Is there a leader to lead this revolution”
Charles Krauthammer writes:
Desperately seeking Yeltsin. Does this revolution have one? Or to put it another way, can Mousavi become Yeltsin?
President Obama’s worst misstep during the Iranian upheaval occurred early on when he publicly discounted the policy differences between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mousavi.
True, but that overlooked two extremely important points. First, while Mousavi himself was originally only a few inches to Ahmadinejad’s left on the political spectrum — being hand-picked by the ruling establishment precisely for his ideological reliability — Mousavi’s support was not restricted to those whose views matched his. He would have been the electoral choice of everyone to his left, a massive national constituency — liberals, liberalizers, secularists, monarchists, radicals and visceral opponents of the entire regime — that dwarfs those who shared his positions, as originally held.
Moreover, Mousavi’s positions have changed, just as he has. He is far different today from the Mousavi who began this electoral campaign.
Revolutions are dynamic, fluid. It is true that two months ago there was little difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. But that day is long gone. Revolutions outrun their origins. And they transform their leaders………..
As Mousavi hovers between Gorbachev and Yeltsin, between reformer and revolutionary, between figurehead and leader, the revolution hangs in the balance. The regime may neutralize him by arrest or even murder. It may buy him off with offers of safety and a sinecure. He may well prefer to let this cup pass from his lips.
But choose he must, and choose quickly. This is his moment and it is fading rapidly. Unless Mousavi rises to it, or another rises in his place, Iran’s democratic uprising will end not as Russia 1991, but as China 1989.
Tag Archives: Krauthammer
Nuclear Japan – the answer to N.Korea?
Michelle Malkin is settling into a comfy chair while N.Korea takes to the skies with more and more fireworks.
Charles Krauthammer is for the U.S. encouraging Japan to take a bold and powerful step by getting into the nuclear ring. The message would pack more punch than either Obama’s disarmament talk, disgruntling Krauthammer:
He certainly has a vision. Rather than relying on America’s unique technological edge in missile defenses to provide a measure of nuclear safety, Obama will instead boldly deploy the force of example. How? By committing his country to disarmament gestures — such as, he promised his cheering acolytes in Prague, ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban.
It would be more of a message than the one Obama’s sends with spending cuts in our defense budget and weakening our defense capabilities or the UN’s laughable assault with more empty words and inaction. Krauthammer’s beat this drum before :
The immediate effect of Japan’s considering going nuclear would be to concentrate China’s mind on denuclearizing North Korea. China calculates that North Korea is a convenient buffer between it and a dynamic, capitalist South Korea bolstered by American troops. China is quite content with a client regime that is a thorn in our side, keeping us tied down while it pursues its ambitions in the rest of Asia. Pyongyang’s nukes, after all, are pointed not west but east.
Japan’s threatening to go nuclear would alter that calculation. It might even persuade China to squeeze Kim Jong Il as a way to prevent Japan from going nuclear. The Japan card remains the only one that carries even the remote possibility of reversing North Korea’s nuclear program.
Japan’s response to the North Korean threat has been very strong and very insistent on serious sanctions. This is, of course, out of self-interest, not altruism. But that is the point. Japan’s natural interests parallel America’s in the Pacific Rim — maintaining military and political stability, peacefully containing an inexorably expanding China, opposing the gangster regime in Pyongyang, and spreading the liberal democratic model throughout Asia.
Why are we so intent on denying this stable, reliable, democratic ally the means to help us shoulder the burden in a world where so many other allies — the inveterately appeasing South Koreans most notoriously — insist on the free ride?
Hot Air questions using logic on the illogical while seeing the logic this way:
Why would Japan want its own arsenal when it already enjoys the deterrent effect of being under America’s nuclear umbrella? Simple: A Japanese arsenal wouldn’t really be aimed at deterrence. It would be aimed at scaring the hell out of China, where memories of Japanese aggression are long. The thinking, I guess, is that China would be sufficiently cowed by Japanese nukes that they’d have no choice but to try much harder to calm Kim down lest they end up being drawn into a three-way nuclear war with North Korea and Japan.
Obama Going Bush
Charles Krauthammer writes Obama’s Deeds Vindicate Bush:
Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech on Thursday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.
The rhetoric is like cosmetic magic making superficial changes while making the Bush policy his own.
Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: “The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e. slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e. the surge) — and now Guantanamo.”
There is something much larger at play — an undeniable, irresistible national interest that, in the end, beyond the cheap politics, asserts itself. The urgencies and necessities of the actual post-9/11 world, as opposed to the fanciful world of the opposition politician, present a rather narrow range of acceptable alternatives.
The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.
That’s happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won’t have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.
If only Obama weren’t so joined at the hip with NARAL and Planned Parenthood, the unborn might have a chance of getting a Bush-Life policy retained to keep them alive along with the other Bush policies finding new life in this administration.
Read it all here.
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Link – Around – Pelosi
Ashes, ashes…the truth will out Pelosi!
The Torture Debate-Continued – Charles Krauthammer
“So what happened? The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly reelected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions — our blindness to al-Qaeda’s plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama’s own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed “high-value information” — and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.
And they were right.”
The Wall St Journal Time-line-intelligence trail:
What Pelosi said she knew
- August 2002: Justice Department authorizes waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques (EITs). The CIA uses the technique.
- September 2002: Nancy Pelosi, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, is briefed on the techniques.
- February 2003: A Pelosi aide attends a briefing with the new ranking member on the committee, Jane Harman. Pelosi later says that she learns after this meeting that the techniques have already been used, and that she ‘concurred’ with Harman’s letter to the CIA protesting the decision to use them.
- December 2007: A news report quotes two officials who say Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding and raised no objections. Pelosi issues a statement confirming she was briefed on one occasion in the fall of 2002 ‘on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future.’
- April 23, 2009: After the Obama administration releases four memos approving the use of waterboarding, Pelosi says that in September 2002, ‘We were not …told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used.’
- May 5, 2009: Intelligence officials send lawmakers a list of 40 congressional briefings on EITs, saying lawmakers ‘will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened.’ The list says Pelosi was told that some EITs had been employed, but doesn’t specify waterboarding.
- May 8, 2009: Pelosi repeats that she was briefed on techniques that would be used in the future
- May 14, 2009: Pelosi says she wasn’t told in September 2002 that waterboarding was being used, and says ‘the CIA was misleading Congress.’
In case you missed it and hadn’t already guessed: “Pelosi: Utterly Contemptible” – here’s Charles Krauthammer, impeccable on the subject, if reason still matters?
Nancy Pelosi Explains What She Knew About Waterboarding
In her own words, you decide!
HotAir on Ed’s Post and More : Pelosi goes nuclear on CIA over torture as Cheney’s memo request is denied:
Meanwhile, as this soap opera’s playing out, Dick Cheney’s request to declassify the two CIA memos which he claims prove that torture works has been denied. Surprise. Exit quotation: “President Obama has the legal authority to declassify the documents ‘with the wave of his hand,’ according to one expert.”
Update: I want to highlight this bit from Ed’s post because it really is the million-dollar question:
And if the CIA really had lied to her in the briefings, why didn’t Pelosi start out with that explanation? In fact, why didn’t she mention that in 2005 when both the EITs and the briefings were made public? Coming four years later, this explanation lacks any kind of credibility.
The killer quote from today’s presser is “they mislead us all the time,” a reference to the CIA’s bad intel on Iraq’s WMD. If there really is a pattern of deception going on, why would she wait until there’s a Democrat in the White House to complain when she could have pinned the whole thing on Bush by screaming about it earlier?
New Majority: Former CIA Sources Respond to Pelosi: Congress Knew Everything
Real Clear Krauthammer
As usual Obama sounded great speaking of how America and the world needed to respond to N.Korea. As usual his response to the launch didn’t match the rhetoric and reality, as real clear Krauthammer, Fox News contributor, posted by Town Hall blog, makes crystal. Here’s Charles on the N. Korean missile launch and the weak response from President Obama :
h/t Greg Hengler
Obama Calling America “Arrogant” Update
Update:
I’m sorry. I was in a hurry and didn’t do Obama’s comments justice. In referring to America Obama said we’d “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive…” Charles Krauthammer fills in the blanks for me with regards to a fuller history on the subject.
Commenting on President Barack Obama’s lack of grace in dissing his country on the world stage, Steven Forbes says, President Obama should take a day off. Go to Camp David. Watch some old tapes of Ronald Reagan, and learn what it’s like to be a real President.“
Charles Krauthammer says more:
Be Holy! 