Right Wing Nut House

Does the fact that the coup is in the interests of the United States even matter to our president?

One less Chavez stooge - a designation that everyone agrees is correct and was the proximate cause of the coup to begin with - is very much in the interests of the United States in Central America. And yet here’s our president, hopping on the international politically correct bandwagon to condemn it.

Obama does not see the clown Chavez as a threat despite his attempts to meddle in Colombian politics by supporting narco terrorists to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. Nor does Chavez exporting his “revolution” to other countries where his influence is magnified and where his stooges try to emulate his anti-democratic policies seem to bother  our commander in chief. And I guess the fact that the Lebanese terrorist group Hezb’allah setting up training camps in Venezuela has no connection to the geopolitical alliance between Chavez, Syria’s Assad, and the Ayatollah’s in Iran.

In fact, after swearing off “interferring” in Iran where demonstrators were getting shot, beaten, and axed to death, our clueless Chief Hypocrite worked frantically behind the scenes to save Honduran President Zelaya’s job, thus interferring on the wrong side while making himself out a liar on Iran.

Paul Kiernan, Jose de Cordoba, and Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal report on the attempt by the White House to save Chavez’s stooge:

The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.

The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.

The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn’t understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro posed.

Retired Honduran Gen. Daniel López Carballo justified the move against the president, telling CNN that if the military hadn’t acted, Mr. Chávez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy. It was a common view Sunday. “An official who was subverting legality and had violated the Constitution was removed,” wrote Mariela Colindres, a 21-year-old Honduran who is studying at Indiana University, in an email. “Everything was done legally and this does not imply a rupture in the constitutional order.”

First of all, it should be pointed out at the outset that the Honduran military has already handed power back to the civilian authorities - an almost unprecedented action in these banana republic coup d’etats. The Honduran legislature named Roberto Micheletti, the nation’s Congressional leader and member of Zelaya’s own political party to replace the ousted Chavezista - another almost unprecedented act.

Further, the military was acting under the orders of the Honduran Supreme Court although they apparently exceeded their authority by whisking him away to Venezuela. And finally, it was Zelaya’s actions in violating the constitution, ignoring a ruling by the Supreme Court that any referendum be put on would be illegal, and the universal belief in Congress, the military, and much of the populace that eventually, he would little more than a stand in for Chavez if he was allowed to carry out his illegal referendum that sealed Zelaya’s fate.

And yet our president, acting contrary to American interests, chose the route of least resistance and condemned what many Hondurans believe was a restoration of constitutional order. The president will find himself in familiar territory with this condemnation - Castro, Ortega, and other Latin American leftist thugs also condemned the coup. Maybe someone could look it up but when was the last time we were on the same side with Cuba on any international issue?

Way to go Barry. Like, we should listen to the Castros when they complain about democratic procedure not being followed?

This was always the biggest risk in electing Barack Obama president with his mushy headed belief that we must subsume American interests to those of the rest of the world so that we could be popular again. That he would fail to stand up for American interests when the chips were down should not surprise us. He said as much during the campaign and he is simply carrying through with that promise.

What will he do if Chavez decides to use the military he has purchased from Russia and China with his oil money to invade Honduras and re-install his stooge Zelaya? How could we possibly intervene when the president has gone on recrord agreeing with Chavez that what happened was “illegal?”

Chavez has proven in the past to be more bluster than anything but he is so unpredictable, such action would not be impossible.

Then what, Mr. President? When Honduran democrats are crying for help, will you dismiss them as you have dismissed the protestors in Iran? It would seem Obama would have little choice now that he has sided with the enemies of democracy in the region.

The world Obama is creating - one with a supine and pliant America who bows to the wishes of every thug, every dictator who struts across the stage, threatening their neighbors or their own people - is a more dangerous world, a less free world, and a world where our traditional advocacy for stability and democracy is lost amidst the pious platitutdes of this starry-eyed leftist ideologue.

What happened in Honduras is a good thing for America and for the Honduran people. Given Obama’s rhetoric during the presidential campaign, it should come as no suprise that he refuses to recognize this and instead, curtsies to Hugo Chavez and other thugs in the region whose policies are inimicable to US interests.

This blog post originally appears in The American Thinker.

You have all probably seen the dramatic video of the young Iranian female protestor who died bloodily on camera. If you haven’t seen the graphic and disturbing slice of life from Iran on Saturday, it can be found here.

We now have a name to go with that bleeding, lifeless face. Allahpundit at Hot Air fills in some details:

Word on the street via one Iranian tweeter is that her name was Neda Agha Soltan. That’s also the name circulating on a few websites and now being attributed to her in a hastily arranged Wikipedia bio. The rumor - and it’s all rumor until some newspaper tracks down her family - is that she was 27 years old and a philosophy student. I hope to god this isn’t really her photo because the thought of her being so beautiful and dignified makes the murder somehow that much more obscene.

[...]

Update: A Farsi speaker tells HuffPo that this blogger is claiming that Neda was at the protest with her professor and several other students and that the fatal shot was fired by a Basij driving by on a motorcycle. No rhyme or reason; I wonder if he even aimed. The burial, reportedly, was today - and her memorial service was ordered canceled by the regime.

Robin Wright in Time Magazine (whose writings on the unrest have surpassed brilliance) fills us in on why Neda’s death may be a catalyst that will bring the regime down:

For the cycles of mourning in Shiite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat - a way to generate or revive momentum. Shiite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran’s rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the shah’s security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles.

The first clashes in January 1978 produced two deaths that were then commemorated on the 40th day in mass gatherings, which in turn produced new confrontations with security forces - and new deaths. Those deaths then generated another 40-day period of mourning, new clashes, and further deaths. The cycle continued throughout most of the year until the shah’s ouster in January 1979.

The same cycle has already become an undercurrent in Iran’s current crisis. The largest demonstration, on Thursday of last week, was called by opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to commemorate the deaths of protesters three days after they were killed.

Shiite mourning is not simply a time to react with sadness. Particularly in times of conflict, it is also an opportunity for renewal. The commemorations for “Neda” and the others killed this weekend are still to come. And the 40th day events are usually the largest and most important.

The way this woman’s death has galvanized the Iranian protestors (and will no doubt get big play in the rest of Iran as well) means that even if they arrest all the opposition leaders, reformers, as well as break the heads of demonstrators in the streets - this revolution is not over. Not by a long shot.

The question is will other clerics with influence recognize this and, in order to save something of the Islamic state, throw Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to the wolves?

Nazila Fathi and Michael Slackman in the New York Times write about the powerful former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and his efforts to form a coalition of clerics in the holy city of Qom to force Khamenei’s resignation and revamp the office of Supreme Leader:

But he remains a major establishment figure, and the detention of his daughter, albeit briefly, was a surprise. In Ayatollah Khamenei’s sermon on Friday, in which he backed Mr. Ahmadinejad and threatened a crackdown on further protests, he praised Mr. Rafsanjani as a pillar of the revolution while acknowledging that the two have had “many differences of opinion.”

Last week, state television showed images of Ms. Hashemi, 46, speaking to hundreds of people to rally support for Mr. Moussavi. After her appearance, state radio said, students who support Mr. Ahmadinejad gathered outside the Tehran prosecutor’s office and demanded that she be arrested for treason.

Mr. Rafsanjani, 75, heads two powerful institutions. One, the Assembly of Experts, is a body of clerics that has the authority to oversee and theoretically replace the country’s supreme leader. He also runs the Expediency Council, empowered to settle disagreements between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.

The Assembly of Experts has never publicly exercised its power over Ayatollah Khamenei since he succeeded the Islamic Revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989. But the increasingly bitter confrontation between Ayatollah Khamenei and Mr. Rafsanjani has raised the prospect of a contest of political wills between the two revolutionary veterans.

Such a move by Rafsanjani would be unprecedented. But these are unusual times in Iran and the day may arrive when many long time critics of the regime among the clerical establishment will finally band together in order to save something of the old order - save something from what Khamenei and Ahmadinejad have apparently tried to bring down themselves by way of vote fraud.

More protests were called for today to honor the dead from Saturday. There ares still tens of thousands of security personnel deployed throughout Tehran to prevent it. We will have to see if the demonstrators - using modern tools of communication - can outsmart the authorities and gather in some strength to demonstrate that they are not finished - not by a long shot.

With tens of thousands of police, Revolutionary Guards, and paramilitary Basij’s on the streets of Tehran, mass protests of the kind we saw earlier in the week are, for the moment, not possible.

Demonstrating very effective crowd control techniques - along with a brutality that shocked the world - the regime’s strategy apparently worked fairly well. Any area where people began to mass, they sent a flying wedge of riot police (probably Rev Guards dressed in police gear) straight into the people and beat as many as they could, as hard as they could, as long as they could. In this way, they prevented tens of thousands from forming in order to protest.

Estimates of police and Guards deployed range from 25,000 to 60,000 in Tehran alone. And the Basij were busy overnight, keeping the pressure on reformists by carrying off several high profile home invasions in richer neighborhoods while scouring hospitals for people injured during the clashes.

That latter activity is being enthusiastically carried out as there have been reports that they are dragging people out of the hospitals and taking them to the notorious Evin Prison where, as one wag put it, “waterboarding will be the least that they do.”

Hossein Mousavi has issued another letter, asking people to go on strike if he is arrested. He says he is “prepared for martyrdom” which, given Khamenei’s threat during his speech on Friday to hold him directly responsible for any blood spilled, might be a prescient statement.

So with no mass demonstrations possible at the moment, what next?

Look for a shocker coming out of the holy city of Qom where former President Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani has reportedly been holed up with what we might loosely refer to as a kind of Shia “college of cardinals” since early this week. (I admit it is not the best analogy but the I am trying to impart a sense of the religious influence these mullahs have on Shias.) This from Nico Pitney who has been doing a bang up job at Huffpo in liveblogging events:

6:00 PM ET — Where is Rafsanjani? “According to an online reformist news source Rooyeh, Rafsanjani has been in Qom meeting some members of Council of Experts and a representative of Ayatollah Sistani.

According to the source that asked to remain anonymous, during this meeting they recounted memories of the days of the Revolution.
A reasonable purpose of these meetings, according to the source, is that Rafsanjani is looking for a majority to possibly call for Ahmadinejad’s resignation.

As one reader points out, Sistani is “one of the most respected Grand Ayatollahs within Shia Islam in the world. He’s Iranian (from Mashhad, same city as Khamenei), but spends most time in Najaf/Karbala in Iraq.”

The Shia clerics are not a monolithic bloc. And the clerics in Qom may hold the key to breaking this situation wide open.

There is no love lost among many of the clerics in Qom and Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. The sticking point is the “Grand” designation for Khamenei’s clerical position. There are many clerics in Qom who believe the idea that Khamenei has that title - which denotes a piety and scholarly achievement that few attain - to be nonsense . Author and scholar Kamil Pasha points us to veteran Middle East reporter Robin Wright’s article up at Huffington Post:

The position of supreme leader has been controversial since it was created in the chaotic early days of the revolution to deal with internal squabbling. After his return from exile, revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khameini had originally returned to the religious center of Qom, but was forced to move back to Tehran as disputes among the fractious coalition that ousted the last shah began to fall apart.

Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran’s revolution represented not just a political upheaval. It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics. With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state.

The current crisis has effectively revived that debate — and deepened the divide between the government and the Shiite clergy as well as with the public. The government includes many clerical institutions, including the 12-member Council of Guardians, the 86-member Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council. But not even all of its members are happy with the election.

More importantly, senior clerics in Qom have noticeably failed to either endorse the election results or embrace Ahmadinejad, while long-time critics within the clergy used the crisis to encourage resistance to the supreme leader’s dictates.

The fact that Rafsanjani is in Qom could mean many things. He may be hiding out there, waiting to see which way the wind is blowing before leaping. Or, as Pitney reports, he may be trying to get these respected clerics in Iran’s holiest city to speak with one voice on the election fraud and Khamenei’s role in government. A strong, unified statement coming from Qom might spell curtains for both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.

While Rafsanjani himself has been absent from view, his daughter spoke out strongly for the reformists. He even rated some heavy criticism from his old friend Khamenei on Friday, although he stopped short of warning the powerful Rafsanjani.

A couple of Grand Ayatollahs in Qom have already come out in favor of the protests. Robin Wright:

Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, who was originally designated to become supreme leader until he criticized the regime’s excesses in 1989, dismissed the election results and called on “everyone” to continue “reclaiming their dues” in calm protests. He also issued a warning to Iran’s security forces not to accept government orders that might eventually condemn them “before God.”

“Today censorship and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth,” said Montazeri. “I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.”

Others have also bestowed legitimacy on the protests. Grand Ayatollah Saanei — one of only about a dozen who hold that position — pronounced Ahmadinejad’s presidency illegitimate.

Neither man weilds much political influence. But if Qom’s clerical leadership calls on Khamenei to resign (thus delegitimzing his role as “Supreme Leader” even more), this would cause a crisis in government - a near civil war - as the clerical establishment would likely be ripped in two. It would paralyze the government and perhaps even split the security forces.

Because of that - and because many of the clerics in Qom have shown a great reluctance to involve themselves too heavily in politics - such a strong statement might not be forthcoming. But don’t count Rafsanjani out. He has a lot of friends in very powerful places. If he decides to risk a confrontation with Khamenei (him being a candidate to replace him although the reformers would take a dim view of that), anything is possible.

So I would look to Qom for the next big story in the Iranian revolution. Whether the blood spilled yesterday is enough to convince the religious in Iran to replace Khamenei is a question that will probably be answered shortly. They will either issue a call for his resignation, or Rafsanjani will emerge empty handed.  The old revolutionary and kleptocrat will try to trim events to fulfill his ambitions. But in the process, he just may free Iran from the grip of the fascists.

UPDATE: RAFSANJANI’S DAUGHTER,  FOUR  OTHER RELATIVES, ARRESTED

AP is reporting the arrest of Rafsanjani’s daughter (mentioned above) and 4 other relatives of the powerful former president.

Um…they’re not being very subtle, are they? They know full well what Rafsanjani is up to and are making it clear to him that there will be consequences unless he ceases what he is doing.

No, these are not very nice people.

That quote, from Andrew Sullivan’s gripping liveblogging of the riots in Tehran speaks volumes.

To a very large degree, the MSM has been left in the dust as far as reporting during this, what now must be termed (though I was reluctant to do so) a revolution in Iran. “The Revolution will be Twittered” is not a joke. Hundreds and hundreds of tweets every couple of minutes are relating a the first draft of history. It’s not newspapers or TV reports - ruthlessly suppressed by the regime - that are informing the world of the chaos, the blood, and the courage of the demonstrators.

It is a silly little social networking app that 1 month ago people were asking how long the Twitter fad might last. I don’t think too many will be wondering whether anything useful can be related in 140 characters anymore. What we’ve discovered is that it is the cumulative effective of the narration that imparts an emotional subtext and gives the reader a psychic connection to the event being twittered.

Sure a lot of the tweets are probably rumor, or perhaps even complete B.S. But have you seen how TV reports a major story lately? Anyone who watched coverage of Katrina can look at what the Iranians are doing with Twitter and other new methods of communication and realize that the MSM Katrina coverage suffers by comparison.

Video is reaching the outside world via YouTube, LiveLeak, and other video outlets. Camera phones seem to be the easiest way to visually relate the horror of the day. The authorities must be going apesh*t. They’ve done all they can to close off communications, even going so far as to censor western news broadcasts out of the country, and the story is still being told - relentlessly, courageously, and emotionally. The regime reminds me of someone trying to plug holes in a dam. Each time they succeed in keeping the water back, another leaks springs up somewhere else.

This is probably not a remarkable turn of events to many younger people. They have grown up with these technologies, use them with a comfort and ease that I envy. But for those of us a little older, this is nothing less than a revolution in communications; easily the equal of the satellite breakthroughs of the early 1960’s. Right before our eyes, we have two forces of history bursting into view - forces that have been roiling beneath the surface of our day to day vision for many years until necessity and opportunity have met in the streets of Tehran and, volcano-like, erupted into view. A new collective way for mankind to communicate and the world-historical impetus that is driving it on - Persians seeking freedom and justice - will be seen in the future as a watershed moment.

Meanwhile, Iran is bleeding. It is night there now. There will apparently be another attempt to gather after dark just as there will be the hated Basij to try and break it up. There will be no official death toll that anyone will believe but it is clear that scores are dead. I fear the night. The regime may use the darkness to teach the reformists an object lesson. This is what the Chinese did in 1989 at Tiananmen Square.

Ed Morrissey has the days events with commentary and video. Just keep scrolling. Ed has several graphic videos of the dead as well as snippets of the response to the crackdown.

As expected, as the violence has escalated, so has the rhetoric from the White House:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

I think the non-violent tactics of King worked because of the times in which he lived and the nation he was trying to reform. As brutal as the southern authorities were on King and his followers, their ruthlessness pales in comparison to the determination of the Iranian regime to stamp out the prairie fire that is actually being stoked by their own callous stupidity towards their own people. The moral courage being demonstrated by those in the streets is to be admired. But it is their physical courage - their acceptance of the risk of death - that is important now.

The Iranians don’t need a Martin Luther King right now. They need a George Washington who can win a revolution. It won’t necessarily be with guns that victory will be achieved. But even if the regime succeeds here in stamping out the reform movement, things will never be the same in Iran and the day will come - as it does for all tyrants and tyrannical regimes eventually - when the walls come a tumbalin’ down and the natural state of being that all men are born into reasserts itself and victory is achieved. People are born free. No tyrant anywhere can take that away from us. It is our heritage as human beings and our right. And whether you speak Arabic, Kurdish, Turkomen, Farsi, or any other language where dictators suppress the will of the people, the Iranians have put them on notice that their days are numbered.

Tomorrow is a big day, maybe I’ll get killed tomorrow! - I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! - A blogger in Tehran 6/20/09

After Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech yesterday warning that further demonstrations would be viewed harshly, initial reaction from the Mousavi camp was that “no demonstrations were planned for Saturday or Sunday” and Mousavi himself would not be speaking.

Then, last night, word began to be passed via Twitter and the newly restored access to Facebook and other social networking avenues, that Hossein Mousavi was calling on his supporters to assemble in downtown Tehran for a demonstration at 4:00 pm local time.

Expect the crowds to be huge. Should we also expect bloodshed?

Mousavi is rolling the dice that the regime will not do what the Shah didn’t have the stomach for 30 years ago - fire into masses of people demonstrating against the goverment, making the streets literally run red with blood. This time, it won’t be the ill-disciplined Basij firing at the odd protestor in an unplanned response to a mob attacking their headquarters as was the case with the bloodletting earlier in the week. This time, it will be a coldly calculating, deliberately planned massacre - Tienanmen Square on steroids.

In 1989, the Communist Chinese only had a couple of thousand die hards in the square as targets. Most of the rest of the protestors vacated the square long before the army - conscripts from the provinces who were told they were putting down a “counterrevolution” - moved in and mowed down the kids who believed up to the last minute their government wouldn’t murder them.

This will be much different if the regime delivers on its veiled threats - which makes the determination of the protestors all the more remarkable.

I find it of unknown significance that the regime has re-established at least some communications networks. Evidently, Facebook, and SMS texting are no longer being blocked. The call for the march originated on Mousavi’s Facebook page. It is impossible to reasonably speculate why the regime would make it easier for the demonstrators to organize at this crucial hour. Are the protestors being assisted by a faction that wants to see Ahmadinejad/Khamenei fall? Are the authorities trying to create as many targets as possible, smoking out regime opponents so that they can arrest as many of them as possible? It may be important, it may not be. We may never know.

Meanwhile, some analysts here and abroad believe that the Supreme Leader miscalculated if he thought his speech would dampen enthusiasm for reform:

Khamenei, 69, appeared to have miscalculated if he thought he could cow the opposition with his tough speech, said Mohammad Sahimi, an Iranian-American professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California and political analyst.

“I think he has polarized the society far more than it was because he made clear what his preference is and where he stands and who he supports,” Sahimi said. The opposition is “openly defying this guy. In the short run, it may it lead to violence.”

Barack Obama has slightly - but significantly - altered the official line of the United States, seeming to come out a little more strongly for the right of the people to reform the government while maintaining it is up to the people to decide their future. In an interview with CBS (via Hot Air):

What you’re seeing in Iran are hundreds of thousands of people who believe their voices were not heard and who are peacefully protesting and - and seeking justice. And the world is watching. And we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way. And, you know, already we’ve seen violence out there. I think I’ve said this throughout the week. I want to repeat it that we stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict, and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard, that that’s a universal value that the American people stand for and this administration stands for…

But the last point I want to make on this - this is not an issue of the United States or the West versus Iran. This is an issue of the Iranian people. The fact that they are on the streets under pretty severe duress, at great risk to themselves, is a sign that there’s something in that society that wants to open up.

This is actually quite good. “Seeking justice in a peaceful way” (a direct but subtle reference to the rigged election) and “[W]e stand with those who would look to peaceful resolution of conflict, and we believe that the voices of people have to be heard,” is closer to what he should have said from the outset. But it’s a niggling complaint. It’s easier to ratchet up the rhetoric as the president has done here than tone it down. It still won’t satisfy his many critics on the right but he’s not keeping score politically as much as he’s acting responsibly in a very difficult situation for the United States. As I said yesterday, everybody would love to see the president come down hard on the regime while making sweet music about supporting the reformers. The reasons not to are self evident. Those who believe differently do not have the responsibility if such rhetoric backfires.

Even if Mousavi had told his followers to stay home, the chances are good that a big demonstration would have been held anyway. Perhaps Mousavi realized this and decided to ride the wave of history rolling over Iran now rather than sit on the beach and watch. He is not in control of events. It remains to be seen whether his gamble that the regime will crack wide open as a result of the protests succeeds. Clearly, the regime has the capability to spill their own citizen’s blood. But do they have the heart for it?

We may find out today.

Trying to get news from Iran this morning is very difficult. Most contact with the outside world has been severed - including phone and cable traffic - while the internet is very unreliable and slow from all reports.

What information is getting out reveals a nation close to chaos but with the authorities evidently well prepared in advance for trouble.

So what does the Iranian election mean? Was it a coup by Ahmadinejad and his supporters in the Revolutionary Guards, done without the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei? Or is Khamenei behind the whole thing and this is an attempt to purge the “reformers” who threaten the position of the powerful clerics who run every facet of the country - its economy, its culture, its social structure, and especially its politics?

A good case can be made for both scenarios. Haaretz is reporting that the opposition leader who challenged Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has been arrested. There are reports that many visible opponents of the regime are also being systematically rounded up with many arrests. Opposition media is shut down. And as mentioned above, normal channels of communication have been interrupted.

The fundamental question seems to be at this point is who is controlling the Revolutionary Guards? They are the ones in the forefront of the crackdown. They are supposed to be under the direct control of the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But this amateurish, way too obvious election fraud would seem to be too inept if Khamenei and say, the senior Guard leadership was going to do the vote stealing. After all, it is widely believed they engineered the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 in the first place. However they did it, they were able to fool most of the international observers who were invited to watch the proceedings (more like the observers were kidding themselves but at least they were given a fig leaf to hide behind).

So it’s not like they don’t know how to be subtle about rigging an election. The heavy handededness of this election’s shenanigans, however, might show more unsure hands at work in the Interior Ministry where the election was obviously stolen. And this would point to an Ahmadinejad-led cabal of loyal bureaucrats and friendly Guardsmen - a possibility I raise in my piece on what might have happened:

Ahmadinejad’s biography has a couple of holes in it; specifically his time spent as a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force:

Ahmadinejad was reportedly a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards stationed at Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. This was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “Extra-territorial Operations,” for mounting attacks beyond Iran’s borders. Reports suggested that his work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to suppression of dissidents in Iran and abroad. Sources associated him with atrocities in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and alleged he personally participated in covert operations around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem; literally ‘Holy’) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. It was reported that he directed assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. According to Revolutionary Guard sources, Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack. He was also reported to have been involved in planning an attempt on the life of Salman Rushdie.

Ahmadinejad’s connections to some very powerful elements in the Revolutionary Guards may have given him something no Iranian president has had previously; an independent power base in the Guards. Would it be enough to challenge Khamenei for control of the Guards? Khamenei has the senior leadership but perhaps some junior officers would be more loyal to Ahmadinejad. It is pure speculation but not without merit as Middle East expert Gordon Robinson writes:

Scenario Two: There has been a coup. Ahmedinejad and the security services have taken over. The Supreme Leader has been preserved as a figurehead, but the structures of clerical rule have effectively been gutted and are being replaced by a National Security State. Reports that facebook, twitter, text messaging and foreign TV broadcasts have been blocked, that foreign journalists are being expelled and that large concrete roadblocks (the kind that require a crane to move) have appeared in front of the Interior Ministry all feed a sense that what we are now seeing was pre-planned. Underlying this is the theory that Ahmedinejad and the people around him represent a new generation of Iranian leadership. He and his colleagues were young revolutionaries in 1979. Now in their 50s they have built careers inside the Revolutionary Guard and the other security services. They may be committed to the Islamic Republic as a concept, but they are not part of its clerical aristocracy and are now moving to push the clerics into an essentially ceremonial role. This theory in particular seems to be gaining credibility rapidly among professional Iran-watchers outside of the country.

If a coup, this is very, very bad news for the US and especially Israel. It is thought that Khamenei was something of a steadying force who countered Ahmadinejad’s extreme radicalism with a more traditional and less confrontational approach. Several times over the last 4 years, Khamenei has appearedto slap down Ahmadinejad when he went too far, contradicting some wild pronouncements made by the president (he never intervened when Ahmadinejad threatened Israel). If that brake is gone, the Iranian president becomes very unpredictable.

Then there’s the “panic” theory where the regime was overconfident in Ahmadinejad’s victory and was reacting to the overwhelming vote for Mousavi and the other reform candidates. This explains why the stolen election appeared to be amateurish.  I find this less than compelling for the simple reason they were deploying regime forces before the polls closed.

With so many arrests of “reformers” (outside of Mousavi, no real big names have been taken into custody that we’ve heard about yet), it may yet turn out to be a simple purge and life will eventually settle back down to normal. But a coup, by its nature, breeds instability. And given the factional nature of the Iranian regime, it is a sure bet that some of these factions will not sit still for an Ahmadinejad power grab. In that case, a low level civil war will play itself out with many “disappearances” and “tragic accidents” as well as a “heart attack” or two before things get sorted out. We saw this kind of thing several times in the old Soviet Union so it shouldn’t surprise us if we see something similar in Iran over the next year or so.

I posed this scenario at the end of my Pajamas Media article on the Iranian elections:

It is possible the incumbent actually received a plurality of less than 50% which would have forced a run-off with Mr. Mousavi and the vote fraud was engineered simply to give Ahmadinejad a majority. But whether or not the president won an outright victory is beside the point; the news from Iran almost certainly points to massive fraud undertaken to give President Ahmadinejad a second term.

This from Tehranbureau appears to make fraud a pretty much an open and shut case:

The best evidence for the validity of the arguments of the three opponents of the President for rejecting the results declared by the Interior Ministry is the data the Ministry itself has issued. In the chart below, compiled based on the data released by the Ministry and announced by Iran’s national television, a perfect linear relation between the votes received by the President and Mir Hossein Mousavi has been maintained, and the President’s vote is always half of the President’s. The vertical axis (y) shows Mr. Mousavi’s votes, and the horizontal (x) the President’s. R^2 shows the correlation coefficient: the closer it is to 1.0, the more perfect is the fit, and it is 0.9995, as close to 1.0 as possible for any type of data.

Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own. For example, in the present elections, Mr. Mousavi is an Azeri and speaks Turkish. The Azeries make up 1/4 of all the eligible voters in Iran and in his trips to Azerbaijan province, where most of the Azeri population lives, Mr. Mousavi had been greeted by huge rallies in support of his campaign. Likewise, Mr. Karroubi, the other reformist candidate, is a Lor. But according to the data released by Iran’s Interior Ministry, in both cases, Mr. Ahmadinejad has far outdone both candidates in their own provinces of birth and among their own ethnic populations.

The question you have to ask is why? Why would the regime so obviously and deliberately fix the election? The mullahs may have insulated themselves and cut themselves off from the rest of the world but they aren’t stupid. Something is not adding up and Laura Rozen over at Foreign Policy’s blog The Cable offers some chilling quotes on what might be happening:

“Yesterday’s events could have a very negative impact on Khamenei’s desires to maintain stability and balance within his administration,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born Middle East analyst. “The question is: what caused him to take such a drastic action, by ordering fraud on such a massive scale?”

“The disappointment and disorientation of people in Iran that I’ve spoken to is unmistakable,” said Parsi. “While a majority argue that this is a coup by Ahmadinejad and Khamenei against virtually the rest of the establishment, there are several question marks: Khamenei, most experts agree, is addicted to the perception of legitimacy for himself and the system. But this coup does away with any chances for such legitimacy. Indeed, it is difficult to see why he would view this situation as terribly favorable.

“Which then raises the question,” Parsi continued, “as to whether a reassessment is needed of the assumption that Khamenei enjoys the position of strength that so often is ascribed to him. If this is not a favorable situation, why is he going along with it? Is he too under pressure from circles in the Guard?”

Ahmadinejad’s biography has a couple of holes in it; specifically his time spent as a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force:

Ahmadinejad was reportedly a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards stationed at Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran. This was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “Extra-territorial Operations,” for mounting attacks beyond Iran’s borders. Reports suggested that his work in the Revolutionary Guards was related to suppression of dissidents in Iran and abroad. Sources associated him with atrocities in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and alleged he personally participated in covert operations around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem; literally ‘Holy’) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. It was reported that he directed assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. According to Revolutionary Guard sources, Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack. He was also reported to have been involved in planning an attempt on the life of Salman Rushdie.

There is something else too, also from Global Security:

Some outside observers had great difficult understanding Ahmadinejad’s popularity across the country. They were not able to comprehend his ability to out-poll better-known figures, such as former speaker of parliament Mehdi Karrubi or former national police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. The other candidates had been nationally visible for years, and had campaigned throughout the country. Ahmadinejad only became nationally visible after he became Tehran’s mayor. He did not campaign as extensively as his rivals. Some speculated that electoral interference by the Basij and the Guardians Council was the only explaination of this otherwise inexplicable rise to power. Reports suggested there was evidence of vote rigging by Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his supporters. These claims were publically voiced by Rafsanjani and his supporters after the results of the election were announced.

The Basij Forces, or Mobilization Resistance Force, a volunteer paramilitary militia under the Revolutionary Guards, was called upon to vote for Ahmadinejad and get others to do so. Since its creation Iranian authorities suggested that on mobilization its active numbers could total 1 million individuals or more. Reformists charged that the Basij violated prohibitions against military involvement in politics by mobilizing votes for Ahmadinejad. Although the military was supposed to steer clear of politics in Iran (as seen with the withdrawal of Mohsen Rezaie), it had always played some role. However, it had never been as prominent as it was during the 2005 election.

If the Guard wanted to assert itself, it certainly had the means to do so. Khamenei is supposed to have control of the Guards, thus giving him a power base independent of the army. Could the Revolutionary Guards have threatened Khamenei’s position if he didn’t return the Guard’s favorite, Ahmadinejhad, to power?

I am not an expert on Iranian politics nor on its political culture which I know from my reading is riven with factions and even features factions within factions. It is a labyrinth that few really understand. As recently as two years ago with the Iranian capture of some British troops on an Iraqi waterway, we saw what appeared to be factional disputes among the leadership on what to do with the prisoners. Some wanted to try them for espionage. Others wanted to negotiate. A couple of times it appeared an agreement had been reached to release the Brits only to have the deal fall through. This is how the Islamic Republic has done business for 30 years.

Given what we know of Ahmadinejad’s past association with a powerful element within the Revolutionary Guards as well as the stated reluctance of the Guards to see a “reformer” assume office, there may be more than meets the eye as far as voter fraud in the Iranian election. It may have been some kind of “coup” by the Guards that was clumsy in its execution and obvious in its intent. Yesterday, the Guardian reported that “A Revolutionary Guard warning about not tolerating a “velvet revolution” by the Iranian “greens” has been noted with some alarm.”

All signs point to a stolen election. But the “why” will have to wait a while.

UPDATE

That statistical analysis performed by Tehranbureau above is flawed. Respected political polling blogger Nate Silver shows how, if a similar technique were applied to the results of our own election last November, the same kind of linear result on the graph would show up.

Congrats to Nate on discovering the truth.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. While no formal polling is allowed close to the election, many analysts still gave a slight edge to the Hezb’allah backed Development and Resistance bloc to emerge with a plurality of seats in the nation’s 128 member parliament, beating out the Sunni-Christian March 14th forces. In any event, neither side was expected to dominate the election.

But if elections were decided by analysts, there would be no such thing as democracy. This, the Lebanese people proved when they shocked themselves and the world by giving a stunning, convincing victory to the forces of democracy represented by the March 14th coalition.

From the Lebanese news portal Now Lebanon:

The March 14 alliance appears headed for a decisive victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with poll results, as of early Monday morning, indicating the alliance took around 70 seats, roughly the same number they held in the last parliament.

Speaking at a victory rally around 1 a.m., Future Movement leader Saad Hariri thanked all Future and March 14 supporters, in addition to the security forces, the army, and Arab and international observers, “all[ of whom] contributed to this glorious national day and establishing democracy.”

“These elections have no winner or loser, because the only winner is democracy and the biggest winner is Lebanon,” Hariri said.

“No victor, no vanquished.” That’s the motto of Lebanese political society. So even though the March 14th forces outpolled Hezb’allah substantially (they may have won up to 58 seats), they will still be invited to participate in the government.

And that includes the participation of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement party who cast their lot with pro-Syrian Hezb’allah and divided the Christian community. Their leader, Michel Aoun, stands humiliated if the results hold up.

Once an anti-Syrian hero in Lebanon, a reputation earned by fighting for Lebanese independence against the Syrian occupiers, Aoun’s triumphant return following the expulsion of Syrian troops raised hopes that the Christian community could rally behind his banner.

Hariri and the Sunnis didn’t trust Aoun and refused to give him what he coveted most; their endorsement of his candidacy for the presidency. He then shocked the nation when he signed a memorandum of understanding with pro-Syrian Hezb’allah and joined their coalition. This has resulted in some awkward moments over the years as Aoun has been forced to take positions inconveniently opposed to ones had taken previously.

Naharnet has the opposition’s response:

Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah reiterated late Sunday the party’s calls for “national partnership” and said the March 8 alliance was reacting to the outcome of the elections with a “positive attitude.”

In an interview with AFP, Fadlallah said Hizbullah’s 11 candidates won seats in the new 128-member parliament.

“Lebanon’s specificity is in its diversity and there is no majority or minority,” Fadlallah said. “No party can claim to have won the majority among all communities.”

“Hizbullah has accepted the public will. The opposition handles the outcome of the polls and the people’s choice with a positive attitude,” he said.

Will that “positive attitude” extend to accepting the result and a reduced role in the cabinet?

For 18 months, Hezb’allah held the nation hostage by besieging the Grand Serail, Lebanon’s government house. During that time, several March 14th politicians were assassinated - probably by Syrian security - including Pierre Gemayel whose family is extremely prominent in Lebanese politics. The question on everyone’s mind is will they accept anything less than what they achieved last year at Doha, Qatar following what Prime Minister Siniora referred to as “an attempted coup?”

As always, Hezb’allah has one advantage not enjoyed by their opposition. They’ve got the guns and the will to use them if they feel threatened. They proved that in May of 2008 when, following a challenge to their communications network, they easily brushed aside disorganized Sunni militias and entered the Sunni enclave in West Beirut. That action triggered a crisis conference in Doha where the March 14th government gave in to most of Hezb’allah’s demands and reorganized the cabinet, giving the Shias and their Christian allies a virtual veto over Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government.

Lebanon can ill afford a repeat of that military-political exercise by Hezb’allah. Nor can it afford another Hezb’allah war with Israel which is always a possibility now that they have been fully rearmed and resupplied by Syria and Iran after the 2006 conflict. But March 14th is stuck with integrating the opposition into the government and trying to keep them happy.

It is in Hezb’allah’s long term interest to cause trouble for the March 14th majority. But there is a possibility they will go along for a while and accept a reduced role as a result of the election. Their spiritual and military leader Hassan Nasrallah is a shrewd operator and has demonstrated a gambler’s instinct when he thinks the odds are in his favor. But given the fact that the Lebanese people seem to have spoken clearly about their future, we might see Hezb’allah laying low for the time being.

The key to March 14th’s success was found in the Christian members of the coalition and their victories in hotly contested districts against FPM candidates. Now Lebanon has the details:

According to unofficial results, March 14 swept Zahle, which was widely seen as one of the more tightly contested districts in the nation. Nicholas Fattouch and Antoine Abu Khater took the two Greek Catholic seats, Elie Marouni took the Maronite seat, Joseph Maalouf took the Orthodox seat, Assem Aaraji took the Sunni seat, Okab Sakr took the Shia seat, and Chant Gengenian took the Armenian Orthodox seat.

In Beirut I, another hard-fought district, March 14 candidates won all five seats, with Nayla Tueni taking the Greek Orthodox seat, Michel Pharaon the Greek Catholic seat, Nadim Gemayel the Maronite seat, Serge Torsarkissian the Armenian Catholic seat and Jean Ogassapian the Armenian Orthodox seat.

March 14 also prevailed in Batroun, winning both the district’s seats. Current Telecommunications Minister Gebran Bassil, who was a candidate in the race, lost, as MPs Antoine Zahra and Boutros Harb took the district’s two Maronite seats.

In race after race where there was a competitive contest (about 100 seats were safely apportioned to the various religions), March 14th surged to victory. A change in the electoral law pushed on the government by Hezb’allah at the Doha conference was thought to favor them over March 14th, but in the end appeared to make little difference.

Now comes the hard part; forming a working government that won’t provoke Hezb’allah into a ruinous confrontation. Although current Prime Minister Fouad Siniora won his race going away, he is not expected back. It would be helpful if whoever emerges from the coming scrum for Prime Minister would be acceptable to Hezb’allah but it is not vital. For the moment, March 14th has the votes. That should cinch the proposition in Parliament.

Sa’ad Hariri, son of the slain ex-Prime Minister, has now engineered two election victories for his coalition. Considering the fact that March 14th appeared dead in the water following their surrender at Doha, he has pulled off a political coup by outmaneuvering Michel Aoun in almost all the competitive districts while infusing his supporters with hope for an independent Lebanon with a strong central government. Not a bad trick if you can pull it off. And Hariri did.

Now that all the apologies for Americans freely electing George Bush twice are out of the way, perhaps the president will make this trip to Europe and his “outreach” to Muslims a little more meaningful than his last foray overseas.

Aside from some gratuitous slaps at his predecessor (and some rookie gaffes), I don’t think Obama performed all that badly over in Europe a couple of months ago. It was basically a “meet and greet” trip, heavy on media events and light on substance (except the speech in Turkey where, despite a couple of eyebrow raising passages, wasn’t bad and he said some things that needed to be said to the Muslim world).

But this trip will be different - especially the first leg which begins tomorrow in Saudi Arabia for some important discussions with King Abdullah and then it’s on to Cairo University for his much anticipated speech to the Muslim world. He will also take time to meet with President Mubarak as well as perhaps, some Egyptian dissidents although that part of the trip is still up in the air.

MIDDLE EAST LEG

Obama’s talks with Abdullah will be crucial to establishing a good rapport with an ally that is becoming more and more important as both a stand in for America in places like Lebanon and Jordan as well as a counterweight to Iran’s ambitions. The stop in Riyadh was a late addition to the schedule - a development that did not please Egypt who thinks that the Saudi stop takes some of the luster off their own hosting of Obama on Thursday.

The agenda for Obama’s Abdullah meeting will be quite full but I suspect one of the main reasons for adding this stop was the political situation in Lebanon. Parliamentary elections will take place next week and Abdullah has been doing yeoman’s work in working behind the scenes at our behest to strengthen the Sunni bloc and support the March 14th forces in their battle against the Hezbullah-backed opposition. Israel would take a very dim view of Hezbullah being formally installed as part of the country’s leadership coalition. (They already exercise de facto control of the country by dint of their militia and veto power in the cabinet.)

The probable outcome of the election will be that neither side receives a majority but that Hezbullah will have a chance to form a government if their bloc gets more votes than the democrats. No doubt Obama and the King will discuss eventualities if that occurs as well as the administration’s overtures to Iran and Syria. Some analysts believe that Obama’s trip to Riyadh also signals support for the King’s peace plan , something that Obama advisors have talked about in positive terms. But Israel has rejected it and it is unlikely to be revived at this point.

As I said, a full plate.

Obama will make his long awaited and much anticipated speech to the Muslim world on Thursday. The forum he has chosen is interesting: Cairo University is one of the oldest centers of learning in the world. It has also seen it’s share of student protests against the Egyptian government. It will be interesting to see if Obama plays the role of lecturer and takes Egypt (and the rest of the Arab world) to task for their miserable human rights records or whether he will appear as conciliator, bridging the gap between Muslims and the West.

During a briefing about the trip yesterday with press secretary Gibbs and Deputy NSA’s Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, we got a preview of what Obama will talk about:

I think what you can expect is a speech that really addresses the range of issues and interests and concerns that we have across this broad swath of the globe that is the Muslim world. And I think the fact is, is that the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to — or before he’s been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world — you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father — obviously Muslim Americans a key part of Illinois and Chicago.

And so it’s going to address a range of issues. You raised some: freedom and opportunity, prosperity. And I think it is fair to say that the President has focused an awful lot of time, as you suggest, focused on revitalizing this economy, which he inherited in such shape. But I think you’ll see his speech addresses the full range of issues and interests that we have on Thursday.

MR. GIBBS: Mark is going to add one point.

MR. LIPPERT: I would just add one other thing, in terms of context, as you’ve seen, is the President, he doesn’t hesitate to take on the tough issues in his speech, just harkening back to his Senate career when he delivered a very, very powerful message on corruption in Kenya; he continually raises these issues here with leaders when they come through both in private and through public statements, as well. So again, you have a President who’s not afraid to engage on very tough, tough issues.

How “tough” can Obama afford to be? Speaking truth to the world’s Muslims would seem to go against everything he has been saying since he was elected. Instead, he will probably be tougher on America and especially Israel than he will be on the tyrants in the Middle East or the despots elsewhere who use religion to keep their populations in line. And as far as taking Muslims to task for their silent assent for jihad, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for him to make mention of that little inconvenient fact.

Marc Lynch has some thoughts on how Obama has laid the groundwork for this speech by talking tough to Israel on the settlement issue, thus (hopefully) making his Muslim audience more receptive to his words:

Secretary of State Clinton, Middle East envoy Mitchell and others in the administration have reportedly been pounding home the importance of the settlements issue at every opportunity — both in private and in what I would consider a well-coordinated strategic communications campaign. General David Petraeus added his voice to the mix in a front page interview in the influential Saudi paper al-Hayat, saying that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would improve American security and weaken its adversaries. (Perhaps the imprimatur of Gen. Petraeus will sway some American skeptics as well?)

As Obama leaves for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he will thus benefit from the headlines and op-eds in the Arab press featuring his strong stand on the settlements. His team has done an outstanding job setting the stage, establishing its credibility both with Israeli and Arab audiences and generating real momentum. It should help him get a receptive audience for the much-anticipated address, and allow him to point to deeds matching words (the most frequent Arab criticism of his outreach thus far).

I think this is too optimistic and raises expectations for the president’s diplomacy too high. But then, the pro-engagement lobby believes that a this is just the ticket to light a fire under the Israelis and restart the peace talks - especially after the Netanyahu government is seen as destroying US-Israel relations over the settlements issue and falls as a result. Presumably, the new government will have a different attitude toward the settlements and, voila! Progress is made.

Nobody will ever accuse the Obama administration of not aiming high.

EUROPEAN LEG

This is the symbolic part of Obama’s trip and while his meetings with Merkel and Sarkozy especially will be important with regard to the world’s financial crisis (Gordon who?), the real fireworks will erupt when the president first visits the concentration camp Buchenwald and then meets Chancellor Merkel in, of all places, Dresden.

This is worse than Reagan going to Bitburg, the site of a cemetery where SS troops were buried. (Read the Wikpedia entry for an interesting take on the controversy.) Reagan used the occasion (or was forced into using it by dint of the ignorance of his staff who scheduled the stop not knowing of its notorious history) as an eloquent and emotional opportunity for reconciliation. It ended up being a positive for Reagan despite the controversy.

But Obama in Dresden opens up a trap door for the president that he will have a tough time avoiding.

John Rosenthal:

The symbolic significance of a visit to Dresden by the American president — especially one undertaken in connection with a D-Day commemoration in France — may be missed by some Americans, but it is absolutely unmistakable for the German public. For Germans, Dresden is the symbol bar none of German suffering at the hands of the Allies. The city was heavily bombed by British and American air forces in February 1945, toward the end of the war. According to the most recent estimates of professional historians, anywhere from 18,000 to at most 25,000 persons died in the attacks. These numbers come from a historical commission established by the city of Dresden itself. But far higher numbers — ranging into the hundreds of thousands — have long circulated in Germany and beyond. The bombing of Dresden is commonly described as a “war crime” in German discussions.

Alleged crimes committed by the Allies against Germans and Germany have indeed become a sort of German literary obsession in recent years, with numerous books being devoted to the subject. The taste of the German public for the theme was made particularly clear by the enormous success of author Jörg Friedrich’s 2002 volume The Fire [Der Brand], which is about the Allied bombardment of Germany. The book’s success was so great that Friedrich and his publisher quickly followed up with a picture book on the same topic titled Scenes of the Fire: How the Bombing Looked.

[...]

It is virtually unthinkable that Obama could give a speech in Dresden and not allude to the bombing of the city. Most of the city’s historical monuments — which Obama’s advance team were apparently inspecting — were severely damaged or destroyed in the bombing and had to be rebuilt. Moreover, for Obama to visit both Dresden and Buchenwald would suggest precisely the sort of outrageous parallels that have become commonplace in Germany at least since the publication of Friedrich’s The Fire.

Will Obama apologize for the fire bombing of Dresden? And most problematic of all, will he try to draw moral parallels between Buchenwald and Dresden?

The Germans would like nothing better but I suspect the president will be extraordinarily careful in making any such comparisons. But hasn’t he already made those parallels plain by juxtaposing the visits in the first place? The president has invited comparisons by the very act of his visiting both sites and there is nothing he can do to change that. They barely mentioned Dresden at the press briefing:

…And secondly, why did the President choose Dresden particularly? Is it just because it’s close to Buchenwald? Is he trying to make some kind of implied point about German casualties, civilian casualties during the war? Or is it just purely a biographical thing?

MR. McDONOUGH: You obviously covered a range of issues and it underscore the importance of the trip. Obviously — and this underscores the reason I think the President is eager to change the conversation with our Muslim and Arab friends. We have a range of issues — you named several of them — Iran, proliferation, Afghanistan, Pakistan, obviously Israeli-Palestinian, have got key elections coming up throughout the region. So it’s an important time, it’s an important issue. I think the President believes it’s an important opportunity to advance the national interest.
As it relates to Dresden, I would just say that obviously the President has a lot of respect for the Chancellor. I think that he, from his early conversations with her, was struck by her time in the former East, and so I think he looks forward to an opportunity to see the major changes in the former East, but also to, as I said, harken back to certain undeniable truths and undeniable realities specifically as it relates to the Holocaust.

“Undeniable truths?” Stay tuned.

From Germany, its off to France for a non-controversial visit to the US cemetery at Coleville and a side trip to Caen. My own prediction - totally unrelated to anything - is that the press will be so bored by this point that they will invent a controversy between Madame Obama and Carla Bruni, Sarkozy’s drop dead gorgeous wife. It will sell zillions of papers and have people glued to their seats in front of cable news. Two female titans in a cat fight!

Irresistible.

I am eager to hear the president’s speech on D-Day and compare it from an academic and historical point of view with Reagan’s famous Point du Hoc address. Hard to keep an open mind on this one but perhaps exploring both speeches thematically will tell us not only something about Obama but also, by comparing and contrasting the two set pieces, it should tell us something about the times we live in as well.

Finally, the president gave an interview to the BBC in which he set up a strawman and then proceeded to appear to embrace it - after blowing it away:

“The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture,” Obama said in an interview with the BBC that aired Monday.

Obama’s opponents have criticized him for appearing to apologize for American policies and behavior while overseas. On Monday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — a possible Republican presidential contender in 2012 — scolded the president for his “tour of apology.”

While Obama seemed to suggest in his BBC interview that America has wrongly attempted to force its principles on other nations, he also argued that other nations should want to adopt those principles without coaxing.

“Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted on these countries, but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity,” he said.

This is pure doublespeak - appearing to take his predecessor to task for “imposing” concepts like democracy and the rule of law on Iraq while chiding other nations for not embracing those same values.

What’s the point? Perhaps we should have just imposed the usual thuggish dictatorship on the Iraqis. Would that have pleased him? This kind of dubious logic comes from possessing a naive outlook on the rest of the world. As other cultures and nations greedily assimilate as much of western culture that their rulers let them get away with, Obama seems to be saying that we’re wrong in promoting those values while at the same time urging other cultures to graft them on to their national identity.

A real head shaker.

Regardless, it will be interesting to watch the president as he tries to achieve some of the ambitious goals he has set for this trip.

Mexico has a full blown health crisis on its hands as deaths related to the Swin Flu virus have risen to 81 with more than 1300 cases reported.

As this BBC piece containing reader emails from Mexico shows, rumors that the crisis is even worse than the government is reporting are widespread:

I have a sister-in-law from San Luis Potosi state in Mexico and we were told that in San Luis Potosi there have been at least 78 deaths, just in that city alone, not 68 in all of Mexico, as is being reported. Schools have been closed until 6 May in this state and in other areas in Mexico. Also, many public venues are being closed, so this makes it more deadly and dangerous than has been stated.
Migdalia Cruz, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

It’s certainly been very quiet where I’m living in the Historic Centre of Mexico City, whereas normally the centre is almost uncomfortably packed at the weekend. Most people also seem to be wearing the face masks being handed out by the army around the city. There always seems to be a healthy mistrust of the government here, but I wouldn’t say I’m sensing a great deal of paranoia or panic. It does seem as though the unprecedented actions being taken by the government to contain the virus don’t match with the statistics being provided, however, so there is some doubt as to whether they’re just being overly cautious or whether things are a lot worse than what they’re telling the public.
Randal Sheppard, Mexico City

It’s pretty hard these days to cook the books on a health crisis - not with the WHO, the US, and Canada in the mix and looking over the Mexican’s shoulder. The Chinese consistently tried to downplay first the SARS epidemic and then the Bird Flu scare and were called out on it by the WHO several times.

Plus, you might note that in the first response, the woman wonders about the size of the problem when she reports 2nd hand information that 78 people have died in her sister-in-law’s state alone. This is how rumors lead to panic in a situation like this; somebody always hears how bad it is somewhere else and those figures don’t match up with the “official” story. This leads to distrust in government and a panic ensues.

There’s no doubt the fear is real and that the government response is indicative of a serious outbreak of a new, lethal virus. The question is, if it is being spread by human to human contact and if so, how much has the original virus mutated?

The outbreak in New York City is being treated very seriously by the city’s health department but if it is Swine Flu, the bug has apparently mutated and in the process, may have become less lethal.

This New York Times piece by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. reports on the condition of the suspected victims:

Tests show that eight students at a Queens high school are likely to have contracted the human swine flu virus that has struck Mexico and a small number of other people in the United States, health officials in New York City said yesterday.

The students were among about 100 at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows who became sick in the last few days, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, New York City’s health commissioner.
“All the cases were mild, no child was hospitalized, no child was seriously ill,” Dr. Frieden said.

Health officials reached their preliminary conclusion after conducting viral tests on nose or throat swabs from the eight students, which allowed them to eliminate other strains of flu. Officials were also suspicious since some St. Francis students recently had been to Mexico, where the outbreak is believed to have started.

If people are dropping dead in Mexico of the disease, how can those infected in the US have only “mild” symptoms?

It could be that the age of the victims differ between the two sites of the outbreak. Flu kills mostly the very old and very young. It overwhelms the immune system before the body’s natural defenses can be mustered to fight it.

However, the Times article seems to indicate that the virus killed young, healthy adults - and their own strength apparently contributed to their demise:

In each year’s flu season, most deaths are in infants and the aged, but none of the first ones in Mexico were in people over 60 or under 3 years old, a W.H.O. spokeswoman said. When a new virus emerges, deaths may occur in healthy adults who mount the strongest immune reactions. Their own defenses - inflammation and leaking fluid in lung cells - can essentially drown them from inside.

It could also be the same virus but the kids in New York contracted a later, mutated form of the bug. This would be unusual but not unprecedented. The bug mutates so that it can survive. If it is killing its host too quickly before it can set up shop in another host in order to replicate, evolution would favor a mutated form of the virus that didn’t kill quite as quickly, thus giving the virus more time to spread and the victim’s body more time to fight the disease. People get sick but not as sick as with the earlier strain of the virus. The mortality rate plummets but the pathogen spreads faster.

It appears from the New York Times article that the government - city, state, and federal - is ready for just such an emergency thanks to the Bush Administration’s preparedness when the Bird Flu scare emerged a few years ago. Millions of doses of Tamiflu (which appears to work on the Swine Flu virus) are available as are mountains of other supplies:

Because of fears of the H5N1 avian flu, both New York City and the United States have had detailed pandemic emergency plans in place since 2005, as well as stockpiles of emergency supplies and flu drugs (the plan can be read at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/).

Dr. Frieden said that for such an emergency, the city had extra hospital ventilators, huge reserves of masks and gloves and “millions of doses of Tamiflu,” an antiflu drug that thus far appears to work against the new swine strain.

President Calderone in Mexico has taken extraordinary measures to combat the spread of the virus including canceling most major sporting events, closing movie theaters, shutting schools, and generally preventing people from gathering in large crowds.

We’ll see if the press plays this straight or starts to generate scare headlines that will panic people into going to the hospital every time they sneeze. If that occurs, hospitals will be overwhelmed and the really sick people may die because of the delay in treatment.

President Obama may be about to be tested not by the Russians or the North Koreans, but by the smallest of God’s creatures - a primitive but deadly form of life that could very well tax our health care system and cause a lot of suffering. We’ll see if he’s up to the challenge.