Aftermath

We have received a dozen emails, all of them highlighting the relevancy of our last sketch, and complementing the author on matters of prescience. Well, perhaps. It is always best to close the pattern ahead of the masses, certainly ahead of the press. But we also insert our heart into what we do. This work, this section is after all as much about warmth and compassion for the world’s peoples, as it is about accuracy.

In 1996 Alan Blinder (D) was vice chair of the Federal Reserve, second to Alan Greenspan (an individual for whom we have little respect). Blinder sent us this short note, dated Jan/19/1996: "Dear Mr. Craven. Thanks so much for sending this. Thanks even more for writing it. It is, without a doubt, the first time I ever found an investment newsletter touching. In a single paragraph, you have captured - with eloquence, grace and perceptiveness – the essence of what I have been trying to accomplish at the Fed. ....It’s nice to know someone was paying attention."

Thank you Dr. Blinder. This is what we are after with our current effort - this blog - "paying attention". We are not out to hang an adolescent president any more than we are out to spew partisan garbage. We simply cannot suffer fools, be they stateside or offshore.

Robert Craven

A Bit Of History

The medievalists ruling Iran have acted in a most predictable way. We should expect nothing else. Nondemocratic rulers find bellicosity, the threat of war as an especially attractive device for justifying the repression that is necessary to control their subjects. External enemies are an effective means of maintaining internal stability; the mullah clowns know that inculcating hatred towards the West is critical to maintaining their rule. Or was. The Iranian masses are catching on. Before, the mullahs transformed potential adversaries into supporters by inventing an enemy - the West. No longer. We have witnessed the beginning of the end for these troglodytes.
Only Obama now stands in the way of an infant democracy in Iran.

A bit of recent history (always a good thing): Kissinger believed in "detente," nothing more than a plan to carve up the geopolitical pie between the two superpowers. Others, Reagan and Senator "Scoop" Jackson (D, Wash) for example saw this as nonsense; they believed in limits, in a right and a wrong. Thus, Jackson co-authored a historic piece of legislation that linked most favored nation status for the USSR’s terms of trade with America, to its protection of its citizen’s right to emigrate. The Soviets had slammed the door shut on millions of Jews who wanted to leave. Kissinger believed the Soviets must be appeased. Jackson and Reagan believed they must be confronted. Kissinger was, as he often is, wrong. Jackson and Reagan, were, as they often were, right. Seeing that he no longer had the strength to control his subjects AND compete with the West, Gorbachev reluctantly implemented his "glasnot" reforms. And this limited attempt at "openness" would usher in changes far beyond what Gorbachev intended. The second the regime lowered its arms, the people it had terrorized for decades overwhelmed it. Thus, the struggle to free Soviet Jews played a critical role in reversing the policy of detente and triggering a new, and eventually successful approach to the USSR.

Jackson rejected the premise that a totalitarian USSR was a permanent fixture on the international stage. He knew the Soviet economy would fold once isolated. And Jackson believed that promoting human rights was also in the strategic interest of the US, one step closer to a democracy.

Kissinger was taken in by the Soviets just as he and Obama have been taken in by the Iranians. The Nixon administration offered the Soviets preferable trading terms as part of their grand strategy of detente. Kissinger saw those benefits as an incentive for the Soviets to moderate their international policies, which suited the duplicitous leadership in Moscow just fine. But by making trade benefits conditional on internal reforms, on the respect for the rights of its own citizens, the Jackson leg actually accomplished something.

The Soviets needed things from the West. To get them, leaders like Reagan and Jackson demanded that the Soviets change their behavior towards their own people. The parallel with Iran is glaring. The bearded thugs open their society or we in the West restrict, and finally if necessary, blockade their supply of gasoline. Use their dependency as a lever for goodness sake. We highlighted this tool three years ago.

We don’t have Reagan now; we are stuck with a dead man walking, who has never known the great enthusiasms, who has never strived valiantly for anything, who has never demonstrated great courage, and, who is profoundly ill equipped to carry out the Founder's definition of the duties of the Executive branch. His appalling ignorance of history prompted him to claim at a press conference recently that "the Iranian people … aren't paying a lot of attention to what's being said … here." On the contrary, from their jail cells in the Gulag, Soviet dissidents took heart from what was being said here--as all dissidents dream that the leader of the free world will be prepared to speak and act in their defense. Instead, Obama’s simply trying to vote "present," but he's the president now, not a junior senator from Illinois.

In reacting rather than leading, BO has in a few day’s time gone a long way in relinquishing our Country’s role as leader of the free world.

Our Marin friends from the left remind us of Kissinger’s recent endorsement of Obama policy, as if this were to convey credibility, somehow excusing BO’s behavior. Instead, this is laughable. Kissinger believed, falsely, that he could engineer what he called a "structure of peace" with the Soviets that would preserve order and stability around the world. But to the Soviets, Kissinger was little more than another of Stalin’s "useful idiots". To the Iranian clerics, Obama fills that slot very nicely.

Robert Craven

IRAN - Days To Tell

Our friends from the left remind us that the US must act in a measured way to the current crisis, that any untoward support for Mousavi for example would simply convert him to the status of a stooge for the West, granting legitimacy to the mullahs in the process. Ok. But how is this a contribution to the discussion, of the task at hand? How is this not but surface feeding, a demonstration of a lack of scholarship?

They and Obama can read our past posts on Iran for guidance. It is all there. Until they do, Obama and our friends will miss the point. This crisis / opportunity is not about an election; it is but the child of an election.

Iranians are fed up with the corruption and incompetence rampant in the Islamic Republic. This dissatisfaction was galvanized by the regime's contempt for their votes and found an accidental leader in Mr. Mousavi. The movement has now taken on a life of its own. The young folk on the street in Iran are no more rooting for Mousavi than they are demonstrating disgust with Ahmadinejad’s policy, that which thoroughly alienated the West and put Iran’s economy in the tank. They know instead that it is the Muslim medevielists - the Khamenei regime, which must go.

None of us, left or right, would argue that it is not in our direct interest to birth a democracy in Iran. We all agree on that point. The ramifications are obvious. As Krauthammer notes, "It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited."

But how best to accomplish that task? We know we have a window (see last post). Unfortunately Obama’s strategy, at least this week, has done nothing but add legitimacy to the mullahs. Those who heard Khamenei yesterday know that another Tiananmen Square may be only days away. And Obama? Afraid of meddling, of taking sides between thugs, and, folks beaten (or shot) on the street who only want to be free. Obama’s response, "I’m deeply troubled by what I’ve seen on TV," then speaking favorably of, "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election." "Supreme Leader"? Obama’s sickening, nauseating abject solitictiousness, as totally repulsive as his complete misunderstanding of the "Iranian people" is disappointing. Hillary, although generally bankrupt in matters of truth, did speak exactly that when she made her campaign point about BO’s inexperience and lack of instinct in a crisis; she was down right prescient in fact.

Iran's entrenched interests read Obama's meant-to-be-conciliatory remarks as a confession of weakness. Is that a surprise? The result was that the mullahs no longer saw a need to play pretend. Bush worried them. Obama doesn't. They judged, correctly, that Washington wouldn't issue a tough-minded statement in response to this mockery of an election, or, to their ongoing brutal attempted put down of acts of free speech. And the administration? Stunned, unable to believe that its self-abasement toward the Middle East didn't inaugurate the next Age of Aquarius.

Robert Craven

IRAN - A Window

The courage demonstrated the past few days in Iran - simply remarkable. Few of us are made of this stuff. The protestors remember the Iranian regime’s bloody crackdown of university students in 1999, that many students simply disappeared. Yet they persevere. Their goal is not so much to salvage Mr. Mousavi’s future - he could have been any number of persons - as it is to secure a genuine consensuality in governing their future, meaning the ouster of Khamenei and the rest of the brutal mullahs.

As the WSJ editorialized, "The election was a sham thrice over. Though elected by popular vote, Iran's president is subservient to an unelected Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The four candidates whose names made it on the presidential ballot this year were pre-screened by an unelected Guardian Council composed mostly of Islamic clerics, which also disqualified more than 400 others. What's remarkable is that these leaders still felt the need to rig the results."

The administration has made this out to be far too complex for any of them to understand, freighted with all sorts of political and ambassadorial nuance. Bull. Bottom feeders always reach for complexity in an attempt to escape. Instead, now is the time for Obama to act. Through the primaries and the election we highlighted what we knew was Obama’s #1 vulnerability - that he was profoundly out of his league in foreign affairs. We were right. Obama has so far given more attention and concern to former enemies than to allies; he believes that provocative acts are the result of a misunderstanding, not planned aggression, that all disputes involve equal culpability, that there are no bad buys. We can see Obama running to the playground swing set, he, Kim and Khamenei pumping away.

Perhaps Obama wants the Iranian dictatorship- Khamenei and his cronies - to stabilize itself so he can get back to the work of appeasing it. On Sat, the White House claimed they were merely "monitoring" the situation. On Monday, State’s spokesman Ian Kelly said the US is "deeply troubled" by events in Iran but would not condemn them. "We need to see how things unfold," he said. "You need to see more heads cracked in the middle of the street?" Fox News James Rosen shot back.

So we doubt that Obama will select this window of opportunity, certainly the greatest potential gift to the West in the three years we have followed the Iranian situation. We want BO to prove us wrong. The US now has the excuse to apply leverage, and, we have our teammates in Iran to see to the final result - a functioning democracy. The tool remains what it has always been - a gasoline sanction, or better yet, blockade. We can lever the present turmoil to the benefit of the Iranian people, and, to the benefit of the West. We are looking out for own self interest in doing so; those posted in history know that (with the single exception of Greek city state conflict) democracies do not war upon one another.

Robert Craven