June 30, 2009: I Day - Victory In Iraq

1. "If we could mark it, June 30, 2009, was the day that the United States won the war in Iraq. Ralph Peters's column in the New York Post names the victory."

I agree and have linked to and excerpted Peters's column below, which correctly names the nature of the victory and its significance.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al Bolani has an op-ed in the Washington Post, which leads with the statement that "none of us can be lulled into believing that Iraq is a 'mission accomplished.'" That's true—from the Iraqi perspective, though the substance of Bolani's op-ed indicates that there is a lot of hope for Iraq's future.

We are already looking well past June 30 to Jan. 30, 2010, the date of our next national elections. Many parties, including my own, will field candidates. But this democratic process is not an end in itself. The mere act of voting does not secure our democracy, for it can easily fall into the hands of separatist or foreign-controlled [i.e., Iranian-controlled] parties. Each successive election here has been a tug of war for our national survival; perhaps none will be more momentous than 2010.

Our choices are between tribalism and nationalism, and everything in between; parties backed by foreign powers and homegrown grass-roots movements; secularists and Islamists. These choices will set in motion Iraq's rendezvous with destiny. If the coming weeks and months are reasonably peaceful, if progress continues against corruption and basic services continue to be restored, we will have taken a huge step forward. With next year's general election and American troops long gone from our cities, Iraqis should come close, at last, to ruling ourselves.

In short, America's part of the war is finished and won. The rest of the conflict is for the Iraqis to win.

In the context of American politics, however, the remainder of Bolani's op-ed comes across as a plea not to be forgotten and abandoned by the Obama administration—a real fear, considering the lack of attention America is paying to its victory.

"
Bye-Bye, Babylon," Ralph Peters, New York Post, June 30 We all recall the delighted leftist claims that Iraq had entered a hopeless civil war. Wrong. That Iraqis preferred al Qaeda to us. Wrong. That Shia militias represented the people. Wrong. And that Iran would seize control. Wrong again.…

[O]ur achievement remains profound: We gave one key Arab state a chance at freedom and democracy. We deposed a monstrous dictator who butchered his own people and invaded two foreign countries. And we didn't quit, despite the scorn of the global intelligentsia….

We botched the occupation early on, which seemed to create an opportunity for our enemies. As a result, al Qaeda declared Iraq the central front in its war on civilization.

Thus, it set itself up for a massive strategic failure, alienating the people of Iraq and exposing itself as a fraud. Al Qaeda may limp along for decades, lashing out now and then—but its high water mark occurred in 2006 in Anbar Province.

That single development made Iraq worthwhile.

But other gains, too, emerged from the vilified Bush administration's actions: As we just saw in Lebanon and Iran, democracy now seems possible to populations that had almost given up.

Iran will be free one day, the only question is when. And it won't be because of President Obama's grotesque Cairo apologia.

2. The Twitter Revolution The protests in Iran have been brutally repressed, for now, but I don't think the Second Iranian Revolution is over. As I put it on Monday, if we compare current events to the fall of Communism, this is not 1989, but it may well be 1981—an early crackdown on a dissident movement that would eventually go on to triumph over tyranny.

One factor to watch, because it has been significant in events so far, is the Internet—technology like Twitter and Facebook which has allowed Iranian dissidents to communicate with one another despite the regime's attempts at censorship.

The article linked to and excerpted below explains how technology developed by the US Navy and maintained by an international nonprofit organization is helping dissidents to do that. It also indicates that the Bush administration directly supported efforts to put this information technology into the hands of Iranian dissidents—much as the Reagan administration did with earlier technology (e.g., fax machines) during the Cold War.

The article also contains a statistic that is surprising, at least to me: "Iran, a country of 70 million people, has more than 20 million Internet users—the highest percentage in the region outside Israel."

Jack Wakeland also sent me a long post by a group of IT bloggers analyzing the techniques used by the Iranian government in its attempt to block Web traffic. I particularly liked one comment about how the Iranian government cannot control the country's Internet without smashing it to pieces—causing enormous damage to its economy.

Governments aren't well-suited to run the Internet, and they don't completely understand how it works. The Internet has never been "turned off" before, and it would take creativity and thoughtful action to figure out who to ask in order to get it done. So it simply hasn't happened, and probably won't. Good thing, too, because they might not be able to turn it on again.

They conclude that the Iranian government's Web blocking techniques are not very sophisticated and show that the regime was unprepared for an uprising: "Essentially, this confirmed the sense that I had started to form when I first started researching the story: that either the government of Iran isn't that technically savvy, or that they had no idea at all that the citizens of Iran would react with the ingenuity and velocity with which they've pursued the ability to communicate their plight."

Of course, the article below also describes a low-tech new form of protest: writing anti-regime slogans on paper money, a form of communication that is ubiquitous, constantly circulated—and impossible for security forces to monitor.

"Iranian Protesters Avoid Censorship with Navy Technology," Eli Lake, Washington Times, June 26 Iranians seeking to share videos and other eyewitness accounts of the demonstrations that have roiled their country since disputed elections two weeks ago are using an Internet encryption program originally developed by and for the US Navy.

Designed a decade ago to secure Internet communications between US ships at sea, The Onion Router, or TOR, has become one of the most important proxies in Iran for gaining access to Web sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.

The system of proxy servers that disguise a user's Internet traffic is now operated by a nonprofit, the Tor Project, that is independent from the US government and military and is used all over the world.

According to the Tor Project, connections to TOR have gone up by 600 percent since mass protests erupted after the June 12 vote, which gave a purported landslide victory to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….

An Iranian who asked not to be named to avoid government retribution told The Times that Iranians are writing protest slogans on their paper money. Mass e-mails have been sent out telling people approached by the authorities to say they got the money from someone else, he said.

Among the slogans the Iranian saw scrawled over the image of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution: "What happened to our vote, dictator?" "Death to the coup d'etat guard." "Supreme leader equals Shah." "The government cheats, the supreme leader approves."…

While US officials and Iran specialists say that the demonstrations are homegrown and reflect pent-up Iranian frustration with the lack of liberty in their country, the US government has in the past invested in communications technology to help Iranians organize and improve their access to the West.

In 2007, the State Department spent $31 million to promote democracy in Iran…. David Denehy, the Iran democracy program coordinator for the State Department from 2005 to 2007, said, "Our goal was to promote freedom of speech for Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world. We funded and supported innovative technologies to allow them to do this via the Internet, cell phones and other media."

Mr. Denehy added, however, that Iran's democracy movement is being directed by Iranians.

"What we are witnessing now is the Iranian people utilizing these new technologies and that is on their own accord," he said. "They have done it themselves. I hope the projects we funded have been helpful to them, but this is an Iranian-led movement."…

Ken Berman, acting director of engineering for the BBG, said he oversees a three-person anti-censorship team that focuses on China and Iran….

"We have realized that Iran has a growing audience of young activist Internet users and we have repurposed our tools to work in Farsi and make it available to Iranians," he said. "We open up the channels so the Iranian blogosphere is more accessible to Iranians in Iran."

Mr. Berman said that one project his group funded was to design the Firefox Web browser to embed the TOR proxy system.

3. "We're Going to Take This a Day at a Time" The Obama administration's reaction to the Iranian revolution has been a disaster from the beginning. One cause is Barack Obama's deep-seated anti-Americanism (see item #4 below). But another cause is the clueless, myopic pragmatism of many "realists" within the administration.

Exhibit A is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When asked whether she would recognize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the legitimately elected president of Iran, she replied "We're going to take this a day at a time." It is a statement that almost rivals "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" as a timeless expression of the view that there are no objective moral principles and no fixed reality.

"Clinton Declines Comment on Ahmadinejad Re-Election," Reuters via Yahoo!, June 29 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refrained from comment Monday on the reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but pointed to a "credibility" gap for Iran's leadership.

"I'm not going to speculate on, you know, what happens with their internal regime," the top US diplomat said….

Ahmadinejad has demanded that the United States recognize him as the democratically elected president of Iran, but Clinton said United States would refrain from drawing conclusions.

"We're going to take this a day at a time. We're going to watch, and carefully assess what we see happening," she said.

"This is a historic moment for Iran and for the Iranian people, and I don't want to, you know, speculate on how it's going to turn out," Clinton added.

4. Good Thing He's Not "Meddling" While President Obama refused to "be seen as meddling" in Iran, he has been quick to meddle in Honduras, describing the arrest and deportation of would-be dictator Manuel Zelaya as "illegal"—which gets the real story exactly wrong. It is Zelaya's actions as president that were illegal.

So what's the difference between Iran and Honduras? Giving moral and material support to Iran's dissidents would serve America's interests. Condemning Zelaya's ejection from office as an illegal "coup" sacrifices America's interests.

The explanation, in short, is that Obama is acting on the basic premise of anti-Americanism. Note that in both cases, Obama cited America's history of involvement in other countries' affairs as evidence of our past sins and lack of moral authority. Thus, in his view, America can only legitimately act overseas if we are acting to thwart our own interests.

From the views he learned at his mother's knee, to those he imbibed at Reverend Wright's church, to those he heard from his friend and political mentor Billy Ayers, Obama has spent his whole life steeped in the slander that America's assertion of its interests in the world has created an evil empire that must be dismantled. And now that he is in office, he is setting about to dismantle it.

I've been worried that Obama will be another Jimmy Carter—but he is worse. He is the first actively anti-American president in our nation's history.

"Nothing So Shocking About This Coup," Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald, June 30 Here's a question for all these new-found defenders of Honduran democracy: Where were you last week? Perhaps if some of these warnings about sticking to the constitution had been addressed to President Zelaya, the Honduran army would still be in the barracks where it belongs.

For weeks, Zelaya—an erratic leftist who styles himself after his good pal Hugo Chávez of Venezuela—has been engaged in a naked and illegal power grab, trying to rewrite the Honduran constitution to allow him to run for reelection in November.

First Zelaya scheduled a national vote on a constitutional convention. After the Honduran supreme court ruled that only the country's congress could call such an election, Zelaya ordered the army to help him stage it anyway. (It would be ''non-binding,'' he said.) When the head of the armed forces, acting on orders from the supreme court, refused, Zelaya fired him, then led a mob to break into a military base where the ballots were stored.

His actions have been repudiated by the country's supreme court, its congress, its attorney-general, its chief human-rights advocate, all its major churches, its main business association, his own political party (which recently began debating an inquiry into Zelaya's sanity) and most Hondurans: Recent polls have shown his approval rating down below 30 percent.

In fact, about the only people who didn't condemn Zelaya's political gangsterism were the foreign leaders and diplomats who now primly lecture Hondurans about the importance of constitutional law. They're also strangely silent about the vicious stream of threats against Honduras spewing from Chávez since Zelaya was deposed.

Warning that he's already put his military on alert, Chávez on Monday flat-out threatened war against Honduras if Roberto Micheletti, named by the country's congress as interim president until elections in November, takes office.

5. Quota Queen Why is the Supreme Court's ruling in the Ricci case—the one about white firefighters who were denied promotions because of their race—so damning against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor? Sotomayor's appeals court ruling was overturned, of course, but it was seemingly supported by the left-leaning minority on the court.

Actually, it wasn't. As the article below argues, even though four justices would have upheld Sotomayor's ruling, all of them rejected the argument Sotomayor cited for that ruling.

Sotomayor supported an argument that any disparity in actual rates of hiring and firing constitutes illegal racial discrimination—with no obligation to demonstrate bias in any part of the process by which the hiring and firing was done. What her ruling meant is that when racial quotas conflict with the objective requirements of a job, it is the requirements of the job that have to give. It was a mandate for crude racial quotas.

This is more evidence that Obama's claim about transcending racial politics was a fraud.

"Justices Reject Sotomayor Position 9-0—But Bigger Battles Loom," Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal, June 29 [I]t was hardly to be expected that the five more conservative justices—who held that the city had violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by refusing to promote the firefighters with the highest scores on a job-related promotional exam because none were black—would endorse an Obama nominee's ruling to the contrary.

What's more striking is that the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel's specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven's decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a "disparate-impact" lawsuit—regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed….

In fact, even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 39-page dissent for the four more liberal justices quietly but unmistakably rejected the Sotomayor-endorsed position that disparate racial results alone justified New Haven's decision to dump the promotional exam without even inquiring into whether it was fair and job-related….

President Obama's campaign rhetoric about getting away from identity politics and racial spoils seemed to promise something rather different.

6. "Red State" Revenge The statistics in the article below name a revealing fact about American politics and the mentality behind the Obama bailout state.

Which side of the political spectrum backed the bailouts and de facto nationalization of domestic automakers? The left. But according to the study below, these same people don't drive American cars. They mostly drive imports.

Now isn't that interesting? On one level, this is old-fashioned liberal condescension, the same attitude of upper middle-class leftists who send their own children to private schools but oppose any form of vouchers and tax credits to help ordinary people do the same.

But I think there is something else to it. As someone who lives in one of the "red states," I can tell you why my neighbors have been buying more cars from domestic automakers: they have been buying pickup trucks and SUVs—Silverados and Suburbans—the best and most profitable models made by the Big Three in Detroit.

Not coincidentally, these are the models that are slated to be eliminated by GM's and Chrysler's new government masters, in favor of models like the Toyota Prius—the kind of car bought by the blue-state leftists. (In fact, there is even a rumor that Toyota is offering to let GM sell a re-branded Prius.)

Combine this with Michael Barone's observation that "cap-and-trade" legislation passed the House with support from the coastal "blue states" that don't rely heavily on coal to generate electricity—and over the objections of the "red states" that do.

What you get is this: the blue states are, in effect, declaring an eco-war on the red states by cutting off their supply of power and taking away their pickup trucks. Perhaps it is the blue-staters' revenge for their humiliating defeat in the 2004 election. But I can't help thinking that the red staters won't put up with this subordination to coastal leftists, and they may take their own revenge in 2010 or 2012.

By the way, I use the term "red states," which is meant to refer to right-leaning states, based on how they appear on the TV news election map—but I use it under protest. As someone who grew up in the last decades of the Cold War, I remember what the color "red" really signifies, and we all know which side of the political debate is "red" in this original sense.

"Study: Political Leanings Drive Car Choice," William Ehart, Washington Times, June 30 The Volvo-driving liberal and the redneck in a Chevy pickup are long-held stereotypes. But a map of car ownership—produced by R.L. Polk & Co.—overlaid on the electoral map reveals the surprising extent to which how we vote corresponds with what we drive.

Blue-staters on each coast, from Los Angeles to Seattle and from Boston to the District, are the most likely to drive foreign cars. Domestic brands have their highest levels of market share in the mostly conservative interior of the country.

In some blue states—where a Democrat has won at least three of the last four presidential contests—foreign cars have as much as 60 percent of the market, as measured by vehicle registrations. It is mostly in red states—Republican strongholds—where domestic cars have 74 percent of the market or more….

But the type of driving you do may play the biggest role.

"If you're looking at more fuel-efficient vehicles, smaller vehicles, [imports] have the edge," said Bruce M. Belzowski of the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute. "If you look at people who need a larger vehicle, who need towing capacity, they probably go more toward the Big Three."