ."
So for our President not to grasp this and to try to sidestep criticism by claiming that Ahmedinejad and Mousavi were "two of a kind" was both a distortion of reality and, as the Mousavi camp noted in a letter to the President, highly destructive. As Mousavi's office put it, the President's "two of a kind comparison, was "a specially grave insult for those who are now fighting for democracy and freedom." Mousavi's office rightly assessed that Obama was being deliberately misleading as he held on to false hopes of a "dialogue with this regime."
The protests began almost as soon as Khameini announced the "divine assessment" of the electorate, supposedly voting for Aheminejad in a landslide. The repression followed almost immediately. Tens of thousands have been beaten, gassed, arrested and/or murdered, with the most barbaric symbol of the regime's brutality and illegitimacy being the murder of Neda, a woman peacefully standing in the street during a protest.
And yet Obama mutes his criticism because he does not want to be seen as "meddling" - a pretextual excuse at this point since the Iranian government is portraying this as an American directed plot regardless - and despite all of this, he continues his outreach to this illegitimate regime. According to WaPo, Obama is trying to "calibrate his comments to the mood of the hour" so as to "preserve the possibility of negotiating directly with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, links to terrorism, Afghanistan and other issues." Indeed, under this rubric, yesterday, while this bloody theocracy was involved in the beating and murder of its citizenry, Obama's State Dept. took the opportunity took the opportunity to assure the theocracy that they were still invited to attend 4th of July celebrations. That is not merely immoral, its obscene and so contrary to our interests as to be inexplicable.
And Obama is the person explaining to America that our moral compass is broken because the majority of us believe that its okay to waterboard a terrorist if it will save American lives? Obama's moral compass is the one broken. There could be no clearer demonstration that Obama sees the world through a reality distorting lens then his response to this protest and his continued reaching out to the butchers of Iran's theocracy.
The reasons to pressure the theocracy and support these protesters are crystal clear, both as a moral and a practical matter. Morally, who can possibly condone or do business with a regime that uses beatings, arrests, and indiscriminate murder to thwart the will of its people. As a practical matter, leading international pressure on Iran can only help the protesters. It matters not a wit to the theocracy, since they are claiming we are the cause of this uprising anyway . It is a transparent pretext that, with the facts established, can fool no one in or outside of Iran.
Further as to the practicalities, there was never any chance that talks with the theocracy would do anything to convince them to forgo their drive for a nuclear arsenal that existentially threatens the U.S., Europe and Israel. For one, what could Obama possibly offer this illegitimate regime moving ever closer to the edge of oblivion at the hands of its people? What could he offer that would make the regime give up a nuclear arsenal it had heretofore utterly refused even to discuss giving up?
The very fact of such talks would add legitimacy to this failed regime. But this gets far more insidious. Iran has rejected every carrot offered by the West, and every reasonable one has been tried multiple times - including the inane suggestions of Obama during the campaign. What could Obama possibly offer the theocracy in their final hours that would induce them to suddenly change their position (on paper at least, as to expect this regime to hold true to their written word is to ignore decades of history to the contrary). Literally the only things they could want that would be worth the price of agreement would be tools that would allow them to survive the challenge of their people. In other words, Obama would have to throw the protesters to the hyenas of tyranny to get any movement from the theocracy. That would be an abomination. Yet it is the only possible logical outcome of talks under the current circumstances.
The reality is that this revolt presents a golden opportunity to end the nuclear ambitions of the mad mullahs as much as it is an opportunity for the people of Iran to end their oppression. If this rebellion flowers into a successful revolution, it will change overnight the dynamic of the Middle East every bit as fundamentally as the founding of Israel changed the dynamic in 1948.
How to approach Iran in this instance has clear lessons from our recent history. The playbook on this was written in 1981. It does not involve playing nice, weinie roasts or conducting "business as usual." This from Sean Hannity via Gateway Pundit:
As I write this, Obama is holding a news conference. In his speech moments ago, he said this on Iran:
The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.
. . . [T]he United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran’s affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.
. . . Some in the Iranian government are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others outside of Iran of instigating protests over the elections. These accusations are patently false and absurd. They are an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran’s borders. This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won’t work anymore in Iran.
Good, but not yet a condemnation of blatant vote fraud, nor an endorsement of the goals of the protesters - human dignity and democracy. Further, in response to a question from Major Garret as to whether in fact Obama still was holding open the invitation to 4th of July celebrations to the theocracy, Obama hemmed and hawed, leaving the clear impression that the answer is yes. Just amazing.
It was relatively quiet in Iran yesterday. The government has achieved its immediate objective of largely clearing the streets and has further hardened its position. The Guardian Council announced today that they would not annul the election. The government is engaged in mass arrests, including today Mousavi's staff. That completes the arrest of essentially the "top two tiers" of leadership in Mousavi's organization. Additionally, the theocracy has "retired" the soccer players who wore green wrist bands in the match with South Korea. Yet all is not returning to normal. As I wrote here, major faultlines are becoming apparent in the regime.
Still Mousavi and another Presidential candidate, Kharoubi have called for a protest march tomorrow. The few protesters who have shown up on the streets yesterday and today are turning the tables and conducting hit and run attacks on the basij. Mousavi has called for a strike today, though it is not clear whether one has occurred and, if so, how widespread it is. This is a revolt still in its nascent stages. Coups can happen overnight, but grass roots revolutions do not. Indeed, the closest antecedent to what is happening in Iran today is the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah. It began in 1978 and played out over a year, going through periods of intense protests and violence followed by long lulls.
There is yet another way that this could end - a clerical coup that ends Khomeini's three decades old experiment in theocracy. It is not one that I imagined possible as there are too many clerics in the theocracy with vested interests, financial and otherwise, in the theocracy's survival. But it seems that is now under discussion in Qom at the highest levels of Iran's clerical establishment.
An article in the Saudi's Al Arabiya, "Iranian clerics seek supreme leader alternative," states that Rafanjani, president of the Guardian Council, is in Iran's home of Shia scholarship, Qom, holding "secret talks" with Iran's top Shia clerics about doing away with the position of Supreme Leader. Whether this would be a full scale retreat from theocracy or a partial one, going from a "Supreme Leader" to a "Supreme Council," is unclear.
As I have pointed out many times before, Khomeini's creation of the Iranian theocracy based on his personal theory of the veleyat-e-faqi (rule of the jurisprudent) is a complete reversal of over a millenia of Shia tradition holding that there should be separation between mosque and state. Khomeini's veleyat-e-faqi was not only a break from tradition, it was a radical and complete reversal.
When Khomeini established the theocracy thirty years ago, he split with many senior clerics in Qom who believed his experiment wrong-headed. And indeed, three decades later, Iran's theocracy is facing a popular revolt from a population many of whom have been secularized as a result of the misrule and massive corruption of the theocracy.
It is of important note that Rafsanjani's meetings have "included Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq." Sistani is an ardent traditionalist who believes in separation of mosque and state. His last contact with the Iran's theocracy was to snub Ahmedinejad when Ahmedinejad visited Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is also the most popular clerical figure in Iran. His presence in the meetings suggests that the options under consideration are far reaching. And indeed:
An option being considered is the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president following condemnation by the United States and other European nations for violence and human rights violations against unarmed protesters.
This could itself work a sea change to Iran - and it might just work. It would end with the the corrupt theocracy fading into the woodwork, the evil doers with their scalps still attached to their skulls, but out of power. It would likely overcome the IRGC without firing a shot because they too rely on the authority of the ayatollahs as their raisond'etre. At worst, it might kick off an active civil war between IRGC elements in a naked power grab and the rest of Iran's military. Steve Schippert has more on this at Threats Watch.
This is something that we can only support indirectly, just like the protests, by keeping the pressure on Iran's theocracy to allow democracy, free speech and rights of free association. But so long as we have a President who is seeing the world through a reality distorting lens and navigating with a broken moral compass, that will not come from him.
Ireland, the only country out of 27 given an opportunity to vote on the new EU Constitution, have just saved the other half billion people in Europe. They have pulled Britain's crown jewels out of the fire. They have voted no to the Treaty of Lisbon. One can only imagine the number of Guiness Stouts being poured across Britain and the rest of Europe today.
As I blogged below, Britain had three last chances to stay out of the EU. One was the a vote on ratification of the EU Constitution by the House of Lords, an institution radically altered by Labour PM Tony Blair when they were not seeing things his way. Unfortunately, but predictably, they voted with Labour to approve the transfer of Britain's sovereignty to the EU. A second chance was a law suit to force a referendum in Britain based on Labour's pre-election promises to the nation. That one is ongoing. The third chance was the Irish vote. And they have not disappointed.
The Irish just tossed a huge wrench into the anti-democratic wheels of EU. Every other nation in the EU was having the new Constitution imposed on them by their political class. Ireland was required by the terms of its Constitution to hold a referendum. And hold it they did. All 27 nations have to agree for the Treaty of Lisbon to come into effect and the new EU super-state to be born - at least according to existing treaties. There are without doubt thousands of socialists in Brussels right now combing every possible nuance of every EU treaty to see if there is a way around that.
The EU Referendum, whose raison d'etre has been to fight this EU coup in Britain, should have the first word on this:
Overall result so far: 53.6 - 46.4 for the "noes", but Corbett speaks (see bottom of this post) - and so does Barroso. Despite that, there is no way that the "colleagues" can get round this. Spin they might, but the fact is that, in the ONLY referendum on the treaty, the voters said Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! . . .
OPENING A NEW FRONT: As this is not the end, the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, a new front has been opened in the war. In a day or so there will be more about the BrugesGroupBlog and the thinking behind it.
What you will now hear is loud squealing from the direction of Brussels as the incredibly anti-democratic folks who are determined to make an EU super-state wholly irrespective of the wishes of Europe's citizens try and figure a way around this. And as the EU Referendum documents, it has already started:
UPDATE: Reuters is reporting that France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, is saying that an Irish "no" should not stop other member states ratifying the treaty. "The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," he told LCI television. "We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."
UPDATE: David Heathcoat-Amory says on BBC Radio 4 that the Conservatives should press for the UK ratification to be abandoned. Some chance!
UPDATE: Ahern says: "We're in uncharted waters." You bet!
UPDATE: The founder of Libertas, Declan Ganley, says: "The Irish people have rejected the Lisbon Treaty. "it is a great day for Irish democracy ... This is democracy in action ... and Europe needs to listen to the voice of the people." Ganley adds that Brian Cowen, "has a mandate to go back to Europe and do the best job possible".
Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins has said the likely "no" vote is a "huge rebuff to the political establishment" but a vindication of the rights of "tens of millions of workers" in the European Union. He believes the "no" side "won the argument", despite the fact that the main political parties and "big business" were in favour of the treaty. . . .
UPDATE: Poland's President Lech Kaczynski's office says he will still sign the treaty. "The president has already said the issue of ratification is a done deal," Mariusz Handzlik, head of the foreign affairs department in the president's office, told Reuters.
UPDATE: Andrew Duff, Lib-Dim leader says, "we cannot accept this result". Corbett on his blog says, "there are 26 other member states whose opinion matters too. It is inconceivable that all of the others will simply say 'too bad - one country has said no to the package as it stands, so let's forget reform and stick with the current system for evermore."
UPDATE: Deutsche Welle reports: "A feeling of gloom and uncertainty fell on Brussels on Friday after Ireland's justice minister said it appeared that the 'no' camp had pulled ahead in the referendum on the European Union's new reform treaty." The eurosceptics, meanwhile, have decamped to Kitty O'Shea's - yards from the commission building - drinking pints of Guiness while they hold an impromptu press conference.
UPDATE: EU commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is still calling on other members states to ratify the treaty. "I believe the treaty is alive and we should now try to find a solution," he says.
UPDATE: Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan says Ireland has lost influence in Europe. He was "very, very disappointed" with the outcome, adding: "I think it is a very sad day for this country and for Europe as well." It was a "serious matter for Ireland," he said, then declaring:"We have to accept the decision of the people… and that's democracy and I accept that." . . .
Read the entire post. This certainly ought to be a signal to Tory Leader David Cameron to finally get off the fence and start challenging this stealth coup being imposed on Britain. And hopefully it will put much more pressure on Labour and Gordon Brown to stop the ratification process.
We will give the last word on this to Brits At Their Best who say a very sincere "Thank You" to Ireland:
We think the Irish have said NO to the EU with gusto!
They alone, three million of the half a billion people in the 27 nations of the European Union, had a democratic vote on the undemocratic EU constitution.
Read the entire post. The war is hardly over. But think of this as Dunkirk. The socialists are not defeated, but they just lost their best opportunity to destroy the allies.
The title of this post is from a memorable quote from the late Sen. Lloyd Bensten, eviscerating Dan Quayle during a VP debate. But it could equally be the words of James Piereson, the author of a book on JFK, Camelot and the Cultural Revoltion, as he responds to those on the left who equate Barack Obama to JFK. Indeed, as he notes, the progressives of today have nothing in common with the hawkish liberals of old. ________________________________________________________
This from Mr. Pierson in an e-mail posted at the NRO:
. . . Theodore Sorenson, JFK's close aide and speechwriter, has said recently that Barack Obama is the natural successor to President Kennedy because of his skills as a speaker and his message of "hope and change." This idea has been augmented by endorsements of Obama by Ted and Caroline Kennedy.
. . . From the standpoint of ideas and philosophy, there is little in Obama to remind us of JFK. Kennedy was a firm cold warrior who believed in the American mission in the world. His memorable inaugural address was entirely about foreign policy and the cause of liberty. Kennedy, in fact, tried to run to the right of Richard Nixon in 1960, blaming the Eisenhower administration for a "missile gap," the embarrassment of the Castro revolution next door, and the downing of a reconnaissance aircraft over the Soviet Union in May, 1960. He brought up comparisons to Chamberlain, Munich, and "appeasement." On the domestic front, while JFK is viewed as a hero of the civil rights movement, in fact he came around gradually to support a civil rights bill in 1963. Kennedy was in fact a cautious politician, unwilling to get too far ahead of public opinion on this critical issue.
The reason that JFK left such a powerful imprint on the liberal movement had little to do with his actual policies, which were generally centrist. President Kennedy’s legacy was more cultural than directly political: he spoke beautifully, (thanks to Sorenson) he drew on images from literature and classical culture, he was a young president in the midst of a burgeoning youth culture, he was a highly attractive man, he had a beautiful family, he was rich, he was an author, he hung around with Harvard professors and Hollywood stars and starlets. He practiced the old politics but with a decidedly new cultural approach. Lyndon Johnson was much more of a liberal in terms of policy, but his cultural persona (in contrast to Kennedy's) was of the old school.
This latter fact is the reason that some observers seen Sen Obama as the new incarnation of JFK. He seems culturally to be of an avante garde, like JFK, though his policies internationally and domestically have little in common with the late President's. This says less about Sen Obama or about JFK than about contemporary liberalism, which is far more concerned with style and one's posture toward the world than about actual policies.
Read the entire post. Just to add, in his three years in office, JFK oversaw a vast expansion of our military involvement in Vietnam, the attempt at a coup in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, repeated failed assassination attempts of Fidel Castro, and the assassination of South Vietnam's President, Diem. It would be hard to find a more complete contrast between two individuals on foreign policy than Obama and JFK.
The radical Khomeinist theocracy - which has been at war with the US since 1979 - has been the single most destabilizing force in the Middle East since its inception. As Sec of Defense Gates said recently:
Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.
More proof of that today from this report at Fox News:
A court in Azerbaijan on Monday convicted 15 people accused of ties with Iranian intelligence of crimes including treason and plotting to seize power, and handed down lengthy prison sentences.
The convictions, which a lawyer for the alleged ringleader said were unfounded, highlighted concern in the secular ex-Soviet republic over the influence of neighboring Iran. The defendants were arrested in January on suspicion of crimes including plotting to forcefully seize power, treason, organizing a criminal group, possession of weapons and drugs, and counterfeiting. Authorities who announced the arrests did not mention Iran. The suspects had been on trial behind closed doors for two months.
The alleged leader, Said Dadashbeyli, and two others were sentenced to 14 years in prison, while the rest received sentences ranging from two years to 13, the Court for Grave Crimes said.
Dadashbeyli's lawyer, Elchin Gambarov, denied the defendants were connected with Iranian intelligence, saying they opposed Iranian influence.
He also denied media reports that portrayed the defendants as Islamic extremists, saying they adhered to "an Islam that is close to democratic values."
. . . The oil-rich Caspian Sea nation has increasingly been caught in a tug-of-war for influence between the secular, democratic West and Iran, its large southern neighbor. Rumblings of Shiite political Islam have been particularly noticeable in the more conservative regions that border Iran. . . .
Read the entire article. Somehow, all of this seems to have passed by the drafters of the NIE, who have suggested that if we only allow Iran to realize its aspirations for "regional influence," they may not build an atomic weapon. It would seem that Iran’s goals for regional influence are defined by their desire to export their Khomeinist revolution.
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