The Inquiring Manatee

Iran News: Obama May Yet Earn His Nobel Prize

   If Iran's leaders OK the draft international deal announced today, the Persians seemingly will put a crimp in their nuclear weapons program by shipping 75% of their enriched uranium to Russia to be returned to Iran as relatively harmless fuel rods for a civilian reactor in Teheran.

    This seems too good to be true -- and it may yet turn out that way -- but as of now the deal represents a triumph for hardliners in the U.S., France and Germany who have been pressuring Teheran for months.
    President Obama should be congratulated for his role in this development. A few more successes like this and he could actually deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a good start.    Of course, there are skeptics, and I'm afraid I am one of them. Do you trust the Iranian mullahs and Ahmedinejad? They are a congenitally mendacious bunch.

    But let's all stay tuned.

John Kerry Gets to Be President

    As a journalist who traveled extensively with Sen. John Kerry during his 2004 presidential campaign, it's gratifying to me -- and probably much more so to him -- to see him playing such a prominent role in the Afghanistan voting process.

   Here is Kerry in Kabul as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helping the White House twist President Hamid Karzai's arm until he agrees to a runoff election Nov. 7 against Abdullah Abdullah. (Election monitors should include Boutros Boutros Ghali and Pedro Gonzales Gonzales.) Kerry was on scene as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were elsewhere. The Massachusetts senator was showing the U.S. flag in a viceregal way.

    He should have been elected in 2004. He wasn't. At least he's getting a consolation prize, finally. He gets to look like a president.

Bill Clinton's Good Deed in Pyongyang

   

The rigidly moralistic Clinton-haters who look at the former president and think nothing but "Monica, Monica, Monica" will be hard put to find anything nasty to say about Bill Clinton today.
     Like Bill Richardson before him in North Korea, the 42nd president has performed a profoundly important humanitarian service to his country, to journalism and to two unfortunate women in working with dictator Kim Jong-il to obtain freedom for Lee and Ling and fly them to the U.S. in rich friend Steve Bing's private jet today.
      The surprise story brightens up a summer of continuing recession, bombs worldwide and bickering over health care reform in Washington. And it illuminates the humanitarian work that Clinton has been doing all along, eclipsed by Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
      Clinton is a great American asset. The administration should make more use of him on selected and appropriate occasions such as this. He may have his faults (I observed him closely as a member of the White House press corps all through his first term), but he is on his way to joining Jimmy Carter as one of the nation's best former presidents in history.

Not Looking Good in Iran

   

It now looks as if the brutes and killers will have their way in Iran. Annulment of the rigged election and the achievement of real democracy in that historic old country was always a long shot.
    In any country, and especially in a traditional society such as Iran's, there are always a lot more stupid and uneducated people, and more thugs, than there are educated, intelligent and decent people.
     In Iran, as in Burma, the oppressed people have lost out to unprincipled power.

Mama Took Our Kodachrome Away

     Digital photography, one of the greatest inventions ever, has done in Kodak's famous old Kodachrome slide color film. It's been years since I used that vibrant film, but I still treasure some of the old slides, long since scanned into my computers and enhanced with one of the excellent programs that can turn any amateur photographer into a virtual Ansel Adams.
     Progress has its painful casualties, but progress marches on.

God May be Great, but Khamenei is a Jerk

    

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, graybeard Supreme Leader of Iran and officially God's representative on earth, has sided threateningly with that sloppy dresser Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and with those who blatantly rigged the June 12 presidential election. Let us hope that no violence ensues but that democracy and the intelligent, progressive, educated elements of the Iranian nation triumph in the end.
     These are dangerous times. And they point up the undemocratic nature of Iran's constitution, which in effect make Khamenei the new shah. Persia has always been comfortable with a king, the best of the lot being old Darius and Cyrus (even though the Athenians defeated Darius II at Marathon). Khamenei spoke like an imperious king on Friday when he pronounced the election legitimate and called for an end to street protests, issuing not-so-veiled threats against Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the brave students who are organizing them in the face of technological jamming from the entrenched forces of the Iranian Unenlightenment.
     In the happiest outcome, a new revolution -- a bloodless one, I hope -- will bring true republican democracy to unhappy Iran and will sweep away all this theocratic nonsense in the governmental structure. Back to the mosque, Khamenei.
     

Uighurs in Paradise

    

If you were a Uighur independence militant from Xinjiang province, wouldn't you rather be in Bermuda, or even mid-Pacific Palau, than in the Guantanamo Bay prison? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha.
     It's good news for the unfortunate and hard-to-place Uighurs of Guantanamo that balmy Bermuda is taking four of them off the hands of Barack Obama and the Pentagon. Palau (in return for what?) is agreeing to take 13 more, apparently, though this is said to be "temporary" help to the U.S., and a permanent home still must be found for these young China-minority Muslim men.
     Helpful as these developments are for the Obama administration toward its goal of closing the infamous prison on Cuba's shore by January, they point up the politically inspired hypocrisy of America in urging other nations to give refuge to Guantanamo prisoners while acting hysterically hostile to the idea of letting a single one of them set foot on our sacred soil -- even when they would be confined in Supermax prisons from which no hard-core terrorist or any other prison ever has escaped. Ever.
      It's been so easy for politicians -- first Republicans in Congress, then Democrats stampeded by the GOP and the far right -- to exploit or cower before the knee-jerk issue of letting "terrorists" come within U.S. borders. Voters don't stop to think about the fact that federal prisons already house some infamous terrorists, including Sheikh Abu Omar and Zacarias Moussaoui. It's simply a NIMBY reaction, easily driven home by Republicans desperately hunting for an issue.
      So far, congressional Democrats have Obama, too, running scared on this issue and unwilling simply to issue executive orders transferring the Guantanamo prisoners to mainland federal facilities. (Or, as I've written before, the men could be housed on Guam, in American Samoa or in the U.S. Virgin Islands in prisons to be built.)
       The Uighurs are a particularly easy case for admission to the U.S. Found not to be "unlawful combatants," whatever that means, they pose no terror threat to this country, though they are concededly Muslim militants and worth keeping under suspicion. Their capture in Afghanistan years ago indicates that they quite possibly were training for a campaign against China. China may have cause to despise and fear them, but it is throwing its neo-superpower weight around by threatening any country considering taking the Uighurs. China wants them back, but you can imagine what a future they'd face there and what a betrayal it would be for Obama to hand them over to Beijing.
       There is a fairly large Uighur community on the U.S. East Coast that has been vocal in its support for the Guantanamo Uighurs and its willingness to keep an eye on them if released locally. These public-spirited Uighurs have been ignored.
       Best off of the 17 Guantanamo Uighurs are those who arrived in Bermuda today. They'll be granted guest worker status. They won't be very free to travel off the small British-affiliated island, but let's face it, Bermuda is a desirable place to live. They must be awfully happy today.
        As for those to join the temporarily hospitable Palauans, less joy should be forthcoming. Palau is a poor, terribly humid little country, threatened with eventual extinction as waves rise with global warming. But any old port in a storm, as the saying goes. This storm appears likely to rage for a long, long time.

    

A Modest Proposal on Guantanamo

    

As Republicans run wild on the issue of closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison and moving the 240 inmates to facilities on U.S. soil, even Senate Democrats can't be blamed for shying from President Obama's plan to remove this symbol of Bush administration high-handedness and torture.
      The NIMBY fears so easily stirred up by the entirely emotional issue, even though the detainees would be secured in Supermax federal lockups from which no one has ever escaped, have potentially vulnerable politicians running scared of a future opponent's simplistic 30-second commercials.
      But before Congress prevents the administration from moving anyone to the U.S. mainland from Guantanamo -- thereby making it virtually impossible to convince any other country to accept a detainee -- policymakers should consider an alternative that could be a win-win choice for everybody, except perhaps for the terror suspects.
      Want to gratify the rest of the world and frustrate jihadist propagandists by closing Guantanamo? Fine, go right ahead. Want to keep any Guantanamo prisoner out of any U.S. states? You can do that, too.
      The strategy: Relocate the prisoners to a high-security facility that would be newly built and opened in Guam, American Samoa or -- just a short flight from Guantanamo -- the U.S. Virgin Islands. (Quiet St. Croix, somewhat off the tourist track, has the most land. Just don't put the Muslims in Christiansted, the island's chief city.)
      All these potential prison sites have these advantages:
      -- They're on U.S. soil, so Obama won't have to back down on that point.
      -- Residents there have no votes in Congress, only nonvoting delegates.
      -- Building and operating the new prison would create local jobs, a prospect that could mute opposition from NIMPT (Not in My Palm Tree) forces. Some of those giant Samoans would make great prison guards after their careers as NFL linemen end.
      -- The locations are in tropical settings that beat the bleakness of tropical but barren and ugly Guantanamo. How could jihadists or European moralists object to housing prisoners in the balmy South Pacific, the North Pacific paradise of Guam or especially the lovely Virgin Islands? (There, the alleged terrorists would be getting a symbolic downpayment on the 78 virgins, or whatever the number is, that jihadi "martyrs" are promised in heaven.) Or the inmates could learn the Argentine tago in Pago Pago.* 
      The president's executive order to close Guantanamo by the end of 2010 would not be blocked. The detainees, whether tried by Obama's tweaked military commissions or detained Cheney-style without charges, at least would have more pleasant quarters under the American flag.
       So how about it, Mr. President and members of Congress? Try the American Territorial Solution to the Guantanamo dilemma.
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* That's a rhyme. Pago Pago, capital of American Samoa, is pronounced "Pango Pango."      
      

Hurray for Roxana Saberi

    Aside from being an Iranian-Japanese-American babe, young Roxana Saberi is a hard-working journalist -- and now a very lucky ex-Iranian prisoner.
    It was no doubt international pressure that helped free Ms Saberi by the action of an appeals court (closed to the public and to her parents) today. The suspension of her trumped-up espionage conviction must have been approved at the highest official levels, perhaps even by the Ayatollah Khameini. In part the reversal was a gesture of goodwill to President Barack Obama, who weighed in mightily on behalf of Ms Saberi.
    The case points up how many power centers there are in the fissiparous, post-revolutionary Iran. Saberi was done in by hardliners and the super-religious, but they can be counteracted by saner and more moderate, international-minded elements.
    How much this all means for Iran's nuclear program remains to be seen. The Saberi outcome demonstrates that Iran can act reasonably and as a conscientious member of the international community. This gives some hope for the future of us all.

Swat That Taliban

  

There's good news from the Swat Valley -- best news since the feudal old Wali of Swat supplied the Sultan of Swat nickname to Babe Ruth.
   It's initially promising, at any rate, that the Pakistani Army is about to take on the barbarians of the Taliban, who have angrily cancelled the craven Chamberlainian deal that Islamabad made to allow Sharia law and virtual Taliban control in the Swat region in return for "peace" with the jihadists.
    When the Taliban took Swat, they did exactly what Hitler did after Neville Chamberlain gave him Czechoslovakia at Munich in 1938: they immediately moved on toward the next conquest, in Buner, only a morning's drive from Islamabad and a takeover of the nuclear-armed Muslim nation. That overreaching will prove, let us hope, to be a mosque too far for the Taliban.
     The weak government of President Asif Ali Zardari, challenged in its manhood over Buner, finally decided it had had enough and that there are no legitimate dealings with the Taliban. The army began pushing the Taliban out of Buner. That infuriated the talibs of Swat, who all but declared war on the army.
      The result is that 500,000 Swat refugees are fleeing the valley, expecting nasty fighting at any moment.
       Washington is urging Zardari and the Pakistan Army to screw their courage to the sticking point and "sustain" a campaign against the Taliban, despite the anti-Americanism rampant in Pakistan and the jihadists' popularity in rural quarters.
       For the moment, Pakistan's government finally is doing the right thing. But the forces of decency and civilization must stick with it, drive the power-greedy jihadists out of Swat and keep going through the Northwest Frontier area and on to the border with Afghanistan, routing the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The world will back Pakistan as it reacts to the globally shared mortal threat of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
       Keep it going, Asif.

Pakistan's Collapse: There Goes the Neighborhood

    

      Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday raised the Obama administration's direst alarm to date over what it considers the possible collapse of the weak Pakistani government in as little as six months, raising the possibility that in the ensuing chaos the Taliban would take over the nuclear-armed Muslim country.
     When the Talibs ran neighboring Afghanistan, we got 9/11. Imagine what the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies would do with control of nuclear bombs. To call this potential a "mortal threat," as Clinton did before Congress, is not understating the case.
      What is raising the hackles of Washington is the Islamabad government's gutless, appeasing cave-in to Muslim extremists in the Swat Valley to avoid further fighting. The Taliban has taken this victory and extended it south into the Buner region, only 60 miles from the capital. They're inkblotting Pakistan, as Hitler inkblotted Europe after Neville Chamberlain's analogous capitulation to the Nazis at Munich over the Czech Sudentenland in 1938.
       The Obama administration is nervously trying to get Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to man up, grow a pair and stop the Taliban's advance before it's too late. Pakistan's army, the strongest force in the country and not particularly friendly to Zardari, plainly has shown no stomach to fight the Taliban or other extremists; in fact, there's substantial extremist sentiment within the Army, especially when it comes to using the Taliban to keep Afghanistan unstable and weak.
       The army isn't going to do anything it doesn't want to do. Somehow, though, the generals must be convinced that it's their butts on the line, too, if Pakistan goes Taliban and the world cuts off the economic aid that is paying their troops. Also, the Pakistani upper class and middle class must get into the fray or lose everything to the same sort of Sharia takeover that has handicapped Iran's progress.
       In the end, I think the army will hold Pakistan together at the last ditch. The army guards the nukes and doesn't want to see them used to destroy the world, though the generals wouldn't mind seeing a bomb or two dumped on India if they thought they could get away with it. (They couldn't).  I don't think Pakistan will collapse completely. But we're in for some hairy times until that becomes clearer.