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Christopher Hitchens gives us the background on the newly nominated Iranian defense minister.
President Obama has said that he wants “the Islamic Republic of Iran” to be welcomed back into the “community of nations.” Unfortunately, it is precisely the fact that it is an Islamic republic that excludes it from such consideration. A pointed reminder of this was provided last week, when the country’s dictator, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, freshly blooded from his recent military coup, nominated his choice of defense minister. This turns out to be Ahmad Vahidi, who if confirmed will be the only holder of the defense portfolio in the world to be simultaneously wanted by Interpol.
Vahidi used to head the so-called “Quds Force,” a shadowy arm of the “Revolutionary Guards” that conducts covert operations overseas. In 1994, according to an Argentine indictment adopted by Interpol’s “red list” or “most wanted” index, he was one of those responsible for “conceiving, planning, financing and executing” the demolition of the Jewish community’s cultural center in Buenos Aires. There were 85 deaths and hundreds of injuries. Among the five other named co-conspirators in this atrocity were Mohsen Rezaee, formerly the head of the Revolutionary Guards and more recently a candidate for the presidency, and the late Imad Mugniyeh, the Damascus-based leader of Hezbollah’s military wing, itself a declared proxy of the Islamic Republic. …
…The term Revolutionary Guard was not, until recently, as much of a byword as it has since become. But this year’s military coup in Tehran, of which that organization was the main engine, has put it at the forefront of our attention. The rape and torture of young Iranians, the sadistic public bullying and sometimes murder of women, the closing of newspapers and the framing-up in a show trial of opposition politicians and intellectuals—all this is the fruit of “Revolutionary Guard” activity and ambition. We may be limited in what we can do to help and defend the Iranians who are confined within their own borders. But surely it is time that the international community spoke with one voice and said that the leaders of this criminal gang must stay inside their own borders as well. Perhaps fewer invitations to “President” Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University and perhaps fewer countries putting out the red carpet for his defense minister. As for the sending of known supervisors of murder and torture to human rights summits in Geneva: Conceivably that could become a slight no-no as well. Some of these people have bank accounts overseas, in consequence of their years of fleecing the helpless and torpid Iranian economy: Freeze these accounts or confiscate them and hold them in escrow for the day when democracy comes. …
We have Marty Peretz ‘s comments on the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Peretz throws in a paragraph trying to pin this on the last administration’s overtures to Gadhafi while ignoring the steady stream of Obama insults towards Great Britain. For example, as soon as he could Obama returned the bust of Churchill Tony Blair had loaned to Bush for display in the Oval Office. When visiting here, Gordon Brown brought thoughtful gifts to The One, like a pen and pencil set carved from timbers from one of the ships used to close down the slave trade. Obama gave Brown a boxed DVD set of 25 American movies formatted for our TV, not England’s. When the kid president went to England he gave the queen an IPod loaded with his speeches. Any wonder the Brits did not give much thought to how Obama might feel about the release of the Lockerbie bomber? For more on Obama’s insults to our closest ally read from the Daily Telegraph.
…The release of al-Megrahi is an enormity all its own, a sabotage of justice. It tells you a lot about the new America’s persuasive powers with its closest ally that it could not preclude his unfettering. Why the American government did not raise the issue of setting the murderer free before he was rescued by British financial interests is left to speculation. What is certainly true is that neither Brown nor Obama could get a believable commitment that the freeing of al-Megrahi would not be accompanied by a taunting of the United States. And if this taunting was preordained or foreshadowed, would it not have been better that Washington be defeated in honorable glory rather than being led into humiliation and ignominy by craven London and Edinburgh?
In the wake of the official delirium awaiting al-Megrahi in Tripoli, the president was quoted as characterizing the images as “highly objectionable” and “disturbing.” A group representative of survivors of the 270 dead did much better, branding them “perfidious, repulsive and sickening.” It is not as if Obama is usually shy with emotional oratory, although he is rather shy in admonishing Muslims, a difficulty he seems not to have with the Israelis. …
…I have my theory about the inertness (perhaps that’s too kind a description) of the Obama response to this grotesque spectacle: He is befuddled. His entire grand strategy rested on our ability to transform dozens of Libyas; his persuasive powers would make allies out of the rogue’s gallery of the Middle East. That was never an approach grounded in the hard realities of history or more than a surface understanding of his supposed interlocutors. It is a dream that should have died, once and for all, with the pep rally greeting al-Megrahi. But will this humiliation of Anglo-America change our policy? Unlike Obama, I have no illusions.
David P. Goldman who we first knew as Spengler discusses the divided opinion in Jewish-American society over Obama.
In case anyone failed to catch my drift last week, permit me to reiterate my distaste for yet another protest from the collected Jewish leadership over a supposed Catholic agenda to convert us. When Jews get together at the moment, do you think they complain about how many of our co-religionists we are losing to the Catholic Church? No, they don’t worry about the Catholic Church. They talk about Obama. Let me correct that: they do not exactly talk about Obama. They shout, stamp, and throw things. After Obama’s betrayal of Israel (and Elliot Abrams’ published reports of pre-existing deals between the US and Israel over limited expansion of settlements makes “betrayal” the operative word), the major Jewish organizations are in trouble. Not just fundraising, but jobs are on the line. Except for the Zionist Organization of America, all the major organizations bowed to the 78% Jewish majority for Obama and kowtowed to the president. Rabbis I know who privately abominate Obama for his betrayal do not dare say so in public because they would lose congregants–a lot of congregants. Except for the Reconstructionists, who would follow Obama back to Buchenwald if he led them there, and a few of the Orthodox who never went along with Obama in the first place, every synagogue in the US is split over Obama. …
…In a much smaller way, Obama is doing the same thing, by placing responsibility for the mess in the Muslim world at Israel’s doorstep: if only Israel could placate Muslim opinion by making visible and painful sacrifices of its own interests, then perhaps the Iranians could be made to act rationally, and so forth. It is unspeakably stupid, but the alternative is to concede that the entire project of the enlightened since the schemes for universal peace of Leibniz and Kant has gone down the drain.
Enlightened opinion sooner will believe that the Israeli army murders Palestinians in order to harvest their organs, then believe in its own redundancy. The stronger the evidence that the Muslim world will not come to terms with the West, the more fanatically enlightened opinion will demand that Israel accept responsibility. Someone must accept responsibility; the Iranian government is too busy suppressing its own voters, the Iraqis are too busy getting on with civil war, the Afghanis are too busy growing opium, the Pakistanis are too busy supporting the Taliban, the Libyans are too busy celebrating a mass murder, and so forth. Are the Muslims recalcitrant, hostile, even murderous? All the more reason to force concessions on Israel! Waxing Muslim rage and distress reveals the entire project of enlightened opinion to hang by a thread. If it should fail, then horrors will ensue to dwarf those of the bloody 20th century.
Jews have been prominent in the project of enlightened opinion, which now has turned upon them and demanded sacrifices that they cannot accept–apart from the extreme secular left of American Jewry. That is tearing the Jewish organizations apart, and possibly many congregations. …
Ann Coulter continues her series on health care.
With the Democrats getting slaughtered — or should I say, “receiving mandatory end-of-life counseling” — in the debate over national health care, the Obama administration has decided to change the subject by indicting CIA interrogators for talking tough to three of the world’s leading Muslim terrorists.
Had I been asked, I would have advised them against reinforcing the idea that Democrats are hysterical bed-wetters who can’t be trusted with national defense while also reminding people of the one thing everyone still admires about President George W. Bush.
But I guess the Democrats really want to change the subject. Thus, here is Part 2 in our series of liberal lies about national health care.
(6) There will be no rationing under national health care.
Anyone who says that is a liar. And all Democrats are saying it. (Hey, look — I have two-thirds of a syllogism!)
Apparently, promising to cut costs by having a panel of Washington bureaucrats (for short, “The Death Panel”) deny medical treatment wasn’t a popular idea with most Americans. So liberals started claiming that they are going to cover an additional 47 million uninsured Americans and cut costs … without ever denying a single medical treatment!
Also on the agenda is a delicious all-you-can-eat chocolate cake that will actually help you lose weight! But first, let’s go over the specs for my perpetual motion machine — and it uses no energy, so it’s totally green! …
Caroline Baum advocates market-driven healthcare reform.
…Medicare, for example, has used a fee-for-service model since its inception in 1965. It encourages volume (more tests, procedures, surgery) over results, rewarding “incompetent doctors and bad hospitals,” according to Irwin Savodnik, a psychiatrist and philosopher on the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Poor diagnosis and treatment may mean more tests and additional surgeries. “The worst rise to the top,” Savodnik says.
And Medicare-for-all is President Barack Obama’s model for health-care reform?
Health care is an overwhelmingly complicated issue, which is probably the best reason the task of reform should be assigned to Mr. Market rather than politicians. The market would “respond and develop tools to make price and value decisions,” Cato’s Tanner says. …
Fouad Ajami looks at liberals’ unrealistic expectations regarding the American public.
So we are to have a French health-care system without a French tradition of political protest. It is odd that American liberalism, in a veritable state of insurrection during the Bush presidency, now seeks political quiescence. These “townhallers” who have come forth to challenge ObamaCare have been labeled “evil-mongers” (Harry Reid), “un-American” (Nancy Pelosi), agitators and rowdies and worse.
A political class, and a media elite, that glamorized the protest against the Iraq war, that branded the Bush presidency as a reign of usurpation, now wishes to be done with the tumult of political debate. President Barack Obama himself, the community organizer par excellence, is full of lament that the “loudest voices” are running away with the national debate. Liberalism in righteous opposition, liberalism in power: The rules have changed. …
…American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the “mandate of heaven” is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics. …
Robert J. Samuelson comments on another expensive program with little benefit being pushed by the Obama administration: high-speed rail.
…In a blog-posted analysis, Glaeser made generous assumptions for trains (“Personally, I almost always prefer trains to driving”) and still found that costs vastly outweigh benefits. Consider Obama’s claim about removing the equivalent of 1 million cars. Even if it came true (doubtful), it would represent less than one-half of 1 percent of the 254 million registered vehicles in 2007.
What works in Europe and Asia won’t in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.
Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it’s 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can’t pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.
Distances also matter. America is big; trips are longer. Beyond 400 to 500 miles, fast trains can’t compete with planes. Finally, Europe and Japan tax car transportation more heavily, pushing people to trains. In August 2008, notes the GAO, gasoline in Japan was $6.50 a gallon. Americans regard $4 a gallon as an outrage. Proposals for stiff gasoline taxes (advocated by many, including me) go nowhere. …
Division of Labour provides a round-up of death videos from Cash for Clunkers. This is the first iteration of Obama death panels.
… A nice looking 2001 Mazda light truck with 75,000 miles bites the dust here. Here’s a good looking Volvo prematurely destroyed. This SUV would look at home in any tony U.S. suburb. …
Ed Morrissey reports the big winners in the Cash for Clunks were foreign makers.
… Why did GM and Chrysler, both owned in part by the same government that launched C4C, do so poorly? In part, they didn’t have cars to sell. Both GM and Chrysler had curtailed their production during their bankruptcies but had worked to have inventory ready for the new sales year. By launching C4C in the middle of the summer, when most dealers are already cutting prices to move inventory off the lot, the administration practically guaranteed that C4C would leave them on the sidelines. Chrysler had the worst inventory problems, but GM also had serious inventory issues. Ford, which didn’t take the bailout, had continued production and had inventory ready to sell.
Shouldn’t the owner of GM and Chrysler had known this? Didn’t anyone on the Auto Task Force — say, Ron Bloom, the auto czar with no automaking experience — bother to check whether their companies were ready to compete in this program, and whether July was a smart time to launch this even apart from that? This is what happens when government enters the private sector; it makes decisions based on politics rather than sound business sense, and it picks leaders based on cronyism and political payoffs rather than expertise and competence. …