BARACK OBAMA DOES TOKYO

Obama’s Tokyo speech, delivered on November 14, 2009 at a glittering downtown concert hall gave a select audience the chance to savor the president’s trademark rhetoric, read aloud in now-familiar endearing tones, accompanied by slightly jarring Janus-like sideward glances, eyes darting back and forth between twin teleprompters.

Designed to set an upbeat tone for the president’s Asia trip, it fell short of his much-hailed Cairo speech as paean to international amity, but served to convince East Asia, despite the late date of his visit, and two distracting wars on the other side of the continent, that the Pacific is somehow the centerpiece of his foreign policy. The pep talk might as well have been subtitled, “America still rules the Pacific.”

The best, if not the most sincere of the many tasty sound-bites offered up in his Yankee-will-not-go-home speech came early, almost haiku-like in brevity, befitting the recollection of a childhood memory. During a visit to the Amida Buddha in Kamakura with his mother, he was distracted by the green tea ice cream.

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THAKSIN SHINAWATRA AND CAMBODIA

In light of tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra's recent political posturing in Cambodia, which he used as a base to deliberately affront and humiliate the Thai government, all the while being accorded VIP treatment by Cambodian strongman Hun Sen, it is interesting to note that Thaksin's family company was already cutting deals and cultivating "friends" over the border back in the days when he was prime minister of Thailand.

The juxtaposition of the two billboards slyly suggests that Shinawatra is, apparently on behalf of the Kingdom of Cambodia, welcoming visitors to Cambodia. Conflict of interest?

This photo was taken in Cambodia near the Poipet border crossing in 2003.

(Phil Cunningham) Read more on this article...

Start A War

A new piece on Swat/Waziristan/Baluchistan and the current Pakistani military operation is up at The Review.

The true crisis facing Pakistan is not the Taliban: it is the rupture between the federal state and its constituent parts, and Islamabad’s refusal to accede to the legitimate needs and demands of its citizens in places like Swat and Baluchistan. It is a rupture, indeed, that is written into the very fabric of the state, and the reason why Bangladesh seceded from West Pakistan in 1971, after it was denied political legitimacy by the military regime and then brutalised by an oppressive army operation aimed at quashing any opposition.

But the Pakistan Army learnt exactly the wrong lesson from Bangladesh: since 1971 it has been determined to move as rapidly and violently as possible against any sub-nationalist movement elsewhere in Pakistan. The spectre of Taliban conquering Islamabad and the state’s American-backed resolve to press on in a series of wars against its own people have effectively ended any chance for political consideration of the Baluchistan issue. Instead Baluchistan will be, once again, merely an empty badland where Taliban are hiding, waiting, plotting. It awaits yet another military operation. And we await another declaration of success.

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NEWSPAPERS IN THE NEWS

PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

The latest gloomy news from journalism's battered front lines is that the prestigious New York Times (NYT) is laying off 100 members of its newsroom staff. Paper-and-ink newspapers are in deep trouble, there's no doubt about that. But the NYT, as comprehensive as its news coverage sometimes is, is hardly in a position to offer the real story on its current woes, anymore than a psychoanalyst is able to objectively analyze him or herself.

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Afghanistan: A Special Issue

The Afghanistan: A Special Issue, Nov 9, 2009, includes a short piece by me. I especially draw your attention to the Priya Satiya and Selig Harrison. And Stephen Walt. And, all. Read more on this article...

The American Foreign Policy Project: Focus on Iran

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BLOWING IN THE WIND

by Philip J Cunningham

Is Japan changing for real? To get a better sense of how Japan is and isn't changing with the urbane Yukio Hatoyama at the helm, in the wake of the Democratic Party of Japan’s stunning electoral victory over the entrenched Liberal Democratic, consider these news stories from around the Japanese archipelago.

First, zoom in on the half-unfinished Yamba Dam in rural Gunma, to see how a multi-billion dollar boondoggle can be stopped dead in its tracks. The LDP, incumbents of a half-century standing, have made an art of pouring money, largely in the form of cement, to rural constituencies scattered around the archipelago, rewarding electoral loyalty while denuding and desecrating the environment with dams, bridges and highways to nowhere.

Hatoyama, in power for little more than a week, suspended the dam project. If there is truly change in the air, it is in the realm of cutbacks on pork-barrel spending. The controversial supplementary budget, a last-dash effort inked by the LDP as it was sinking into obscurity, has been scrapped and the overall budget has been massively trimmed.

Now pull back from the rice fields and hills of Gunma and zoom in on the shimmering Tokyo megalopolis, the largest concentration of human beings on earth, with some 40 million people clustered within a 40 kilometer radius. Not too much green here, but not too many roads to nowhere either; instead a vast, vibrant, complex inter-connected living, breathing super-organism with an arterial system of asphalt and iron; electricity and light, a steady flow of trains and automobiles, but what, no international airport?

Only far-away Narita.

The LDP during the height of its power operated much as an authoritarian communist party might have done in the same era. A swath of isolated rice farms in Chiba was decreed to be the new Tokyo International Airport, even though the project was bitterly opposed by Narita locals from the start, and has been inconveniencing travelers ever since. Situated an incomprehensible 60 kilometers outside of city center, it's an airport only big-time investors in infrastructure and social engineers hoping to discourage the hoi polloi from traveling, could love. in effect banishing the gateway of Tokyo to Chiba.

It was the sort of inconvenience to which one could only sigh "shoganai" as it could not be helped, at least not while the LDP remained in power. Long after violent clashes ceased, Narita remained an armed, barb-wired camp, subjecting visitors to intimidating, but largely theatrical, Star War trooper controls.

Then the LDP loses power and within weeks the DPJ’s Land and Transport Minister, Seiji Maehara, makes a bold proposal, suggesting that homely Haneda Airport, located on Tokyo Bay, snugly close to downtown, be the new hub. What? Move the gateway of Tokyo to Tokyo itself? What an idea! And why not?

Narita, like its patron party the LDP, has too long enjoyed a monopoly at the expense of others. But it has been failing on its own terms as well; it's inconvenience has not discouraged Japan's stoic traveling set from spending yen overseas, but it has stemmed the inflow of tourists and their cash. Foreigners, especially those in need of connecting flights, or on urgent business, bridle at the thought of over-nighting in Narita or detouring through the rice paddies of Chiba on bus and on over-priced trains.

One only need to consider the new airports in Inchon, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong to see how Japan isolates itself, with Narita looking more and more a relic of the 1970's sorry domestic politics.

Maehara's bold bid did not go unopposed, however, and he back-tracked the next day after Chiba governor Kensaku Morita (a former actor, he goes by his stage name) made veiled threats during a sputtering televised performance full of innuendo, suggesting the old guard won't give up without a fight.

Zoom away from the troubled waters of Tokyo Bay and zoom in on distant Okinawa, which bears the brunt of the US military footprint in Japan, not just because it is an excellent staging ground for Pacific Ocean policing, but because the better-connected politicians of Japan proper never really took to the sight of uniformed gaijin walking the streets of their prefectures. The result? Outlying Okinawa long ago got stuck with rather more than its share of US bases, partly a legacy of LDP politicking.

The DPJ owes it to the under-represented voices of dissent in Okinawa to re-examine decades of back-room deals, but here, again, Hatoyama, soon to meet Obama, must tread gingerly, lest the game of base allocation become a bitter contest of musical chairs with the US military.

A quick leap the length of Japan up to its northernmost extremity followed by a zoom in on some windswept islets suggests that the new government, like the LDP, is haunted by the past, despite its intelligent core leadership and early moves to improve relations with China and Korea.

Land and Transport Minister Maehara, still reeling from the backlash from his Haneda air hub comments, escaped the heat by flying north to the chilly Southern Kuriles, where he staged a nationalistic photo op courtesy of the brashly patriotic Coast Guard, publicly pining for the return of the Russian-held islands. Gazing at the hazy outline of the distant isles, Maehara, born in 1962, said he was "nostalgic" for the old days before the Kuriles were "illegally occupied" by Russia.

Nostalgic for what? The 1940's? The good old days when these desolate, rocky isles were used to stage a brilliant sneak attack on Pearl Harbor? If a bunch of rocks can evoke such passion, imagine the bouts of nostalgia a Japanese nationalist might experience at the sight of former territories such as Korea and Taiwan?

Yet another indication that the sweeping change of power in Japan has failed to sweep away all the cobwebs of the political realm comes from the Wakayama coastal town of Taiji, famous for its unnecessary and unnecessarily brutal whaling and dolphin kills.

No less a luminary than the new foreign minister Okada has unwisely chosen to defend Taiji's defenseless slaughter of marine mammals by using the "culture" argument, which is to say, anything Japanese do that the international community disapproves of is okay, if it can be trumped up as a facet of Japanese culture.

This evokes the ghosts of the LDP past and hints of a Thermidor to come. "Culture" has been used by old school politicians to defend everything from keeping out Thai rice to refusing Russians entry to public baths, from creating structural impediments to foreign products and services, to refusing the full palette of human rights to Japanese of Chinese and Korean descent and resident foreigners.

Hiding behind the culture curtain is a willful act of obfuscation. It is a slippery slope of an argument, popular with tyrants and Taliban alike, and not a promising start for the leading diplomat of the new, reform-minded ruling party.

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CITY OF THE WORLD

SINO-US RELATIONS
(from the Bangkok Post, October 3, 2009)

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

As a native New Yorker far from home, I felt a surge of pride to see photos of the Empire State Building lit up in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Casting the upper floors of New York's pride and joy in coloured spotlights is nothing new; it's been done in honour of everything from St Patrick's Day and India Day to Columbus Day and July Fourth. As a New Yorker, one gets used to that.

Some people made a fuss about it and New Yorkers are used to that, too.

Of course, turning on the lights and shifting the colour wheel for American traditions is one thing; doing the same in the name of friendship with a foreign power is another, especially a powerful foreign power.

It comes as no surprise that a coterie of anti-China activists registered their dismay with a little protest at the main entrance to the towering edifice. Nor does it surprise anyone that a handful of politicians jumped on the bandwagon; feigning shock that "communist" China, of all countries, should be so celebrated, or simply channelling a generalised indignation against things not American.

Sadly, there's precedent enough for casting rivals as enemies and regarding anything foreign as suspect in America's long, convoluted history. But there have also been many shining moments when the clumsy, myopic God-favours-my-country-over-yours mentality has given way to a more gracious and congenial cosmopolitanism.

The French-made Statue of Liberty was controversial on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1870s; some French thought Americans too ungrateful to merit such a grand gesture, while The New York Times was the mouthpiece for Americans who termed it a folly not worth paying for.

Bartholdi's soaring statue, huge and patently foreign, was donated by a fledgling regime in Paris, still suffering the throes of political violence, to a wobbly US, still in shock from its own unusually brutal Civil War.

Luckily the artistic symbolism trumped politics in the end. Although the peculiar politics of its original conception as a Roman goddess-styled lighthouse for Ottoman Egypt during the early days of the French Third Republic have become obscure, its ultimate incarnation as a gift to the United States from the people of France has done much good.

Lady Liberty was a bold and provocative symbol of one country reaching out to another, a gesture duly reciprocated, a gesture of such power that it continues to inspire. It has helped Americans to better understand themselves and their better angels; a proud symbol of America's open door, of America embracing the world.

Of course, changing the colour of the spotlights on a tall building for a single evening hardly compares to the permanent installation of a soaring icon, most especially a timeless masterpiece of wrought iron and copper sheathing, majestically installed in the estuary harbour where America meets the sea.

But both gestures share an outward-looking cosmopolitan spirit. Americans in general, New Yorkers more particularly, have a proud history of embracing the world, even when it comes as a burden. It is no accident of geography that the United Nations is located in New York, it is an earned honour for a city that has been entrepot, middle ground and refuge for the world ever since its founding by relatively liberal Dutch settlers and laissez-faire Englishmen.

So a tip of the hat to China on the eve of its national day is not at all out of character for America's greatest city.

New York City is loved and hated to a degree hard to find elsewhere, because it is a city with backbone and the courage of its convictions, a port city so different from inland citadels that some conservative Americans see it as a foreign city, an un-American city, an unforgivably liberal city when in fact it is more radically American in political tradition than many of its detractors.

But a grand gesture can help people to rise above the fray, as was the case with the Statue of Liberty. One can deplore the horrible human rights record of both America and France in the mid-nineteenth century and still value the fraternal gesture represented by the Statue of Liberty.

Coming less than three weeks after yet another anguished anniversary of the devastating Sept 11 attacks, the Sept 30, 2009 light display carries special symbolic value.

The Statue of Liberty itself was closed to the public from the time of the attacks until this past July, and its re-opening is a symbolic lighting of a candle, a sign of re-discovered confidence, a fresh eagerness to look out and reach outward, after the dark miasma of the hate-stained post-9/11 period.

New York is reasserting itself as a world city, a city of the world.

For New York to reach out to China and offer a friendly high-five at a time like this, so soon after the world economy was nearly brought to a halt by the foolish, greedy machinations of Wall Street elitists, is good form; a kind of working-class gesture of humility congruent with New York's distinguished history as a big-hearted, cosmopolitan port.

China and America have, despite inevitable ups and downs, found themselves on the same side of history more often than not, whether it be parallel struggles against the predations of the British Empire at its peak, or the common war against Japanese imperialism.

From the days of the China Clippers to the Flying Tigers, from the efforts of missionaries and philanthropists to the fruition of Nixon and Mao's cunning and counter-intuitive alliance, America and China have found common cause. Illuminating the top of the Empire State Building in the red and yellow hues of China's flag for an evening is a fleeting but memorable wink of acknowledgement from one to another, as friends, if not equals.

Perhaps when the US reaches an important milestone China will offer a reciprocal wink back at the US, illuminating the beautiful Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in red, white and blue.

If both sides work for peace and prosperity, it is not inconceivable that China's own home-grown version of Lady Liberty will stand again, a symbol of shared values and friendship.

Philip J Cunningham is a free-lance writer and political commentator. Read more on this article...

WHITHER THE KYOTO PROTOCOL?

BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

One of the wonderful things about Kyoto is how well the environment has been preserved, thanks in part to savvy citizens, ample public transportation and the popularity of bicycle use. On the other hand, what at first glance might seem a pristine environment is quickly being eroded by the boom of automotive culture.


Riding my bike past the historic site where the Kyoto Protocol was signed I always find it surprising to see how many motorists chose this otherwise pristine symbolic setting to idle away. Cars, taxis, trucks alike park with engines on, whiling away the hours on a tree-lined roadside, in violation not only of parking laws but also violating Kyoto's mild and generally ineffective ordinances against idling.

Similar scenes of drivers with their vehicles left running, idling noisily away while napping, smoking, watching DVDs or just killing time can be seen everywhere in Kyoto, winter, spring, summer and fall.

But it is especially odd to note that some of the most scenic, quiet spots with the cleanest air, such as the street in front of Kyoto's International Conference Hall, where the famous anti-global warming protocol was signed, attract droves of needlessly polluting vehicles like a magnet.

More disconcertingly, since after all, the Kyoto International Conference Hall and accompanying hotel, despite the symbolic significance, are primarily designed for out-of-town VIP visitors, is the way idling drivers lurk in front of local children's playgrounds and public parks, historic streets and temple grounds that are part and parcel of daily life in this proud ancient capital city.

The accompanying amateur video was filmed on location on an IPhone, mostly from the vantage point of a bicycle in motion. For more photos and related articles, see my blog, Frontier International.



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TIME FOR CHANGE

(from the Bangkok Post)
Time for change the Japanese can really believe in
Writer: PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Published: 15/09/2009 at 12:00 AM

Japan has a new prime minister and a new ruling party. Prime ministers come and go in Tokyo on almost an annual basis, 50 of them in the post-war period alone, so the change of guard at the top of a huge, humming, well-oiled bureaucratic machine might not seem like news. But Hatoyama's ascension to power might be significant, if the long impotent opposition, now crystalised as the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), takes the helm long enough to steer Japan, Inc in a new direction.

Yukio Hatoyama, who was born on Sept 11, 1947, is nicknamed "The Alien" by his fellow party members for his quirky appearance and different way of thinking.

The DPJ's Hatoyama - like his predecessors in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda and Taro Aso - is a political blueblood and financially secure. He is a member of the elite, which as Japanese like to see it, puts him a cut above the average man.

Like his elite predecessors, the new prime minister has strong personal links to America, not so much in terms of old-time family links with the Bushes or through party hacks on the CIA payroll or through verbal compliance with US fundamentalisms, but rather in meritocratic terms; he earned an advanced graduate degree at Stanford. He knows America but it's not the old boy network all over again. Much has been made of Mr Hatoyama's stated position that Japan needs to adjust its relationship with the US, setting off alarm bells in the corridors of entrenched power in Washington and Tokyo.

But that's just the old guard reasserting itself. What's wrong with some adjustments in a critical bilateral relationship that has been shaped by heavy-handed demands on one side and sneaky non-compliance on the other? Isn't it time to change, time to rejuvenate and re-define the bilateral relationship rather than relying on anachronistic and ossified patron-client links?

It is not as if the US-Japan security treaty is up for grabs, though it can and should be discussed and improved where necessary. After half a century of one-party rule in Japan, a fresh approach to foreign policy and collective security is not really an option, it's a necessity.

The Liberal Democratic Party, born of the ashes of WWII, branded with the imprint of US Occupation, has always been an odd hybrid, neither particularly liberal nor democratic, but an opportunistic mish-mash that was fine-tuned into a winning political machine.

Even if the US was uniformly enlightened in its Japan policy, which is hardly the case, being forced to rely on the Godzilla-like LDP as the main conduit for the conduct of bilateral relations has led to mutations and destructive distortions over the years.

One need only look at recent headlines to see how the LDP's past has continued to haunt the present, whether it be glorifying the lost cause of the last war at Yasukuni Shrine, or the vestiges of anti-communism in foreign policy and anti-labour practices, or the not-so-subtle intimidation of progressives by organised crime and rightwing groups for hire that are themselves relics of US occupation days.

More recently, a bungling obsession with North Korea continues to invoke unfinished business of Japan's historic annexation of its neighbour and what later became America's Korean war.

Then there's the LDP's almost military mindset when it comes to promoting big business and coddling modern-day zaibatsu, all the while building bridges to nowhere and churning out endless pork-barrel spending to nourish a rural elite/big business electoral juggernaut.

It's time for a change, all right, and the DPJ has seized the mantle of electoral legitimacy. The only question is whether the much-needed change will come about or will it be stalled, co-opted and buried by attack campaigns from the right, in concert with passive-aggressive non-compliance from powerful vested interests.

Prime Minister Hatoyama would be wise to take note of how US President Obama, who started out with so much promise, and such a huge mandate for change, only to end up tacking to the right and frittering much of his mandate away, betraying his own reform-minded base in the hopes of placating Wall Street, the Pentagon and America's implacable right wing. Mr Hatoyama and the DPJ face a comparable test, and early indications suggest they too will compromise and bend and revive existing patronage patterns, perhaps until the day that they are not recognisably different from the "fat cats" and the complacent ruling party that they have ostensibly replaced.

For change to have any real meaning, it has to exit the realm of rhetoric and enter the realm of action.

If the DPJ, with Mr Hatoyama at the helm, and former LDP stalwart Ozawa Ichiro navigating at his side, keep their promise to help Japan become a more normal nation - less dependent on the whims of US foreign policy, less beholden to Japan's own elite with its malignant, murky roots in the last world war, and more responsive to ordinary citizens and taxpayers, then Japan is indeed entering a period of change that people can believe in.

If, instead, however, the new government avoids friction by continuing along the beaten-down path created by the LDP, and in doing so sustains the unholy marriage between big business and an entrenched bureaucracy and concommitantly inflates its own military reach while hiding in the shade of the US security umbrella, then the demise of the LDP has been greatly exaggerated.

Even if they stick to their professed ideals, the new ruling team may still succumb to the inertia and stagnation that characterise Japan's body politic today, failing not only to fulfil the promises they made while not in power, but putting themselves out of power again.

In which case DPJ rule will prove not only brief, but may be one day understood not so much as a change in the power structure, but as a short-lived victory for some frustrated, veteran pols of the LDP reform wing, who will give Japan the illusion of change before deftly steering things back to the status quo of big business, big-bureaucracy as usual.

(first published in the Bangkok Post)

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IS THE EAST STILL RED?

Click here for a sneak preview of China's National Day TV extravaganza on and off the big stage.

http://jinpeili.blogspot.com/

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Aflghanistan elections as seen from China

To view a recent Chinese television program on the issue of the elections in Afghanistan with guests Aykut Tavsel, Philip Cunningham and CCTV-9 anchor Yang Rui, please click the following link:


http://english.cctv.com/program/e_dialogue/20090903/106145.shtml

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Is Commander Jafari Stupid?

Farideh Farhi

Tehran is buzzing about a speech by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of Islamic Revolution’s Guard Corps (IRGC) that was made public on September 2 by Fars News, a hard-line news agency. It was delivered in front of some of the early military leaders of the Iran-Iraq War and elicited immediate sharp responses.

It is noteworthy for several reasons.

First and foremost was Jafari's open acknowledgment that at least since February 2009, well before the June election, the IRGC was closely monitoring the reformists of all hue in order to keep in check their presumed efforts to weaken or undermine the office of the leader (rahbari) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This acknowledgment came in reference to an attribution of a statement to the former president Mohammad Khatami, which according to Jafari was uttered in February 2009. Jafari did not reveal how this statement was accessed. Setting aside the real possibility of distortions, a wiretap should probably be considered a good bet.

According to Jafari, Khatami said, “If in this election Ahmadinejad falls, then rahbari will be effectively eliminated; if at any cost reforms return to the executive branch, rahbari will have no authority in society… through the defeat of principlists, we must contain the power of rahbari.”

Indeed, in Jafari’s telling, the IRGC had to enter the fray well before the election took place in order to prevent the weakening or even elimination of rahbari. It did this by taking note of what the reformists were doing and identifying them as enemies of the Islamic state as embodied in rahbari.

This is an astounding public admission by the commander of a body that is presumably supposed to stay out of partisan politics. Of course, Jafari’s likely riposte is that Article 150 of Iran’s constitution gives the IRGC the responsibility of “guarding the revolution and its achievements.” Hence by identifying key reformist leaders as enemies of rahbari, the commander offers justification for taking sides in the election and even more so for manipulating the election.

If Jafari is be taken at his words, even if in the official narrative the election had been won by Mir Hossein Mussavi, then IRGC would have had no choice but to enter the fray and overturn the results since such a victory would have brought to power people who wanted to undermine the Islamic Republic.

Considering that in the minds of many Iranians doubtful of election results, this is precisely what the IRGC did, such an admission was probably imprudent if not outright stupid.

But at this point Jafari is probably less concerned about the doubts of the Iranian population and more interested in justifying the intrusive role the body he heads has taken in Iranian politics, particularly to many members of the Iranian elites who are fence sitters as neither full-fledged reformists nor comfortable conservatives with the increasing role of military in politics.

Jafari’s second admission - and this one quite explicit - was that in his mind, there is really no difference between a change in the policy direction of the country – change of behavior he called it - and regime change. Again this is a significant admission since important policy differences in both domestic and foreign arenas have generally been accepted in the Islamic Republic.

The distinction made is between a barandaz - someone who wants to overthrow the regime - and a critic. The equation of behavior or policy change with regime change and the argument that policy differences now amount to the challenges to the foundations of the Islamic Republic, transforming the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary character along the lines designed by the country’s external enemies, is a clear admission that differences about how the country should conduct itself is at the core of the current crisis.

Individuals are called traitors not because they have done anything illegal, but because they think differently about policies.

Again this is an astounding admission in the midst of major trials of some of the reformist leaders. From Jafari’s point of view, they should be prosecuted and convicted not because they broke laws but because through an electoral process they wanted to change the policy direction of the country.

Jafari’s third admission came in the form of reporting on the previously unreported prison confessions of two key reformist leaders – Mohammad Ali Abtahi and Mohammad Atrianfar, effectively acknowledging IRGC's access to prisoners that have been kept in the Intelligence Ministry’s Ward 209 at Evin Prison.

Again, probably not a smart move to openly acknowledge the IRGC’s role in the imprisonment and interrogation of prisoners. As the violent crackdown has unfolded since the election, there has been a lot of talk about the unknown sources of violence dished out to the population. In effect no one has wanted to take responsibility and unidentified “rogue elements” or "plain-clothes men" have been the usual suspects.

Jafari’s speech has now made it much easier for people to pin institutional responsibility and blame for the post-election gratuitous violence, indiscriminate arrests, deaths, tortures (of white and physical kind), and forced confessions.

The question is, even if IRGC was indeed the leading force in making sure the reformists did not win and also the headquarter of the post-election crackdown, why would Jafari decide to acknowledge this openly, eliciting immediate reactions from reformist leaders and organizations accusing him of not only improper institutional conduct but also slander?

The leader of the reformist faction in the Parliament, Mohammadreza Tabesh, went as far as to suggest that “those who have given license to Sepah’s [IRGC’s] entry into elections and interrogations should be prosecuted and not those whose background and responsibilities chronicle their attachment to the system, rahbari and the deceased Imam.” The Association of Combatant Clergy, whose two leading members Khatami and Mohammad Mussavi Khoeiniha were accused by Jafari of plotting against rahbari, in turn asked the new prosecutor general to do something about the type of slander that is being thrown around. Presidential candidate Mehdi Karrubi firmly suggested to Jafari to go back to the barracks.

It is difficult to decipher the reasons for Jafari’s public admissions. It is possible that his frank talk marks the beginning of a move against high ranking former leaders of the Islamic Republic. By making the transition from accusing the reformists of “doubting” the election results – which no where is stated to be a crime in Iran - to one of an attempted effort to undermine rahbari – which is considered a crime, Jafari may be setting the stage for a much bigger purge of reformist leaders than the one already in progress and put together by the now replaced Prosecutor General of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi.

Another possibility is that Jafari’s talk is about justifying IRGC's actions in the face of the reality that the trials and forced confessions have so far not revealed any committed crimes.

To be sure, individual prisoners have acknowledged their mistake in doubting the election results, lamented the influence of foreign ideas and concepts on university curricula, talked about the pernicious role of the foreign press in highlighting divisions inside Iran, and deliberated in length on external designs to sow dissent inside Iran.

But none of the defendants have confessed to a serious crime . In their confessions, some have accused others not present in the courtroom and roaming free of financial misbehavior in the election and desire to win by all means. But no concrete evidence has been offered. In other words they have “confessed” to crimes committed by other people, which in no body of laws, including Iranian and Islamic laws, is considered sufficient for prosecution; just accusations hurled against others that cannot be accepted as fact and used in public the way Jafari has done without corroborating evidence.

Beyond justification, Jafari’s words may also be about intimidation. Threatening Khatami, Mussavi and Mussavi Khoeiniha – a cleric who was ironically the so-called spiritual leader of US embassy hostage takers and today many hardliners consider to be the eminence grise of the reform movement – with treason may be a way to try to silence the outcry and change the national conversation from a focus on the responsibility for the people killed by the security forces – latest confirmed figures are 72 according to a key Mussavi advisor – and crimes of rape and savage beatings that have taken place in various prisons against young men and women who were simply exercising their constitutionally protected rights to peaceful protest.

Unfortunately for Jafari, though, none of the people he may be trying to intimidate is showing any sign of backing down. Karrubi’s dogged efforts to find the sources of violence have finally led to the creation of a three-member committee to investigate the crimes in the Judiciary. Khatami and the reformist clerical organization to which he belongs also keep challenging the kind of narrative put out by Jafari and the same is true of Mussavi.

The only way to silence them is to incarcerate them on charges of sedition against rahbari; a move that simply cannot take place without the assent of the commander-in-chief or Khamenei himself.

The issue is not whether Jafari would like the arrests to happen. His speech clearly suggests he does. The intriguing question is why he is talking about all this publicly, in effect pleading or calling for the arrests?

Why doesn’t he, like all good military men intent on maintaining the status quo, simply work behind the scene to arrange for arrests and silencing without implicating himself and the IRGC in such a public manner? Why the urge to speak?

The answer to this key question in all likelihood is found in the felt need to defend the indefensible in front of a crowd of old Iran-Iraq War commanders who remain highly skeptical of IRGCs politicization and its use as an instrument of repression against Iranian citizens in the name of saving the Islamic republic and its leader.

If so, this was not a speech given from a position of strength.



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Mr. Nice Guy is not good enough

THE POLITICAL MAN


by PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM

Published in the Bangkok Post: 15/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News


What is it about politics that makes it so hard to find a leader both decent and effective? Why is it so hard to find both qualities in one individual? If an electorate facing urgent problems must choose between a mild-mannered politician in service of the status quo, and an unpredictable Machiavellian manipulator, who offers the greater hope and who the greater liability?

A recent Thai Rath editorial compared current Thai PM Abhisit with fugitive former premier Thaksin, suggesting one man was clearly more decent, but the other more capable. The comparison ended with the lament about the difficulty of finding a leader who was both keng and dee (clever and good). Both terms are praiseworthy attributes, but the former is a kind of efficacious talent or power, the latter a rather more static moral quality.

To reduce complex, internally conflicted adult individuals to simple stereotypes of "clever" and "good" is to employ the language of the schoolyard to over-simplify things a bit. But it's a catchy media angle and it raises interesting questions.

Is the current prime minister being damned with faint praise when he is described as being good but essentially ineffective? Or is it a withering critique of Thaksin to portray him as rather more clever than good? What's better, what's worse?

The editorial gives both pols a slap in the face, suggesting that one is likable but lacking as a politician, the other not particularly likable but perhaps fit for politics. Is there something about the rough and rumble world of politics that makes the concept of a "good politician" an oxymoron? Is it really so hard to combine the two? The Thai dilemma has interesting parallels to the situation in America at the moment. What kind of man is President Obama, if not a nice man? He rode into office on a wave of niceness, he exuded a basic civility lacking in his opponents. And yet he increasingly is showing himself to be far more complex than nice.

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Ahmadinejad’s Predicament and Iran’s Political Crisis

Farideh Farhi

HONOLULU, Hawaii, Aug 10 (IPS) - With the confirmation of his re-election by Ayatollah Khamenei and his oath of office taken, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will begin his second term facing much steeper challenges than any of Iran’s previous second-term presidents.

In fact, despite the proclaimed support of 24 million Iranians, his government is by far the weakest post-revolutionary government. Ironically, it is this weakened position that tempts him to be a force of constant agitation and confrontation.

Challenges facing Ahmadinejad include open hostility from a large section of the Iranian elite which Ayatollah Khamenei characterised in Ahmadinejad’s confirmation speech as "angry and wounded"; highly charged criticisms of his appointments and policies from within the conservative ranks; continued civil disobedience; a public mood that has turned from mostly inattentive and apolitical to concerned and angry; general unhappiness among the clergy about the harsh crackdown; and a much more hostile international environment.

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