Saturday, June 18, 2005
The Sorry Bunch - Listen and learn from our enemies.
In a single day last week, in various media — the liberal International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post — the following information appeared.
A Syrian smuggler of jihadists to Iraq, one Abu Ibrahim, was interviewed. He made the following revealing statements:
(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")
(2) that September 11 was "a great day"
(3) that two weeks after the attack, a celebration was held in his rural Syrian community celebrating the mass murder, and thereafter continued twice-weekly
(4) that Syrian officials attended such festivities, funded by Saudi money with public slogans that read, "The People ...Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All"
(5) that despite denials, Syrian police aided the jihadists in their efforts to hound out Western influence: They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia, or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs."
(6) that the Syrian government does not hesitate to work with Islamists ("beards and epaulets were in one trench together")
(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."
(8) That once Syria felt U.S. pressure, there was some temporary cosmetic change of heart: "The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadists' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard."
(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"
Note how in this one Washington Post story how almost every one of our Western myths promulgated by the antiwar Left is shattered by a candid jihadist himself. First, there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq. Indeed, celebrations were spontaneous immediately after September 11 on the mere news of slaughtered Americans.
We have been told that jihadists and secular Baathists have little in common, and that only our war brought them together. But like the Japanese and Nazis in World War II, autocrat and jihadist have shared interests in hating liberal democracies — and well before our response they were jointly fanning efforts against the United States.
Note too the passive-aggressive nature of Syria that gives into rather than resists American pressures. When the U.S. threatens, it backsteps; when we relent, it goes back on the offensive.
Americans worry that captured terrorists have proper Korans and are allowed traditional grooming. Arab jailors immediately shave the traditional beards of those they arrest.
Saudi Arabia claims to be our ally, but its Wahhabi roots are so deep and its oil revenues so vast that much of its multilayered ruling class could not cease its support for jihad even if it wished. We forget that their 'war against terror' is a war against Muslim terrorists who attack Muslims — not necessarily against Muslim terrorists ("militants") who attack Westerners.
Some claim that anti-Semitism is an exaggerated charge, yet the jihadists blame the Jews, not just Israel, instinctively.
Westerners also worry about collateral damage; the terrorist Ibrahim confesses that military operatives routinely count on falsely claiming civilian casualties.
For more of this sorry bunch, the same day I turned to the International Herald Tribune. Its headline ran: "For Saudis' promised liberalizations, a snail's pace." The story followed about the routine persecution of any who questioned government autocracy and Wahhabist Islam. We learned once more that there is no freedom of any kind in Saudi Arabia and that dissidents are routinely jailed for their mere protests (sentences ranging from six to nine years).
More interestingly, Arab reformers, few though they are, most certainly don't blame the West for the misery of the Middle East. Instead, they confess that the Arab world itself is parasitic: "Western governments, reformers say, should question why curriculums are so weak and why Arab societies contribute nothing to the world's scientific or technological advancements."
In the words of one persecuted novelist Turki Al-Hamad, "The problem is not from the outside, the problem is from ourselves; if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change."
In the United States, we are told that we have created terrorists. Saudi liberals would beg to differ. So the theologian Al-Maleky confesses, "If Wahhabism doesn't revise itself, it will produce more terrorism."
This is all so strange.
Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.
Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture. Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.
The constant? A global distrust of Western-style liberalism and preference for deductive absolutism. So burn down a mosque in Zimbabwe, murder innocent Palestinians in Bethlehem in 2002, arrest Christians in Saudi Arabia, or slaughter Africans in Dafur, and both the Western Left and the Middle East's hard Right won't say a word. No such violence resonates with America's diverse critics as much as a false story of a flushed Koran — precisely because the gripe is not about the lives of real people, but the psychological hurts, angst, and warped ideology of those who in their various ways don't like the United States.
I will pass over quickly the day's other sorry stories, but they were equally revealing. From Karachi, we learn that Pakistani Shiite Muslims burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. You see, a Sunni suicide bomber had just blown up 19 Pakistani Shia. In reaction to that attack, the Shiite mob went out and killed six employees of a business owned and operated by a Pakistani Muslim. Follow the logic of the Middle East: When you are angry at your own for their murdering, and are too weak or terrified to do anything about it, go out and destroy anything remotely American-affiliated.
I read most of these news accounts last week while sitting in a Starbucks (Dunkin' Donuts next door) on the eastern side of the Brandenburg Gate in the former Communist sector of Berlin — watching a parade of protestors damn the militarism of the United States (a.k.a. "Top Gun") while a nearby TV blared accounts of a recent German mystery on state-run television, whose subtext was that the United States intelligence planned September 11 and blamed it on the poor jihadists.
So there we have a snapshot of 60 years of American efforts to rid Germany of Hitler, pour in Marshall Plan money, keep 300 Soviet divisions out of Germany, and convince skeptical British, French, and Russians to support reunification: In response, welcome in American popular culture as you damn the United States in the conveniently abstract.
A war that cannot be won entirely on the battlefield most certainly can be lost entirely off it — especially when an ailing Western liberal society is harder on its own democratic culture than it is on fascist Islamic fundamentalism.
So unhinged have we become that if an American policymaker calls for democracy and reform in the Middle East, then he is likely to echo the aspirations of jailed and persecuted Arab reformers. But if he says Islamic fascism is either none of our business or that we lack the wisdom or morality to pass judgment on the pathologies of a traditional tribal society, then the jihadist and the police state — and our own Western Left — approve.
The problem the administration faces is not entirely a military one: Our armed forces continue to perform heroically and selflessly under nearly impossible conditions of global scrutiny and hypercriticism. There has not been an attack on the U.S. since 9/11 — despite carnage in Madrid and over 1,000 slaughtered in Russia by various Islamic terrorists during the same period.
Rather, the American public is tiring of the Middle East, its hypocrisy and whiny logic — and to such a degree that it sometimes unfortunately doesn't make distinctions for the Iraqi democratic government or other Arab reformers, but rather is slowly coming to believe the entire region is ungracious, hopeless, and not worth another American soldier or dollar.
This is a dangerous trend. Despite murderous Syrian terrorists, dictatorial Saudis, crazy Pakistanis, and triangulating European allies, and after so many tragic setbacks, we are close to creating lasting democratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq — states that are influencing the entire region and ending the old calculus of Middle Eastern terror. We are winning even as we are told we are losing. But the key is that the American people need to be told — honestly and daily — how and why those successes came about and must continue before it sours on the entire sorry bunch.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
In a single day last week, in various media — the liberal International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post — the following information appeared.
A Syrian smuggler of jihadists to Iraq, one Abu Ibrahim, was interviewed. He made the following revealing statements:
(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")
(2) that September 11 was "a great day"
(3) that two weeks after the attack, a celebration was held in his rural Syrian community celebrating the mass murder, and thereafter continued twice-weekly
(4) that Syrian officials attended such festivities, funded by Saudi money with public slogans that read, "The People ...Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All"
(5) that despite denials, Syrian police aided the jihadists in their efforts to hound out Western influence: They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia, or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs."
(6) that the Syrian government does not hesitate to work with Islamists ("beards and epaulets were in one trench together")
(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."
(8) That once Syria felt U.S. pressure, there was some temporary cosmetic change of heart: "The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadists' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard."
(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"
Note how in this one Washington Post story how almost every one of our Western myths promulgated by the antiwar Left is shattered by a candid jihadist himself. First, there was always radical Islamic anti-American hatred that preceded Iraq. Indeed, celebrations were spontaneous immediately after September 11 on the mere news of slaughtered Americans.
We have been told that jihadists and secular Baathists have little in common, and that only our war brought them together. But like the Japanese and Nazis in World War II, autocrat and jihadist have shared interests in hating liberal democracies — and well before our response they were jointly fanning efforts against the United States.
Note too the passive-aggressive nature of Syria that gives into rather than resists American pressures. When the U.S. threatens, it backsteps; when we relent, it goes back on the offensive.
Americans worry that captured terrorists have proper Korans and are allowed traditional grooming. Arab jailors immediately shave the traditional beards of those they arrest.
Saudi Arabia claims to be our ally, but its Wahhabi roots are so deep and its oil revenues so vast that much of its multilayered ruling class could not cease its support for jihad even if it wished. We forget that their 'war against terror' is a war against Muslim terrorists who attack Muslims — not necessarily against Muslim terrorists ("militants") who attack Westerners.
Some claim that anti-Semitism is an exaggerated charge, yet the jihadists blame the Jews, not just Israel, instinctively.
Westerners also worry about collateral damage; the terrorist Ibrahim confesses that military operatives routinely count on falsely claiming civilian casualties.
For more of this sorry bunch, the same day I turned to the International Herald Tribune. Its headline ran: "For Saudis' promised liberalizations, a snail's pace." The story followed about the routine persecution of any who questioned government autocracy and Wahhabist Islam. We learned once more that there is no freedom of any kind in Saudi Arabia and that dissidents are routinely jailed for their mere protests (sentences ranging from six to nine years).
More interestingly, Arab reformers, few though they are, most certainly don't blame the West for the misery of the Middle East. Instead, they confess that the Arab world itself is parasitic: "Western governments, reformers say, should question why curriculums are so weak and why Arab societies contribute nothing to the world's scientific or technological advancements."
In the words of one persecuted novelist Turki Al-Hamad, "The problem is not from the outside, the problem is from ourselves; if we don't change ourselves, nothing will change."
In the United States, we are told that we have created terrorists. Saudi liberals would beg to differ. So the theologian Al-Maleky confesses, "If Wahhabism doesn't revise itself, it will produce more terrorism."
This is all so strange.
Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.
Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture. Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.
The constant? A global distrust of Western-style liberalism and preference for deductive absolutism. So burn down a mosque in Zimbabwe, murder innocent Palestinians in Bethlehem in 2002, arrest Christians in Saudi Arabia, or slaughter Africans in Dafur, and both the Western Left and the Middle East's hard Right won't say a word. No such violence resonates with America's diverse critics as much as a false story of a flushed Koran — precisely because the gripe is not about the lives of real people, but the psychological hurts, angst, and warped ideology of those who in their various ways don't like the United States.
I will pass over quickly the day's other sorry stories, but they were equally revealing. From Karachi, we learn that Pakistani Shiite Muslims burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. You see, a Sunni suicide bomber had just blown up 19 Pakistani Shia. In reaction to that attack, the Shiite mob went out and killed six employees of a business owned and operated by a Pakistani Muslim. Follow the logic of the Middle East: When you are angry at your own for their murdering, and are too weak or terrified to do anything about it, go out and destroy anything remotely American-affiliated.
I read most of these news accounts last week while sitting in a Starbucks (Dunkin' Donuts next door) on the eastern side of the Brandenburg Gate in the former Communist sector of Berlin — watching a parade of protestors damn the militarism of the United States (a.k.a. "Top Gun") while a nearby TV blared accounts of a recent German mystery on state-run television, whose subtext was that the United States intelligence planned September 11 and blamed it on the poor jihadists.
So there we have a snapshot of 60 years of American efforts to rid Germany of Hitler, pour in Marshall Plan money, keep 300 Soviet divisions out of Germany, and convince skeptical British, French, and Russians to support reunification: In response, welcome in American popular culture as you damn the United States in the conveniently abstract.
A war that cannot be won entirely on the battlefield most certainly can be lost entirely off it — especially when an ailing Western liberal society is harder on its own democratic culture than it is on fascist Islamic fundamentalism.
So unhinged have we become that if an American policymaker calls for democracy and reform in the Middle East, then he is likely to echo the aspirations of jailed and persecuted Arab reformers. But if he says Islamic fascism is either none of our business or that we lack the wisdom or morality to pass judgment on the pathologies of a traditional tribal society, then the jihadist and the police state — and our own Western Left — approve.
The problem the administration faces is not entirely a military one: Our armed forces continue to perform heroically and selflessly under nearly impossible conditions of global scrutiny and hypercriticism. There has not been an attack on the U.S. since 9/11 — despite carnage in Madrid and over 1,000 slaughtered in Russia by various Islamic terrorists during the same period.
Rather, the American public is tiring of the Middle East, its hypocrisy and whiny logic — and to such a degree that it sometimes unfortunately doesn't make distinctions for the Iraqi democratic government or other Arab reformers, but rather is slowly coming to believe the entire region is ungracious, hopeless, and not worth another American soldier or dollar.
This is a dangerous trend. Despite murderous Syrian terrorists, dictatorial Saudis, crazy Pakistanis, and triangulating European allies, and after so many tragic setbacks, we are close to creating lasting democratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq — states that are influencing the entire region and ending the old calculus of Middle Eastern terror. We are winning even as we are told we are losing. But the key is that the American people need to be told — honestly and daily — how and why those successes came about and must continue before it sours on the entire sorry bunch.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
Friday, June 17, 2005
This blog is surfing the net with a vengeance, looking for other statements from worl leaders on the cause of liberty and freedom in Iran. None have yet come to my attention besides this one:
Statement by the President on Iranian Elections
In recent months, the cause of freedom has made enormous gains in the broader Middle East. Millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq defied terrorists to cast their ballots in free elections. Palestinians voted for a new president who rejects violence and is working for democratic reform, and the people of Lebanon reclaimed their sovereignty and are now voting for new leadership. Across the Middle East, hopeful change is taking place. People are claiming their liberty. And as a tide of freedom sweeps this region, it will also come eventually to Iran.
The Iranian people are heirs to a great civilization - and they deserve a government that honors their ideals and unleashes their talent and creativity. Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.
The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record. Iran's rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.
The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest - and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around. The Iranian people deserve a truly free and democratic society with a vibrant free press that informs the public and ensures transparency. They deserve freedom of assembly, so Iranians can gather and press for reform and a peaceful, loyal opposition can keep the government in check. They deserve a free economy that delivers opportunity and prosperity and economic independence from the state. They deserve an independent judiciary that will guarantee the rule of law and ensure equal justice for all Iranians. And they deserve a system that guarantees religious freedom, so that they can build a society in which compassion and tolerance prevail.
Today, the Iranian regime denies all these rights. It shuts down independent newspapers and websites and jails those who dare to challenge the corrupt system. It brutalizes its people and denies them their liberty.
America believes in the independence and territorial integrity of Iran. America believes in the right of the Iranian people to make their own decisions and determine their own future. America believes that freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul. And to the Iranian people, I say: As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you.
Statement by the President on Iranian Elections
In recent months, the cause of freedom has made enormous gains in the broader Middle East. Millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq defied terrorists to cast their ballots in free elections. Palestinians voted for a new president who rejects violence and is working for democratic reform, and the people of Lebanon reclaimed their sovereignty and are now voting for new leadership. Across the Middle East, hopeful change is taking place. People are claiming their liberty. And as a tide of freedom sweeps this region, it will also come eventually to Iran.
The Iranian people are heirs to a great civilization - and they deserve a government that honors their ideals and unleashes their talent and creativity. Today, Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world. Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy.
The June 17th presidential elections are sadly consistent with this oppressive record. Iran's rulers denied more than a thousand people who put themselves forward as candidates, including popular reformers and women who have done so much for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.
The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest - and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around. The Iranian people deserve a truly free and democratic society with a vibrant free press that informs the public and ensures transparency. They deserve freedom of assembly, so Iranians can gather and press for reform and a peaceful, loyal opposition can keep the government in check. They deserve a free economy that delivers opportunity and prosperity and economic independence from the state. They deserve an independent judiciary that will guarantee the rule of law and ensure equal justice for all Iranians. And they deserve a system that guarantees religious freedom, so that they can build a society in which compassion and tolerance prevail.
Today, the Iranian regime denies all these rights. It shuts down independent newspapers and websites and jails those who dare to challenge the corrupt system. It brutalizes its people and denies them their liberty.
America believes in the independence and territorial integrity of Iran. America believes in the right of the Iranian people to make their own decisions and determine their own future. America believes that freedom is the birthright and deep desire of every human soul. And to the Iranian people, I say: As you stand for your own liberty, the people of America stand with you.
When Is an Election Not an Election?Iranian farce.
It's symptomatic of the failure of strategic vision from which our chatterers and leaders currently suffer, that so many words and so much energy are being wasted on the immense charade that goes under the name of Iranian "elections." Any normal person familiar with the Islamic republic knows that these are not elections at all, and for extras have nothing to do with the future of the Iranian nation. They are a mise en scene, an entertainment, a comic opera staged for our benefit. The purpose of the charade, pure and simple, is to deter us from supporting the forces of democratic revolution in Iran.
Ask yourself two simple questions. Does the president of Iran hold any real power? Has any "candidate" (of which there are eight) been chosen by anyone other than the supreme leader and his cronies?
No, and no. Whoever is "elected" (and you can be sure that the outcome is already known, millions of "officially cast" ballots having been manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast) will be an instrument of the mullahcracy. The sole "issue" in the farce is how best to convince George W. Bush that it would be wrong for the United States to press on with support for the forces of freedom in Iran, because that would "force" the mullahs to crack down (which they are doing already). The slogan for the post-electoral period will be "give reform a chance." And you can be sure that the useful idiots among us, from the Amanpour woman at CNN to the Haass man at the Council on Foreign Relations, have already prepared their sermons and their slogans, ranging from "hopes for a new relationship" to "a rare opportunity for an historic dialogue," and other such slogans.
We have heard these slogans before, applied to other tyrannies shortly before they attacked democratic societies. When Stalin ruled the Soviet empire, great attention was paid to elections to the Politburo, as if the Molotovs and the Berias were independent actors, capable of moderating or liberalizing or reforming the Soviet Union. When the Fuhrer ruled the Third Reich, even British diplomats confidently announced that Hitler had "no further territorial ambitions," and was, after all, surrounded by reasonable industrialist types like Goehring. And who can forget — actually, who can remember — the surge of empathy when it was announced that comrade Andropov — until yesterday the boss of the KGB and now the new Soviet dictator — liked jazz?
Sensible folks have learned that it isn't about personality, it's about freedom and tyranny. All the totalitarian regimes of the last century staged elections, and they were all meaningless, because the structure of the state concentrated power in the two hands of the dictator, and exercised through the single party.
The president has had this right for a long time, and I'm delighted to report that, three days ago, the State Department spokesman delivered an eloquent condemnation of the fraudulent exercise about to take place in Tehran. And I am also pleased that Human Rights Watch has started to pay attention to the grave condition of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji. Perhaps the editorialists at the New York Times and the Washington Post could tear themselves away from the imagined horrors of Guantanamo and denounce the systematic oppression of nearly 70 million Iranians.
It is unlikely this will happen, both because any journalist in Iran who reports fully on the nature of the regime risks expulsion or — as in the celebrated case of the female Canadian journalist who got too close to the truth — death. And because anything that makes the Iranian regime "look bad" automatically makes W "look good," and most journalists don't want that.
Who's going to win, you ask? I don't know. For months I have assumed that Rafsanjani would walk away with it. But when Supreme Leader Khamenei ostentatiously overruled his henchmen, permitting a nasty pseudo reformer by the name of Moin to run, I have wondered if Khamenei knew something I didn't. Rafsanjani's sins — from gross corruption to mass murder — are fairly well known, and there are probably limits beyond which even a British foreign secretary or a French foreign minister will not go to make nice to the mullahs. President Rafsanjani would test those limits. Moin, on the other hand, isn't so well known, he's got that lean and hungry look instead of Rafsanjani's portliness, and he might be more convincing as he plays that most difficult role: the moderate face of islamofascism.
I haven't checked the morning line recently, and I certainly wouldn't bet the family oil well on it, but a small bet on Moin might be a good hedge. On the nose, of course (have you seen the pictures?).— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
It's symptomatic of the failure of strategic vision from which our chatterers and leaders currently suffer, that so many words and so much energy are being wasted on the immense charade that goes under the name of Iranian "elections." Any normal person familiar with the Islamic republic knows that these are not elections at all, and for extras have nothing to do with the future of the Iranian nation. They are a mise en scene, an entertainment, a comic opera staged for our benefit. The purpose of the charade, pure and simple, is to deter us from supporting the forces of democratic revolution in Iran.
Ask yourself two simple questions. Does the president of Iran hold any real power? Has any "candidate" (of which there are eight) been chosen by anyone other than the supreme leader and his cronies?
No, and no. Whoever is "elected" (and you can be sure that the outcome is already known, millions of "officially cast" ballots having been manufactured weeks ago, to ensure the right guy wins and that enough votes will have been cast) will be an instrument of the mullahcracy. The sole "issue" in the farce is how best to convince George W. Bush that it would be wrong for the United States to press on with support for the forces of freedom in Iran, because that would "force" the mullahs to crack down (which they are doing already). The slogan for the post-electoral period will be "give reform a chance." And you can be sure that the useful idiots among us, from the Amanpour woman at CNN to the Haass man at the Council on Foreign Relations, have already prepared their sermons and their slogans, ranging from "hopes for a new relationship" to "a rare opportunity for an historic dialogue," and other such slogans.
We have heard these slogans before, applied to other tyrannies shortly before they attacked democratic societies. When Stalin ruled the Soviet empire, great attention was paid to elections to the Politburo, as if the Molotovs and the Berias were independent actors, capable of moderating or liberalizing or reforming the Soviet Union. When the Fuhrer ruled the Third Reich, even British diplomats confidently announced that Hitler had "no further territorial ambitions," and was, after all, surrounded by reasonable industrialist types like Goehring. And who can forget — actually, who can remember — the surge of empathy when it was announced that comrade Andropov — until yesterday the boss of the KGB and now the new Soviet dictator — liked jazz?
Sensible folks have learned that it isn't about personality, it's about freedom and tyranny. All the totalitarian regimes of the last century staged elections, and they were all meaningless, because the structure of the state concentrated power in the two hands of the dictator, and exercised through the single party.
The president has had this right for a long time, and I'm delighted to report that, three days ago, the State Department spokesman delivered an eloquent condemnation of the fraudulent exercise about to take place in Tehran. And I am also pleased that Human Rights Watch has started to pay attention to the grave condition of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji. Perhaps the editorialists at the New York Times and the Washington Post could tear themselves away from the imagined horrors of Guantanamo and denounce the systematic oppression of nearly 70 million Iranians.
It is unlikely this will happen, both because any journalist in Iran who reports fully on the nature of the regime risks expulsion or — as in the celebrated case of the female Canadian journalist who got too close to the truth — death. And because anything that makes the Iranian regime "look bad" automatically makes W "look good," and most journalists don't want that.
Who's going to win, you ask? I don't know. For months I have assumed that Rafsanjani would walk away with it. But when Supreme Leader Khamenei ostentatiously overruled his henchmen, permitting a nasty pseudo reformer by the name of Moin to run, I have wondered if Khamenei knew something I didn't. Rafsanjani's sins — from gross corruption to mass murder — are fairly well known, and there are probably limits beyond which even a British foreign secretary or a French foreign minister will not go to make nice to the mullahs. President Rafsanjani would test those limits. Moin, on the other hand, isn't so well known, he's got that lean and hungry look instead of Rafsanjani's portliness, and he might be more convincing as he plays that most difficult role: the moderate face of islamofascism.
I haven't checked the morning line recently, and I certainly wouldn't bet the family oil well on it, but a small bet on Moin might be a good hedge. On the nose, of course (have you seen the pictures?).— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
KOFI FOR FOOD:
NEW YORK -- The United Nations panel investigating the Iraq oil-for-food scandal said yesterday it is "urgently reviewing" a 1998 memo in which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears to endorse a bid by the Swiss firm Cotecna to monitor the program. If accurate, the memo would contradict a claim by Mr. Annan that he did not know about the bid by Cotecna at the time -- a potential conflict of interest because Cotecna employed Mr. Annan's son, Kojo Annan. It would also appear to contradict a preliminary report by the investigating panel, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, that Mr. Annan did not improperly influence the contract being awarded to Cotecna. U.N. officials said yesterday that they had reviewed logs of Mr. Annan's contacts and had found no record of a Dec. 4, 1998, meeting in Paris between Mr. Annan and Michael Wilson, a former Cotecna vice president and longtime Annan family friend. "There is no mention in that trip record of any exchange with Michael Wilson," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, who noted that his office had contacted Mr. Annan, as well as the coordinator of the trip where the meeting is said to have taken place. Mr. Eckhard said there is no entry of a telephone conversation, formal meeting or informal contact with the former Cotecna executive. According to the memo, first reported in yesterday's editions of the New York Times, Cotecna officials had "brief discussions with the SG and his entourage" and said they were told that "we could count on their support." Mr. Eckhard said it was not possible that Mr. Annan, who has consistently denied discussing the Cotecna contract with his son or company officials, could have endorsed the deal. "That could not have come from the secretary-general because he had no knowledge that Cotecna was a contender for that contract," Mr. Eckhard told reporters yesterday. Mr. Annan has consistently denied knowing that Cotecna, which at the time employed his son, was bidding for the contract to inspect and verify merchandise imported by Iraq under the humanitarian program. The Geneva-based company won the nearly $10 million contract in late 1998, and investigators charge that it continued to pay the younger Mr. Annan long after he told his father that he had broken all ties with the company. The memo, provided to the newspaper by an unnamed consultant, was written by Mr. Wilson after a meeting with Mr. Annan and his entourage. The newspaper quoted the consultant as saying it was discovered in files by administrators searching for documents related to the tangled circumstances of Cotecna's payments to Kojo Annan. The meeting, if there was one, appears to have occurred on the sidelines of a summit of Francophone African leaders in Paris. Mr. Volcker's U.N.-sanctioned Independent Inquiry Committee said it is "urgently reviewing newly disclosed information concerning possible links between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and representatives of Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss contractor based in Geneva that bid for contracts under the Oil-for-Food Program while the Secretary-General's son, Kojo Annan, was a consultant for the company." The panel, which is aiming to wrap up its $20 million investigation by late summer, said yesterday it will conduct additional investigations based on the "new information." Mr. Annan has acknowledged meeting Mr. Wilson and Cotecna Chairman Robert Massey around that time, after initially telling investigators that he had no contact with the firm. The Paris meeting is detailed in the Volcker committee's preliminary report released on March 29. That report said Mr. Annan had not exercised "affirmative or improper influence" in awarding Cotecna the contract, but criticized his overall management of the $69 billion oil-for-food program. Panel investigators have also repeatedly criticized Kojo Annan for refusing to disclose Cotecna payments and answer questions from the panel.
NEW YORK -- The United Nations panel investigating the Iraq oil-for-food scandal said yesterday it is "urgently reviewing" a 1998 memo in which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appears to endorse a bid by the Swiss firm Cotecna to monitor the program. If accurate, the memo would contradict a claim by Mr. Annan that he did not know about the bid by Cotecna at the time -- a potential conflict of interest because Cotecna employed Mr. Annan's son, Kojo Annan. It would also appear to contradict a preliminary report by the investigating panel, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, that Mr. Annan did not improperly influence the contract being awarded to Cotecna. U.N. officials said yesterday that they had reviewed logs of Mr. Annan's contacts and had found no record of a Dec. 4, 1998, meeting in Paris between Mr. Annan and Michael Wilson, a former Cotecna vice president and longtime Annan family friend. "There is no mention in that trip record of any exchange with Michael Wilson," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard, who noted that his office had contacted Mr. Annan, as well as the coordinator of the trip where the meeting is said to have taken place. Mr. Eckhard said there is no entry of a telephone conversation, formal meeting or informal contact with the former Cotecna executive. According to the memo, first reported in yesterday's editions of the New York Times, Cotecna officials had "brief discussions with the SG and his entourage" and said they were told that "we could count on their support." Mr. Eckhard said it was not possible that Mr. Annan, who has consistently denied discussing the Cotecna contract with his son or company officials, could have endorsed the deal. "That could not have come from the secretary-general because he had no knowledge that Cotecna was a contender for that contract," Mr. Eckhard told reporters yesterday. Mr. Annan has consistently denied knowing that Cotecna, which at the time employed his son, was bidding for the contract to inspect and verify merchandise imported by Iraq under the humanitarian program. The Geneva-based company won the nearly $10 million contract in late 1998, and investigators charge that it continued to pay the younger Mr. Annan long after he told his father that he had broken all ties with the company. The memo, provided to the newspaper by an unnamed consultant, was written by Mr. Wilson after a meeting with Mr. Annan and his entourage. The newspaper quoted the consultant as saying it was discovered in files by administrators searching for documents related to the tangled circumstances of Cotecna's payments to Kojo Annan. The meeting, if there was one, appears to have occurred on the sidelines of a summit of Francophone African leaders in Paris. Mr. Volcker's U.N.-sanctioned Independent Inquiry Committee said it is "urgently reviewing newly disclosed information concerning possible links between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and representatives of Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss contractor based in Geneva that bid for contracts under the Oil-for-Food Program while the Secretary-General's son, Kojo Annan, was a consultant for the company." The panel, which is aiming to wrap up its $20 million investigation by late summer, said yesterday it will conduct additional investigations based on the "new information." Mr. Annan has acknowledged meeting Mr. Wilson and Cotecna Chairman Robert Massey around that time, after initially telling investigators that he had no contact with the firm. The Paris meeting is detailed in the Volcker committee's preliminary report released on March 29. That report said Mr. Annan had not exercised "affirmative or improper influence" in awarding Cotecna the contract, but criticized his overall management of the $69 billion oil-for-food program. Panel investigators have also repeatedly criticized Kojo Annan for refusing to disclose Cotecna payments and answer questions from the panel.
'Old Europe' must reform or crumble, Blair warns leaders
By David Charter, Philip Webster and Charles Bremner
TONY BLAIR warned France last night that the European Union would never regain the confidence of its citizens unless President Chirac agreed to far-reaching changes in its priorities and direction.
That meant substantial reductions in the money the EU channelled to French and other farmers, and an end to the traditional dominance of the Franco-German alliance.
Mr Blair’s message, delivered after tough talks with M Chirac in Paris before the Brussels summit tomorrow, was intended to direct attention away from Britain’s £3 billion budget rebate and back towards France’s rejection of the EU constitution. “If we want to reconnect people with the idea of the EU we have to set a new political direction and reconnect the priorities which the people have with the way we spend money,” Mr Blair said.
In a break with tradition that showed how cool relations have become, Mr Blair and M Chirac did not hold a joint press conference. At a solo press conference at the British Embassy, Mr Blair insisted that the rebate could not be removed without a fundamental reappraisal of all EU spending priorities, particularly spending on agriculture. The rebate would not be given away for a “slapped-together deal that does not work”.
He has allies in this — it has emerged that the Netherlands and Sweden are backing his calls for a shake-up of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Mr Blair disagrees with M Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, over whether the 2002 deal that set CAP spending to 2013 can be reopened. He says that it is impossible to envisage the reappraisal he wants without touching the CAP, and senior British ministers are pointing out that under Paragraph 12 of the 2002 agreement the CAP settlement can be reopened as part of the current budget negotiations.
After an hour of discussion with M Chirac, Mr Blair admitted “sharp” disagreements over the budget and sought to shift attention back to France’s rejection of the constitution.
“The response should be to concentrate on issues of how we spend European money. The response should be to reconnect the priorities of the EU with the priorities of the people of Europe,” Mr Blair said.
He demanded changes to the way that the EU is run. “It’s got to be run on a different basis. We need a strong Europe, but it’s got to be a strong Europe of the right kind. The FrancoGerman relationship is very important but it cannot comprise all of what now drives Europe forward,” he said.
M Chirac was in no mood to back down. A spokesman said that he told the Prime Minister: “In the situation of political crisis now affecting Europe, it is important that we do not add financial difficulties.”
Last night Mr Blair took his message directly to the French people, talking mainly in French on the evening news on TF1, the most-watched television channel. He defended the British economic system — held up as the unattractive future of Europe during the French referendum campaign. “We have tried to find another way to combine social solidarity with an economy that is very competitive,” he said.
Mr Blair’s interview will have helped to soften Britain’s image as a country of cruel capitalism. His appearance in stumbling French was described by one woman viewer as “pure Hugh Grant, all apologies and self-deprecation”.
José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, last night appealed for a “pause” in the ratification process of the EU constitution, to avoid further rejections of the treaty. “The best solution . . . may be prudence. I would advise at least a pause, a reflection, because there is actually a risk there,” Senhor Barroso said on French television, alluding to the danger that other countries might follow French and Dutch voters in rejecting the constitution.
By David Charter, Philip Webster and Charles Bremner
TONY BLAIR warned France last night that the European Union would never regain the confidence of its citizens unless President Chirac agreed to far-reaching changes in its priorities and direction.
That meant substantial reductions in the money the EU channelled to French and other farmers, and an end to the traditional dominance of the Franco-German alliance.
Mr Blair’s message, delivered after tough talks with M Chirac in Paris before the Brussels summit tomorrow, was intended to direct attention away from Britain’s £3 billion budget rebate and back towards France’s rejection of the EU constitution. “If we want to reconnect people with the idea of the EU we have to set a new political direction and reconnect the priorities which the people have with the way we spend money,” Mr Blair said.
In a break with tradition that showed how cool relations have become, Mr Blair and M Chirac did not hold a joint press conference. At a solo press conference at the British Embassy, Mr Blair insisted that the rebate could not be removed without a fundamental reappraisal of all EU spending priorities, particularly spending on agriculture. The rebate would not be given away for a “slapped-together deal that does not work”.
He has allies in this — it has emerged that the Netherlands and Sweden are backing his calls for a shake-up of the Common Agricultural Policy.
Mr Blair disagrees with M Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, over whether the 2002 deal that set CAP spending to 2013 can be reopened. He says that it is impossible to envisage the reappraisal he wants without touching the CAP, and senior British ministers are pointing out that under Paragraph 12 of the 2002 agreement the CAP settlement can be reopened as part of the current budget negotiations.
After an hour of discussion with M Chirac, Mr Blair admitted “sharp” disagreements over the budget and sought to shift attention back to France’s rejection of the constitution.
“The response should be to concentrate on issues of how we spend European money. The response should be to reconnect the priorities of the EU with the priorities of the people of Europe,” Mr Blair said.
He demanded changes to the way that the EU is run. “It’s got to be run on a different basis. We need a strong Europe, but it’s got to be a strong Europe of the right kind. The FrancoGerman relationship is very important but it cannot comprise all of what now drives Europe forward,” he said.
M Chirac was in no mood to back down. A spokesman said that he told the Prime Minister: “In the situation of political crisis now affecting Europe, it is important that we do not add financial difficulties.”
Last night Mr Blair took his message directly to the French people, talking mainly in French on the evening news on TF1, the most-watched television channel. He defended the British economic system — held up as the unattractive future of Europe during the French referendum campaign. “We have tried to find another way to combine social solidarity with an economy that is very competitive,” he said.
Mr Blair’s interview will have helped to soften Britain’s image as a country of cruel capitalism. His appearance in stumbling French was described by one woman viewer as “pure Hugh Grant, all apologies and self-deprecation”.
José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, last night appealed for a “pause” in the ratification process of the EU constitution, to avoid further rejections of the treaty. “The best solution . . . may be prudence. I would advise at least a pause, a reflection, because there is actually a risk there,” Senhor Barroso said on French television, alluding to the danger that other countries might follow French and Dutch voters in rejecting the constitution.
