Understanding Iran

Understanding Iran

Mike Walker, Col. USMC (ret)

Iran is hurting under maximum sanctions and does not know what to do.

The United States is waging a form of asymmetrical warfare that the mullahs cannot figure out and it is driving them crazy.

The mullahs are lashing out hoping to provoke a military response to free them to strike back and rebalance the pain but we have not risen to the bait.

Below was sent this back in June. Perhaps it is worth resending:

All,

Fundamentals in understanding the Islamic Republic of Iran:

(1) Iran is a revolutionary state.

 It will remain so until the generation that participated in the revolution pass away, in other words, not for decades...

...or if they fall from power, a highly unlikely outcome since the Green Movement was crushed in 2009.

(2) Iran is a theocracy with everything that implies.

Its theocratic underpinning imbue the Iranian regime with the immensely strong (and dangerous) conviction that they are doing Allah's will.

That is why the mullahs call the Unites States "the Great Satan."

(3) Taken together that means several important things:

The Islamic Republic wants no part of the current world order.

Its goal remains revolutionary: To destroy the current world order...

... and that means from its first day of existence the United States has been its intractable enemy -- like it or not.

The mullahs do everything in their power to bring the war to America and act against America's interests globally.

The Islamic Republic will never cease the aggressive and often violent exportation of its revolution.

It will not stop its militant and violent acts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and everywhere in the world where it can gain a foothold.

(4) Iran sees itself at war and is desperate not to lose. Most of the world does not recognize this reality.

That means US military strikes on the Iranian homeland will be hard to contain. Iran likely will not see it as the opening of a broader war.

(5) Iran traditionally sees itself as an immensely powerful nation -- far beyond any reasoned measure.

Iranian history is replete with examples of overreach based on false assumptions of strength.

The penchant of its leaders for disastrous miscalculation is stunning.

It will be their last mistake as the United States if sufficiently provided will crush the rulers of the Islamic Republic.

Tragically, the cost for everyone -- especially Iran -- will far exceed the expectations.

The New York Times’ Activism Ignores Fundamental Ethics of Journalism

The New York Times’ Activism on Kavanaugh Ignores Fundamental Ethics of Journalism
Jim  Geraghty, National review - Morning Jolt

The New York Times Throws a Bonfire of Its Credibility

Conservatives have complained about The New York Times for a long time, but now the newspaper’s increasingly slippery standards for reporting and verification are getting so glaring, even its own former staffers can’t ignore it. Joe Pompeo writes in Vanity Fair:

Sources say Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly initially pitched their reporting to the news side, but top editors ultimately felt that there wasn’t enough juice to warrant a story there—punting the scoop to the Sunday Review section. “In today’s journalistic world, the conversation is a bit irrelevant,” one source said. “Your average reader is not gonna really know or care where it is.” 

Similarly, in the words of a former high-ranking Times figure, “In today’s journalistic world, the conversation is a bit irrelevant, because for most of the people who read the New York Times online or on their phones, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Your average reader is not gonna really know or care where it is. They played it up pretty big, and I have to tell you: When I first read it, I had no idea it was in the Review. I tapped on a link, and at the top it said ‘News Analysis.’ And I also didn’t know it was a book adaptation, because I didn’t even get to the end. I get the point of view of the activists. They want the Times to further their agenda, but that’s not the Times’ job.”

Wait, it gets worse! Pogrebin and Kelly told MSNBC last night that the qualifier about the other alleged Kavanaugh accuser not remembering an incident at Yale was included in the initial draft but removed. And then this morning, Pogrebin started describing the woman who said it didn’t happen in not-so-flattering terms: “She was incredibly drunk at that party . . . Memory here is really a questionable issue.”

The article — er, pardon me, “book excerpt” that ignored the alleged victim saying the event didn’t happen — did its job, by one measure: House Democrats are now beginning a push to impeach Justice Kavanaugh. Senate Democrats, who realize they don’t have the votes to impeach Trump, never mind Kavanaugh, are calling the effort unrealistic.

Our Kyle Smith makes the compelling argument that this is battle space preparation for upcoming Supreme Court decisions that progressives won’t like. The Left knows they’re going to lose a lot of 5–4 decisions, and if Trump gets the opportunity to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, maybe a bunch of 6–3 decisions, too. Because progressives believe they can never legitimately lose a battle over what America’s laws ought to be, they need to lay the groundwork for the argument that any decision that involves Justice Brett Kavanaugh (and maybe Clarence Thomas, too) shouldn’t “really” count because one or both should never have been appointed to the court in the first place.

There’s one other point, though. The election of Donald Trump really shocked America’s progressives (and a lot of other people, too) and stands as a global disaster on par with 9/11 or the rise of Hitler. (Jonathan Chait declared Trump’s election is the “worst thing that has happened to the world in my life.” He was alive during 9/11!)

If you could go back and time and falsely report things that would lead to the early and abrupt end of a brutal dictator’s rule, would you do it? Most people would make that trade; a bit of dishonesty to prevent widespread injustice and misery. The end justifies the means. Once you see Trump as history’s greatest nightmare, every action taken in opposition to him and those allied with him is justified. This kind of thinking is how you get people trying to shoot up a baseball field full of Republican congressmen.


Our Populist Era of Faux-Downscale Politicians

Quite a few people — including quite a few Joe Biden fans — liked yesterday’s column, “Inside the Mind of the Biden Voter.” Part of understanding politics is understanding the thinking, values, and priorities of people who aren’t like you, and I’m trying to be better at that.

Many contend we’re in a populist moment; some might argue this is a new populist era. Part of populism is an inescapable awareness of and focus upon who society’s big guys and little guys are, and a seething distrust and even contempt for those at the top. Back in 2008, Robert Reich talked about four classic narratives in American politics, and one of them was “the rot at the top.”

The last story concerns the malevolence of powerful elites. It’s a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility in high places–of conspiracy against the common citizen. It started with King George III, and, to this day, it shapes the way we view government–mostly with distrust. The great bullies of American fiction have often symbolized Rot at the Top: William Faulkner’s Flem Snopes, Willie Stark as the Huey Long-like character in All the King’s Men, Lionel Barrymore’s demonic Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life, and the antagonists that hound the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath. Suspicions about Rot at the Top have inspired what historian Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in U.S. politics–from the pre-Civil War Know-Nothings and Anti-Masonic movements through the Ku Klux Klan and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunts. The myth has also given force to the great populist movements of U.S. history, from Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States in the 1830s through William Jennings Bryan’s prairie populism of the 1890s.

You don’t have to look far in post-2000 America to see why millions of Americans not only believe in “the rot at the top,” but are driven or even consumed by the thought of it. The housing bubble, the Wall Street collapse, the bailouts and the Great Recession, and the sense that no one was ever held accountable for reckless decisions. Enron. Federal bureaucrats at the General Services Administration enjoying a lavish taxpayer-funded party in Las Vegas. Executives at nonprofits making a half-million a year. At least two separate waves of abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. GM’s cars not being safe, Boeing’s planes not being safe, one database breach after another. Bernie Madoff. Harvey Weinstein. #MeToo. Jeffrey Epstein. A giant, far-reaching bribery scandal to get dumb kids of rich and famous parents into top schools.

There are enough egregious examples of bad behavior by powerful people to convince the masses of two powerful conclusions. The first is that the people currently in charge of American society should not be in charge, that they did not earn their positions of power and authority fairly, that they frequently and shamelessly abuse their power and betray people’s trust, and not only does the cream not rise to the top, but the scum does. The second is that the reason they don’t feel as powerful and successful in American life as they wish they were is that they weren’t willing to cheat, lie, steal, and be as immoral as the powerful people were.

That first conclusion is an exaggeration, and that second one is a soothing explanation that hand-waves away anyone’s individual mistakes, bad judgments, attitude, ability to work with others, etc. But it’s easy to see why people believe them.

One of the points of yesterday’s column is that Biden voters and Trump voters see their guy in a similar way: “Sure, maybe he’s technically one of the elites, but he’s always been on the side of the little guy.”

This is why Joe Biden insists everyone calls him “Middle-Class Joe” even though the only person who’s ever been quoted calling him “Middle-Class Joe” is Joe Biden. He was elected to the Senate at 29 because his birthday was before the day of his swearing-in ceremony. He may well have been “poor” by the standards of the U.S. Senate, but every senator is wealthy by the standard of the average American.

This is why Elizabeth Warren frequently tells the story that “at 19, I got married, dropped out of school, took a minimum wage job, thought my dream was over.” Okay, but she was an associate dean of a law school by the time she was 31. By 1998, Harvard was paying her $192,550 in salary and an additional $133,453 in “other compensation” — which included a faculty mortgage subsidy, housing allowance, moving expenses, and imputed interest.

This is why Bernie Sanders talks about “growing up in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, New York, the son of an immigrant who came to this country without a nickel in his pocket.” You could argue Sanders’ first regular job came with his election to mayor in 1981. But that job paid $33,824, the equivalent of more than $100,000 in today’s dollars, and money went pretty far in 1980s Burlington. As many know, Sanders is now a multimillionaire.

None of this means these figures were never poor or of modest means, or that they don’t remember what it was like to be that way. But every major presidential candidate in either party has been living, at minimum, an upper-middle-class lifestyle for many years. A populist mood in the nation forces politicians to pretend that they’re poorer than they are, that those hard times weren’t as long ago as they were, and that they still share or at least freshly remember the economic anxiety that stresses so many Americans.

Perhaps in the often sordid and shamefully dishonest realm of politics, a candidate downplaying his wealth and how long he’s lived comfortably is a small sin. But this sort of thing caught up to Hillary Clinton — “We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt.”

I recall years ago watching prominent liberal journalist lamenting the greed of millionaires on television and the roughly $200K-per-year magazine columnist referring to “ordinary people like us.” To paraphrase that slang term of incredulous skepticism, “rich, please.”

Cliff dive...

Biden or Bust?

Biden or Bust?

For better or worse, the Democratic establishment apparently has decided it has no choice but to embrace the former vice president. Can he be propped up and pampered for the next 14 months?

Victor Davis Hanson - American Greatness 

Pundits and politicos play the current parlor game of counting Joe Biden’s daily bloopers, signs of debility, or embarrassments.

Unlike former “Apprentice” host Donald Trump’s exaggerations and narcissisms, Biden’s fantasies are not baked into an outsider candidacy that by intent offers as a radical change of policy, a tough presidential tone, and unconventional political tactics. Trump is a renegade. Biden remains what he always was—a deep state fixture. And his brand is mainstream Democrat left-liberal orthodoxy, which supposedly does not include weird and wild La La Land pronouncements.

Also, Trump is hated by a media that is 90 percent negative in its coverage of his every word, deed, and sneeze. In contrast, the media is in the Biden tank.

So the reaction to the respective boilerplate gaffes and untruths of each is quite different: when Trump is caught mythologizing, his supporters blame the “fake news” media for taking things out of context—confusing his jest with seriousness, or conflating normal exaggeration and bombast with mortal-sin lying.

Their dismissal of Trump’s imperfections is perhaps justified when contrasted to the media reaction when one of their own, like Biden, proves a walking, talking prevaricator. The subsequent shock arises despite, not because of the media. Trump when caught can always blame a biased media. Biden can only shrug his gaffe was so egregious that even his media conspirators could not contain its toxicity.

Trump’s gaffes are usually ones of exaggeration—inflating crowd size or pumping up good economic news. Or they are the overload use of terms like “tremendous,” “fantastic,” “incredible,” and “awesome.” Or they consist of perceived crudity: the supposedly unpresidential promiscuous use of invectives like “liar,” “crook,” and “cheat. Yet in terms of his 2016 campaign promises, he has either met them or tried to meet them.

Biden’s fantasies, however, are quite different: 1) total memory losses and brain freezes—in which he has forgotten in what state he is, when he was vice president, or for whom he once served in that office; 2) mythography in which Joe Biden becomes an epic hero of every fiction he relates, as he stitches together half-true and quarter-true memories into mythical proportions, and 3) his race and gender hang-ups, in which he says something the Left would normally categorize as racist (e.g., “clean” and “articulate” blacks) or he breathes onto, touches, grabs, and hugs too long and too closely unsuspecting girls and women in the no margin-of-error #MeToo era, and 4) promises that he never intends to keep, such as embracing the suicidal Green New Deal.

As far as the diagnosis of the Biden gaffe machine, the only debate is whether Biden at 76 is addled and suffering early signs of dementia—that is, hardly the sharp and energetic septuagenarian that Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Elizabeth Warren seem to be. Or, in fact, is he just now back in the spotlight and thus resuming his forty years of characteristic embarrassments, some of which blew up his prior two presidential bids.

Is Biden in fact not any more unhinged than he was at 40—the difference now being only that what was seen as eccentric and obnoxious then is now recalibrated as demented due to his advanced age?

After all, we remember a much younger Biden’s lies about his college résumé, his plagiarism in law school, his decades of creepy hugs and breathing into the ears and curls of prepubescent girls, his intellectual theft of British Labourite Neil Kinnock’s stump speechand padding it with family distortions, his trademark appropriation of the ideas and buzzwords of others, his racialist commentary (e.g., Barack Obama is our first “clean” and “articulate” major black presidential candidate, Delaware donut shops are all stuffed with Indian immigrants, Mitt Romney would put blacks “back in chains”) and on and on.

Whether one thinks that Biden is just continuing where he left off in 2008, or that his capacities have slipped considerably since that failed bid matters not. The key is the current prognosis: can the present Biden possibly survive the rigors of 14 more months of campaigning, some 10 or more primary debates, countless fundraisers and one-on-one televised interviews, nearly 50 state primaries, the convention melodramas, and likely three more debates with Donald Trump without every 24 hours sounding either crazy or incomprehensible or offering medical warning signals, in a fashion that confirms he is living in an alternate universe?

That is, can Biden be propped up, doctored, medicated, given time-outs, and media pampered in the manner that an obviously frail and ill Hillary Clinton limped home during the final stretch of the 2016 campaign and nonetheless won the popular vote?

Would it really matter? Not really.

Best of a Bad Lot

For better or worse, the Democratic establishment apparently has decided that it has no choice (a Michelle wink-and-nod Barack-again joint Obama bid is off the table for now). The nominee is to be a supposedly senior statesman Biden, who can tack leftward before the convention and then successfully veer back to “good ole Joe” from the mines of Pennsylvania.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren almost daily remind us what socialism is: a belief that the government innately owns our labor, property, and capital, and “built” our wealth. It properly oversees us by using its superior morality and wisdom to redistribute resources to unappreciated deserving parties at the expense of the over-appreciated undeserving parties—at least as the grandees Bernie and Liz see it, who of course are exempted from the ramifications of their own bromides.

Kamala Harris by now has no idea who she is or who she is supposed to become. She is now well into her third or fourth adopted persona. Beto O’Rourke—dropping f-bombs on live television, calling for gun confiscations, and libeling his country as inveterately racist—would be lucky to be elected to a Texas county commission in 2020. His once apparent eccentric speech and demeanor are now gratingly obnoxious as he reverts to his pre-adolescence.

Corey Booker has not evolved beyond his confused puerile Spartacus moment during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Goofy seems his new sobriquet. Saintly Pete Buttigieg thinks his role is to make up biblical exegesis to fit 2020 race-class-gender parlance—and then condemn any who disagree with him as Christian apostates.

Any Democratic candidate who has seemed somewhat normal or centrist—Michael Bennet, Steven Bullock, John Delaney, and Tim Ryan—long ago melted down. The rest of the pack like Andrew Yang or Julian Castro are probably to the left of Beto and Kamala and pose the question of why are they running at all.

Gaffes Are Better Than Suicidal Socialism

So the powers-that-be among Democrats believe it is Biden or bust.

Apparently, they wager that they can mend and patch Biden together, carefully select and curtail his public venues, set up a rapid response gaffe war room, nurse him to victory, and then outsource governance to the progressive establishment and use Biden as some sort of four-year prop that would put president Biden in formaldehyde through the age of 82—as the DNC swamp plays Edgar Bergen to Biden’s Charlie McCarthy.

Political parties do not normally nominate admittedly weak candidates like a Bob Dole or a Walter Mondale—unless they perceive they have no choice given the alternatives are worse. The Republicans were most certainly in 1996 not going to run Pat Buchanan or Steve Forbes against President Clinton. The Democrats in 1984 were not going to put up a previously mostly unknown, but soon to be libeled “where’s the beef” Gary Hart or a loose cannon like Jesse Jackson.

And, of course, such a comparison involves the best-case Biden scenario, given that both Dole and Mondale were serious politicians at the height of their powers and far more sober and judicious than is Biden in 2020. By that I mean, the purpose of the default Dole and Mondale nominations was to prevent a Buchanan nominee, or a Hart and Jackson nominee from saying something shocking that would, in theory, implode a political party’s entire presidential campaign.

In contrast, the logic of the Biden campaign is to ensure there is slightly less chance that his daily gaffes will be as offending and suicidal as the off-putting and unapologetic hard-core leftism of a Harris, Sanders, or Warren.

In sum, Biden’s continued polling and viability are testaments to the poverty of the Democratic field—at least as currently seen by the Democratic establishment itself and a third of the primary voters.

Rightly or wrongly, they believe it is for now either the gaffaholic Biden or a socialist bust—and Democrats seem to prefer random senselessness to pre-mediated lunacy.