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t seems like only yesterday we were looking at nominee #3 for this year’s C-SM “Most Ridiculous” award (actually, it was Tuesday), and here we are again so soon with #4 – a second nominated article from the nearly always ridiculous Gary Kamiya of Salon.

Kamiya easily checks off all the requirements for consideration for this august (if ridiculous) honor:  He is a serious writer, writing about a serious subject in all seriousness, yet he goes far beyond the sublime, settling heavily into the imbecilic.

His piece, Night of the Living Neocons, The shameless fools whose Iraq folly empowered Iran’s hard-liners are back, smearing Obama as an appeaser, is typical Kamiya: Blind to all the Left’s faults, while accusing the right of exactly those faults … oh, and being utterly unable to forgive or forget George W. Bush, who he sees as the primordial presidential ooze from which all things evil evolved.

Let’s start with a rundown of the derrogatory words he uses for neocons:  Rasputin-like, unhinged, disgraced, braying, raving, unreconstructed, lunatic, Visigothic, idiotic, ludicrous, paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks, supposedly “idealistic,” and cavalier.  A little later on he belittles neocons for belittling Obama.  The pot is allowed to call the kettle black, but the kettle gets no such rights in Kamiyaland.

As the piece’s title hints, Kamiya believes it’s Bush who created Iran’s hard-line regime, and that Obama is right to appease use carefully considered words, because just three words – axis of evil – are behind all that’s wrong in Iran.

That these neoconservative pundits have the gall to talk about Iran at all, let alone pose as defenders of the Iranian people, would be stunning if it were not so familiar. For it was their own policies that were largely responsible for the rise of the hard-liners in Iran. … And of those U.S. actions, none was more consequential than the very “axis of evil” statement that the neocons are now tumbling over each other to glorify.

Kamiya quotes Islamic affairs scholar Malise Ruthvin:

“The build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq provided them with strong public support. In the local council elections of February 2003 — one month before the invasion — conservatives regained nearly all the seats they had lost in 1999 at the peak of the reformist movement. This was not a rigged poll: for unlike the parliamentary and presidential races, candidates for municipal elections are not vetted for ‘Islamic suitability.’ The right-wing victory was sealed two years later with Ahmadinejad’s election as president.”

It’s simplistic to blame the results of elections in Iran on the actions of America. Economic issues at home and tribal alliances and conflicts also matter greatly, and whatever America does or does not do is grossly distorted by the state-controlled Iranian media – which didn’t cover Obama’s Cairo speech and reported his recent milquetoast comments as if they were incendiary. Be that as it may, haven’t events borne out the fact that Iran is indeed evil? It has ruthlessly repressed its people, called for the destruction of free, Democratic Israel, tried to strip Lebanon of democracy, killed our soldiers, and thumbed its nose at the world.

Oh, and we need not mention Jimmy Carter’s contribution to the mess in Iran, or Bill Clinton’s.  We need not mention that Democratic presidents have had their visions for progress in the Middle East destroyed by Islamists just as much as Republican ones have.  Kamiya just won’t talk about that – he just is interest in the failure of Republicans.

Kamiya than attacks the Iraq war, familiar ground for him indeed:

And, of course, the entire Iraq war greatly empowered Iran by removing its greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, and shifting power to Iran’s coreligionist Shiites.

He ignores the fact that the war also created a functioning (for better or worse) Muslim democracy next door, something the Tehraniacs have fought tooth and nail since the neocons first started working towards bringing it about. We didn’t remove Hussein and leave a vacuum; we did it and left a form of government that threatens Tehran to its core. How many of the demonstrates on the Iranian streets are there because they saw fair elections happen next door, and they want them now, too? Most of them!

At this point, Kamiya must have stopped writing and fired up a big, fat doobie because what follows appears to be some kind of drug-induced hallucination:

One of the things the neocons would like the rest of us to forget is that they were the most ardent proponents of invading the very country whose people they now piously claim to support. Back in the heady “Mission Accomplished” days, the neocon slogan was “Wimps go to Baghdad — real men go to Tehran.” Leaving aside the fact that the neocons were a bunch of paper-pushing pundits ensconced in comfy right-wing think tanks who never “went” anywhere that didn’t have room service, the point is that they have been burning to attack Iran for years — an attack that would inevitably result in the slaughter of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iranians. Yes, some of them claimed that invading Iran would be a cakewalk, that the long-suffering Iranian people would welcome Americans as liberators, and so on. (Some of them even managed to keep a straight face while saying this.) And if you believe them, there’s a bridge in Fallujah I’d like to sell you.

Have any of you ever heard any of us call for any sort of ground attack on Iran that would slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians? I sure haven’t, although I’ve heard plenty of calls for limited attacks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Have any of you heard that “Real men go to Tehran” slogan? I sure haven’t. Have any of you heard anyone idiotic to say attacking Iran would be a cakewalk? To the contrary, I’ve heard neocons explain that Iraq was selected as a target because a war with Iran would be exponentially more difficult. Look at all the straw dogs barking at the neocons!

As if you haven’t guessed by now, the next target of Kamiya’s angst is Israel:

Beneath their talk of spreading freedom and democracy, the neocons have always hated and feared Iran. There are several reasons for this, including the state of enmity between Iran and America spurred by the Khomeini revolution and the 1979 hostage crisis, but the main one is that Iran is Israel’s most dangerous enemy. Removing Iran as a threat to Israel is the main strategic goal of the neoconservatives, and that goal is far more important to them than “liberating” the Iranian people.

That’s it. Really. There’s no mention of holocaust denial or pledges to wipe Israel off the map. There’s no mention that Israel is a democracy. And there is certainly no mention of the regional destabilization a nuclear Iran would present, or the threat to America posed by Iran providing terrorists with nuclear weapons or materials for dirty bombs. It’s just that we have this curious strategic goal to protect Israel.

The most tragic and pathetic statement by Kamiya follows.

For the truth is that the neocons’ supposed “idealism” was and is in fact a fig leaf covering utter, cavalier indifference to the massive death and destruction their reckless — but so “principled” — policies caused.

He apparently has avoided any contact with information about what happened in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos after his side won and we ended all that neocon silliness about domino theories in Southeast Asia. Millions died, were tortured or forced into state-sanctioned slavery, and that’s all just hunky dory with Kamiya – just don’t ask him to consider how hundreds of thousands were executed by Hussein, but that doesn’t happen any more … well, it happens in Iran, but not Iraq.

And what of Obama’s position in all this?  Why, it’s just brilliant, of course!

The situation in Iran is a tricky moving target, but so far, Obama has played it exactly right on. He has expressed deep concern about the election and the regime’s violent response to peaceful demonstrators, but added that “it is not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations to be seen as meddling — the U.S. president, meddling in Iranian elections.”

Since when is calling for fair elections “meddling?”  Since when is sympathizing with freedom-loving people “meddling.”  I know meddling when I see it:  Owning 60 percent of GM or canning its CEO; that’s meddling. But Kamiya is convinced in a meddle-free foreign policy:

It should be amply clear by now that America’s ability to influence events in the Middle East is severely limited. Indeed, as the Bush years showed, U.S. actions in the region tend to result in the exact opposite of their intended consequences.

He then turns around and says:

The success of the March 14 Alliance in Lebanon, a major victory for the U.S., is widely attributed to the “Obama effect.”

Which is it? Is he saying the Cairo speech led to the riots in Iran as the exact opposite of its intended consequences?  Or is he saying that Obama should speak very strongly in favor of democracy in Iran because there’s an “Obama effect” that can really make things happen?  I am so confused.  But that’s something that happens frequently when I consider the ridiculous things said by Liberals.

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e learn this morning from the left-wing mag The Nation that the man who won the election in Iran is the “radical right” candidate Mah – I’m in the - moud - for re-election Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “Two-to-one margins make me glad”).  That comes as a surprise to me; I always saw him as a leftist.

After all, he likes a big central government upon which the people are dependent, and he’s a fan of government control of the economy rather than a free market.  Here in America, that would define the leftist Obama, not any “radical right” party.

I’m backed up by Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, and Patrick Doherty of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, who report the results of their May 11-20 polling in Iran in today’s WaPo. (The main thrust of their article is that their polling proves Ahmadinejad won the election by a two-to-one margin, fairly or not.  Yes, they say they prove it, but that’s them talking, not me.)

Ballen and Doherty also found that university students and the highest income Iranians were the only groups largely opposed to Ahmadinejad.  University students in Tehran have been fighting for less government control for years, and you know those rich people – voting conservative from polling stations set up in their country clubs.

The pollsters also found that a free press and free elections were the top priorities of Iranians, followed by a free economy.  The powers that be in Iran support none of the above – but does that make them radical rightists?  Here in America, leftists support the Fairness Doctrine to repress a free press, the radical left-wing ACORN group is rewarded by Obama with millions in grants for its efforts to suppress free elections, and we’re left shaking our heads and saying “What free market?” after just six months of Obama.

The evidence is clear.  It’s a radical left-winger who’s back in power in Iran.  Maybe that’ll give Ahmadinejad and Obama something to talk about if our president ever succeeds in grovelling his way into talks with his counterpart in Tehran.

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uropeans must be a happy bunch this morning because a team of Russian and American “experts” have determined that their continent needs no missile shield, and those apocalyptic Iranians and their full-bore nuclear development programs pose no risk to Europeans from Budapest to Bath.

The experts’ first finding, reported by WaPo is that the planned defense won’t be effective against the type of missiles the Iranians are likely to use. The second: It’ll be more than five years before the Iranians would be read to nuke Europe.  Two questions:  How long will it take to install the missile defense.  And why not hire some other experts to use those five years to make the system effective against the kind of missiles the Iranians would use.

The experts then analyzed the Iranians’ crappy missiles, derived from crappy North Korean knock-offs of seriously outdated Russian sub-launched missiles, and conclude it would take six to eight years for the Iranians to get a launchable bomb and put it on a missile capable of hitting a European city.  So no missile defense is needed, natch!  Especially since the experts don’t think any U.S. system could knock out an Iranian – North Korean – Russian missile dating from the 1950s.

But the entire discussion is moot because of the experts’ final point: that the Iranians won’t nuke Europe anyway because it will ensure their self-destruction.  How odd.  Saner nations than Iran - the US and Russia – pursued or feared missile defense systems, even though the doctrine of mutually assured destruction was firmly in place between them, so why should the Europeans not have an insurance policy against Iranian lunacy?

I don’t think the Iranians are likely to try to hit Europe with a missile because so many other scenarios make more sense, not the least of which is simply providing a nuclear umbrella for its operatives in the Middle East.  But if I were a European, I’d be more comfortable staking my future on a real missile defense than the opinions of experts.

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Perhaps the most important story of the week for U.S. foreign policy was Ayatolla Ali Khamenei’s swift, rude rejection of President Hope’s latest “I can talk ‘em into it” overture towards Tehran, but it was hardly the only big news.  The need to make money robbed me of time to blog on these two other recent news items:

Fuoad Ajami in the WSJ: 

The opponents of the American project in Iraq did not know much about Afghanistan. They despaired of Iraq’s sectarianism and ethnic fragmentation, but those pale in comparison with the tribalism and ethnic complications of Afghanistan. If you had your fill with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites of Iraq, welcome to the warring histories of the Pashtuns, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, and the Hazara Shiites of Afghanistan.

In their disdain for that Iraq project, the Democrats and the liberal left had insisted that Iraq was an artificial state put together by colonial fiat, and that it was a fool’s errand to try to make it whole and intact. Now in Afghanistan, we are in the quintessential world of banditry and tribalism, a political culture that has abhorred and resisted central authority.

I’ve said it ever since Obama rejected Iran and embraced Afghanistan that his position had nothing to do with commitment to or understanding of Afghanistan; it was only a pose so we could appear tough while still being for defeat in Iran.  Ajami’s piece gives depth and confirmation to my position, and points out that Obama has yet to commit to Afghanistan and lay out his objectives – a position that strengthens the Taliban every day.

Also in the WSJ, John Bolton:

While President Obama’s unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn’t really this week’s big news related to the Islamic Republic. Far more important was that a senior defector — Iran’s former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari — disclosed Tehran’s financing of Syria’s nuclear weapons program. That program’s centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran’s active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to “negotiate” with Britain, France and Germany (the “EU-3″). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran’s nuclear deceptions.

That the Pyongyang-Damascus-Tehran nuclear axis went undetected and unacknowledged for so long is an intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. It represents a plain unwillingness to allow hard truths to overcome well-entrenched policy views disguised as intelligence findings.

Our intelligence capabilities in Greater Jihadistan remain a pale shadow of our Cold War capabilities, even though the threat is real and far more complex.  Does anyone think our capabilities will improve under an Obama administration that has put a political hack in charge of the CIA? 

Bolton thinks Obama may well succeed in sparking some talks with Tehran, but that Tehran will use the talks just as they have used the EU-3 (Britain, France, Germany) talks: A good way to cover up and stall, while the Mullahs continue to pursue their dream of nuclear jihad.

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Who’s To Blame For Mexico Drug Wars? Us!

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iberals’ knees are still jerking. It’s not enough that they blame America for the jihadists’ war on the West and for persistent poverty in post-colonial countries (not even our colonies, mind you!) but now it’s our fault that 6,000 Mexicans have died in the last year in the Mexican drug wars. So says LA Times columnist Tim Rutten:

America’s political decisions to treat drug addiction as a crime rather than a public health problem, and to legalize AK-47s but not pot, fuel an incipient civil war in Mexico. …

Mexico’s drug war could escalate into widespread civil strife with incalculable consequences for the U.S. — and, particularly, the Southwest. And we’re kidding ourselves if we insist that this is a problem that can be wholly solved south of the border, or quarantined there if events spiral out of control. It’s impossible to know how close either the United States or Mexico is to God, but geographically, culturally and economically, they’ve never been closer to one another.

If Americans really are concerned about the horrific toll inflicted by Mexico’s narco-gangsters, we need to ask some tough questions about our own cultural and political delusions.

The “close to God” reference is a reference to the corrupt Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who famously said Mexico suffered because it was located “so far from God and so near the United States,” and Rutten foolishly chooses to believe the blood-soaked despot than rational thought.

Canada is located just as close to the U.S. as Mexico, yet we don’t see poverty, corruption, a human flood across our border or drug wars on the northern fronteir – so why to we have to assume the mantle of guilt.  The same drug and gun laws exist in Detroit and Minneapolis as exist in San Diego and El Paso.

Does Rutten really think that if we legalized pot tomorrow and banned whatever guns he wants stripped from law-abiding citizens that the violence in Mexico would stop?  Of course not.  But neither does he care. Like other liberals, he is only interested in using whatever excuse he can come up with to recast America in his vision. Continue Reading »

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inds of change are blowing, and Mah- I’m in the -moud for victory Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “I think Barack can be had”) has  his nose in the air, sniffing intently.  He likes what the breeze is blowing his way:

Without mentioning President Obama by name, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday repeatedly referred to those who want to bring “change,” a word used often in Obama’s election campaign, and seemed to indicate Iran would be looking to see whether there would be substantive differences in U.S. policy under Obama.

“We will wait patiently, listen to their words carefully, scrutinize their actions under a magnifier and if change happens truly and fundamentally, we will welcome that,” Ahmadinejad said, speaking to a crowd of thousands. (USA Today)

So is this a new sign that there is indeed hope for real change in US-Iran relations, that Obama’s much scoffed-at calls for talks with Iran might actually be a sane idea?  Given Ahmadinejad’s terms for change, I certainly don’t think so.

“Change means giving up support for the rootless, uncivilized, fabricated, murdering… Zionists and let the Palestinian nation decide its own destiny.”

Disparaging adjectives aside, there’s a problem with Mahmoud’s position here.  The trouble is, the Palestinian nation wants to decide its destiny and Israel’s, and their idea of Israel’s destiny sounds familiar:  Wipe them off the face of the earth.  Any Obama dialog with Iran had better state quickly that we won’t go along with that.

Then, as Iran spoils for war, fighting a barely clandestine war against us in Iraq, threatening transport in the Gulf, building nukes, Ahmadinejad defines change in U.S. military policy as he would like to see it:

“Change means putting an end to U.S. military presence in (different spots of) the world.”

Nifty.  Why do I get the feeling that you just can’t talk to this guy?

And finally, Ahmadinejad smells something he doesn’t like, and he wants Obama to change it right away:

“The change will be to apologize to the Iranian nation and try to compensate for their dark records and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation.”

He wants us to pay retribution for having supported the Shah.  How do we compute the price if the Iranian people are far more poor and repressed now than they were under the Shah?  How do we compute the price if the Shah was preceded by British and Russian imperialism and the either brutally repressive or lamely ineffective Qajar Persian heads of state? (Have you forgotten that the Russians actually seized Iranian territory and marched on Tehran after the 1917 Communist revolution?)  And are we to offset the price with their payments to us for seizure of our embassy and diplomats, and for the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian-supplied weapons and Iranian-trained jihadists?

Ahmadinejad’s latest rant comes in direct response to Obama’s Al-Arabia interview Tuesday, in which the prez said, “”it is important for us to be willing to talk to Iran, to express very clearly where our differences are, but where there are potential avenues for progress.”  How much progress can there be if the Iranian starting position is for us to abandon Israel, withdraw our military from pretty much everywhere and pay them reparations?

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obert Kaplan at Atlantic calls the current offensive a war against the new Iranian empire. That’s a scary thought and and rings true to me it’s a worthy read:

Israel has just embarked on a land invasion of the Gaza Strip after a week of aerial bombing. Gaza is bordered by Egypt, and was under Egyptian military control from 1949 through 1967. And yet in a startling rebuke to geography and recent history—and in testimony to the sheer power of audacity and of ideas—the mullahs in Teheran hold more sway in Gaza today than does the tired, Brezhnevite regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Gaza constitutes the western edge of Iran’s veritable new empire, cartographically akin to the ancient Persian one, that now stretches all the way to western Afghanistan, where Kabul holds no sway and which is under Iranian economic domination.

If you read that carefully, particularly the “all the way to western Afghanistan” line, then we fighting on the other front of this war.

It seems to me the most effective tactic in this campaign is to do all we can to keep the price of oil down. A few more years of economic crumbling in Tehran must might spell the end for the Mullahs and the collapse of the naescent and nasty empire.

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at-tipee extraordinaire Jim, true to his form of finding the most interesting stuff wherevre it might be lurking, just sent over this:

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jumped aboard the wild speculators regarding the Somali pirate-hijacked Iranian merchant vessel Iran Deyanat (here, here, here).  I particularly liked the rumor that it was a dirty bomb, destined for Israel.

Fortunately, it appears to have all been a huge www hyperventilation.  Mea culpa.  Reports the always handy Information Dissemination:

Well, the MV Iran Deyanat popped up in the news again today, this time making port in Rotterdam. Not only was the ship deemed unsuspecting of any problems, but it underwent a normal inspection without issue and according to this news report, is tied up to bouy 29 without the necessity of extra security as the ship waits to unload cargo.

Hopefully this will allow the never ending conspiracy theory surrounding the ship die.

I.D. agrees that the speculation wasn’t ill-founded, pointing out that these rumor-feeding facts:

Pirates turned down a $2 million dollar ransom at one point, the ship had an unusually long official transit log, Reuters reported on dead people and other health related problems of those exposed to the ship, and official government folks in Somalia threw plenty of gas on the fire.

Plus, I wouldn’t put something as nasty as a ship-borne dirty bomb beyond the Iranians.  Anyone odd enough to spiritedly deny the holocaust while aggressively calling for a new one provides plenty of evidence  of being a wee tad meshuggah.

hat-tip: Jim

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Mysteries Of Evolution

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ere’s a story that might give Darwin pause:

Amoebas glide toward their prey with the help of a protein switch that controls a molecular compass, biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered.

Their finding, recently detailed in the journal Current Biology, is important because the same molecular switch is shared by humans and other vertebrates to help immune cells locate the sites of infections.

The amoeba Dictyostelium finds bacteria by scent and moves toward its meal by assembling a molecular motor on its leading edge. The active form of a protein called Ras sets off a cascade of signals to start up that motor, but what controlled Ras was unknown.

Amoeba have a sense of smell? They know how to build a molecular motor? Darwin certainly never suspected a single-cell critter could have all that!

It requires more faith to believe such a complex system can evolve out of the primordial mud than it takes to believe the amoeba is part of God’s design. Continue Reading »

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