Johno's last post, Is Tehran Burning? raises some important questions. And not just regarding the remarkable silence of the major media outlets on events in Iran, Syria, and public opinion in Iraq. But first, the media issue:
Consider that our political leadership has committed the United States to a wide-ranging war on terror - not just those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but terrorists in general and the nations that support them. Is the media so blinkered that they cannot perceive that this means that several other countries are crucial to the success of this endeavor? We know that America has adopted a policy of change in the Middle East (and elsewhere) and we named the initial targets - Iraq, Iran and North Korea. To be sure, there is extensive and largely negative coverage of the war in Iraq, but that story is so obvious that even the media knows to cover it.
Why nothing on Iran except for occasional stories about Iran's nuclear program? It is well known in the blogosphere that the Iranian people are deeply unhappy with their government, and that there have been huge protests, and now violent unrest. You'd think that someone at CNN would make the connection between the libervasion of Iraq and the hopes and actions of the Democracy Movement in Iran, or at the very least scratch their heads and ask questions.
Nothing on Syria. Little on the violence in Saudi Arabia. The rationale behind Qaddafi's flip obscured. Nothing on death camps and misery in North Korea. Little of substance on the nature of the new Iraqi constitution. (Clueless had a great piece on that recently. These are important stories in their own right, but they are double plus important in relation to the big story, America's (and 33 other nations) war on terror. This failure in reporting is stupendous, monumental and nearly incomprehensible. It is also a big reason why some people don't get what's going on. The war on terror is a big thing, with big goals. If people don't realize, because they are never told, that the invasion in Iraq has resulted in the dismantling of Libya's WMD programs, and is a large factor in the push for democracy in Iran, why would they support it, when all they see is dead American soldiers in Iraq?
We have had many successes in the war so far. The recent bombings in Madrid were a dire setback. But the media refuses to cover the war as it actually exists.
Another issue is raised in a comment on the Michael Totten post that Johno linked:
How screwed up is it, by the way, that the most irrationally exuberant folks for Iranian liberty are at The National Review?!!!
What a weird and twisted thing the political spectrum has become these days. The Party of Kissinger and Buckley under the Bush Administration is, in the recent words of George Will, serving out Woodrow Wilson's third term.
In terms of party politics and history, something pretty monumental may be going on here. The Democratic Party from the days of Wilson up through the days of LBJ was clearly the Party of anti-isolationism. Vietnam shook this interventionist streak to the core but I always conceived of it as being a temporary thing. But I'm really not so certain, anymore. Maybe it's just the poor luck of not having a Democrat in the White House when 9/11 happened but you gotta admit, the Democrats are closer today to being an anti-war party than they've ever been.
Granted, they're not running George McGovern but even in 1972 there was a large contingent of "Cold War" hawkish Democrats in Congress. I can't think of a single Democrat in Congress today that is both a bona-fide liberal and a bona-fide hawk. The Scoop Jackson wing of the Party is officially dead and The New Republic increasingly reads like a journal out of time.
As you look back through history you have to recognize that the Democratic Party of 1934 had more in common with the Republican Party of 1864 than the Democratic Party during that same time. The parties had profoundly flip-flopped in 70 years. Another 70 years later I'm wondering if the same thing isn't happening, again.
Obviously, I don't think its so strange that movement conservatives are gung ho for liberty. That is one of the greatest contributions of the neocons to conservatism - the move beyond mere anticommunism to a policy of active support of liberty. The pursuit of realpolitik is not well suited for a republic. But idealism can have pragmatic benefits. The spread of liberty - political and economic - has clear benefits for the security and prosperity of the United States. Further, it's the right and moral position to take.
From the perspective of that commenter, we have the odd situation of conservatives pushing for liberation, and liberals coddling dictators. We no longer have any need for coddling dictators. During the cold war, resisting the spread of communism was arguably more important than fostering democracy right then. And I think it was. And in many cases, those nations that did not go commie eventually became democracies anyway. South Korea, Taiwan and Chile are examples of this. But now, without the threat of communism, we need to work to support democracy movements, especially in the Middle East.
And Iran should be our first target. At the very least, we should be giving cell phones, computers, printers, advice and public support to the Iranians who are opposed to the theocratic government. If need be, we should think about arms and military support. Iraq is one model for spreading democracy, and seems to be working relatively well. Iran gives us an opportunity to use another model, and one that might have more applicability around the world.
[wik] Thanks to Loyal Reader Mapgirl for pointing out that I mistook an entire nation for one of my favorite foods. Now corrected. However, Mapgirl should be aware that spell check only chimes in when you misspell a word, not when you use an inappropriate, but correctly spelled word. Like she did: you should turn of any spellchecking feature. Bricks/glass houses yadayadayada.
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