Author: Andrew Sullivan

Hillary Mann Leverett responds to Goldblog and explains the progression of her views on Iran:

During my experience actually negotiating with senior counterparts from the Islamic Republic, I saw first-hand how my Iranian interlocutors were able to negotiate productively, deliver on specific commitments, and make concessions and calculate trade-offs across a range of issues.  In this regard, recent statements by Kenneth Timmerman on C-Span’s Washington Journal that my husband, Flynt Leverett, and I have been spreading “lies” about Iran’s substantial cooperation with post-9/11 American efforts in Afghanistan are beneath contempt.  Mr. Timmerman was not in government, and does not know what he is talking about.  I was one of very few U.S. officials authorized to deal directly with Iranian officials regarding Afghanistan–Timmerman’s neoconservative friends at the Pentagon were deliberately kept out of those discussions–and I saw what the Iranians did to help us in Afghanistan.    

E.D. Kain reviews Pocohontas Avatar; and Kottke makes a similar point:

[T]he Na'vi have regular and intimate access to a moon-sized supercomputer — a neural net supercomputer at that — that connects them to every other living thing on their world and have had such access for what could be millennia. It just doesn't add up. The Na'vi are too capable and live in an environment that is far too pregnant with technological possibility to be stuck in the Stone Age. Plot-wise it's convenient for them to be the way they are, but the Na'vi really should have been more technologically advanced than the Earthlings, not only capable of easily repelling any attack from Captain Ironpants but able to keep the mining company from landing on the moon in the first place.

Friedersdorf doesn't buy the noble savages criticism:

James Cameron isn’t portraying native people of our world. His alien protagonists aren’t intended as stand-ins for the Navajos or the Aztecs or the Cherokee. In his different world, the native people really are in communion with nature. Were his purpose to comment on European history, this would be a terrible choice, but in fact Avatar is a film whose purpose is allowing humanity to reflect on its circumstances and fallen nature in a novel way. That is why I approve of the decision to portray the kinds of natives that were shown.

Conor really has been on a roll lately. The role of conservative contrarian suits him. I revered the movie visually and found the writing and story somewhat lame. But the Brooks-Podhoretz critique leaves me cold for all the reasons Conor cites. Or I really am becoming a goddamn hippie after all these years. (I'm seeing it again next week at an Imax.)

(Hat tip: URLesque)

Scott H. Payne and Chris Dierkes discuss the Iranian uprising at length.

Charles Kurzman and Ijlal Naqvi have "examined results from parliamentary elections in all Muslim societies":

Given the choice, voters tend to go with secular parties, not religious ones. Over the past 40 years, 86 parliamentary elections in 20 countries have included one or more Islamic parties, according to annual reports from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Voters in these places have overwhelmingly turned up their noses at such parties. Eighty percent of these Islamic parties earned less than 20 percent of the vote, and a majority got less than 10 percent — hardly landslide victories. The same is true even over the last few years, with numbers barely changing since 2001.

True, Islamic parties have won a few well-publicized breakthrough victories, such as in Algeria in 1991 and Palestine in 2006. But far more often, Islamic parties tend to do very poorly. What's more, the more free and fair an election is, the worse the Islamic parties do. By our calculations, the average percentage of seats won by Islamic parties in relatively free elections is 10 points lower than in less free ones.

(Hat tip: 3QD)

[Re-posted from earlier today]

It’s somewhat interesting to see the layers and layers of denial begin to peel back a little at National Review. Jonah Goldberg endorses a reader’s view that

This is driving me crazy. Peter [Beinart] argues that aspects of the “War on Terror” are recruiting tool, and cites Abu Ghraib. NO CONSERVATIVE IS DEFENDING ABU GHRAIB so this is a strawman. It’s not merely fallacious, but slanderous in its implication that conservatives thought Abu Ghraib was fine.

Let us leave aside the simple fact that even at the time, many conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and James Inhofe refute this. Limbaugh called the techniques at Abu Ghraib a “brilliant maneuver.” Inhofe said he was more outraged at the outrage than the offenses. Are Limbaugh and Inhofe not conservatives in Goldberg’s view? Will National Review run a correction for this untruth? Or would that be too much cognitive dissonance even for them? But we don’t have to go back in time. On the same page in the same week that Jonah publishes this, Marc Thiessen is aggressively defending the exact techniques used at Abu Ghraib as things we should be proud of! Is it possible to be against Abu Ghaib and in favor of almost all the techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib? Sure. In fact, that’s been the “conservative” position for six years now. Let’s run down the Abu Ghraib techniques that we saw in those photos, shall we? Stress positions? Supported by NRO. Forced hooding and stripping? Backed by NRO. Mock executions? Backed by NRO. Forced nudity? Backed by NRO. Multiple beatings? Backed by NRO. Use of dogs to terrify? Backed by NRO. Sexual abuse? In some respects – such as smearing fake menstrual blood on the faces of naked, shackled prisoners – NRO found nothing wrong with that either. Now remember what other “enhanced interrogation techniques” National Review also now supports that did not actually occur at Abu Ghraib: freezing prisoners to near death with ice, water and naked exposure to very low temperatures; repeated near-drowning of human beings tied to a board; sleep deprivation up to 960 hours; slamming a human being repeatedly with a neck collar against a plywood wall; forcing human beings into upright coffins for long periods of time and tormenting them with phobias, like the rats in Orwell’s 1984. Any conservative who says he or she supports these “enhanced interrogation techniques” pioneered by Cheney therefore logically supports almost every atrocity at Abu Ghraib. So man up, Jonah. Quit the lies and own this or disown it. And no “well I haven’t thought about this that much” or ‘there’s no evidence linking Abu Ghraib to Cheney – when the Senate’s own bipartisan report directly and unanimously linked the techniques at Abu Ghraib to the Bush White House. In fact, in its support for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” NRO doesn’t merely support what happened at Abu Ghraib but believes that prisoners there were treated better than they should have been. On the same Corner blog, one NRO contributor last week actually proposed grouping prisoners in one ethnic group and murdering them in one go with a missile, even though many were admittedly innocent. And Jonah wants to say that conservatives at National Review oppose the techniques at Abu Ghraib! 

The only conceivable way for conservatives to oppose Abu Ghraib but support the use of the techniques revealed is that they wanted prisoners tortured by real professionals, not Lynndie England.

This was Krauthammer’s original position – the creation of a elite cadre for torturing prisoners (something even the Nazis didn’t do). These conservatives are fine with Rumsfeld’s approval of stripping a human being and tying a leash around his neck and parading him around as a dog as part of an ongoing attempt to destroy that individual’s sense of self and reality. But if someone down the line of command obeys the Rumsfeld order and it gets out, they oppose it. In fact, they will pretend to be shocked by it. They will also ensure that the person at the bottom of the line is punished and that those who ordered them get away with impunity. The only thing wrong with Abu Ghraib for National Review is that it was photographed and we found out about it. And that’s also why they opposed dissemination of other photos that showed the same exact techniques at other locations in the war on terror.

For Cheney, the only thing wrong with Abu Ghraib was that it was exposed. Since America is America, torture becomes not-torture when Americans do it. Since the US president has no legal or constitutional limits to his use of violence in wartime and since captured prisoners are no different than active combatants, war was unleashed on men already shackled and isolated in torture cells across the globe.

This was one of the darkest moments in American history. And National Review aided, abetted and endorsed every bit of it. And wants to bring it back.

While Giuliani continued to blunder his way through GWOT, Adam Blickstein and Andrew called him out. Sully also called out Stephanopolous for his coddling of Rudy (which he recanted) and Noonan on her blinkered view of Obama (with some help from a reader). He also turned up the heat on the president's approach to accountability. A reader dissented. Brennan owned up.

In Iran, we saw the dangers of being a reformer – whether a politician or a tweeter. (In Iraq, thankfully, things are much safer lately.) The Leveretts responded to their critics. Larison and Dish readers discussed revolutions. Hooman Majd characterized the Iranian one as a "civil rights movement."

Palin outmaneuvered Politico and Schmidt (though she stumbled herself), while GOP insiders quietly groaned. We also collected more reaction to her speaking gig. Ackerman, a reader, and an adorable baby added to Kinsley's discussion of newspapers. Andrew saved his longest critique for Jonah Goldberg and NR over torture. Friedersdorf took down Glenn Reynolds with aplomb. And Lieberman managed to piss off everyone.

We also posted a two-part window today and taught you how to launch a Christmas tree.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

As a gay African man (Kenyan), I have been infuriated by the recent proceedings in Uganda and just incandescent at the Christianist right's midwifery of this execrable 'bill'. For the LGBT community in majority of sub-saharan Africa, the stigma is absolute. South Africa remains the lone outpost of progressivism because gays can legally wed there. Kenya is the most socially liberal country in East and Central Africa but only relatively so since homosexuality hasn't been decriminalized yet.

I've thought a lot about how I've enabled this by not being open about who I am. I have heard the same disgusting anti-gay rhetoric openly spoken at parties and gatherings where I was present and I said nothing. No more.

The picture of the Malawian couple in the back of a pickup truck, besieged and utterly alone, surrounded by a sea of unsympathetic and mocking faces, sealed the deal for me. It is no longer possible for me to take my own indignation about these human rights abuses seriously. How can I while being closeted at the same time? This is why I'm coming out. As soon as possible. I'm telling everyone that matters to me and will admit openly to who I am to anyone that cares to ask. It is clearer to me than ever before that I can't have it both ways. I can't be outraged and closeted at the same time.

You correctly called those two Malawian men heroes and I saved that post. They remain my inspiration.

And my reader becomes a hero of mine as well. The Internet is helping to propel global gay consciousness as well as religious fundamentalism.

A reader writes:

Larison wrote:

Most revolutions do have specific goals and demands, most of the successful ones do have organized leadership that can mobilize at least a dedicated cadre of followers, and most have some idea what means they will need to exact the concessions they desire and have some idea of how to acquire these means.

It's important to not let the future determine the past in the understanding of revolutions, or read the causes from the outcomes. Why the Bourbon, tsarist, Stalinist, Pahlavi states fell to popular revolt is a different question than why the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, liberals, and Islamists respectively won.

There was a long debate in the 1970s to 1990s about the causes and dynamics of revolutions. Names like Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol, Nikki Keddie may be familiar to those who studied political science at the time.

But if we read not from outcome to past but from the uprising to when a successful revolution unfolds, we find it hard to discern clear patterns apart from the obvious, or definitional, like the state's security apparatus becomes ineffective.

If we're to take the criterion of organized leadership for example, we have a dearth in some revolutions and an embarrassment of riches in others.

Russian 1917: anarchists, social revolutionaries, left social revolutionaries, mensheviks, bolsheviks, constitutional democrats.

Iran: the fedayeen, the mojahadeen-e-khalq, various liberals, the islamist, the freedom movement of iran, the tuden (commies); among leaders it wasn't just Khomeini, but also Taleghani and Bazargan.

The various factions of the French Revolution gave birth to the observation that revolutions eat their own children.

Many of the East European revolutions have less clear leadership. (In Poland the leadership was clear, but then organized opposition to the regime started in 1980). They of course did have notable dissidents around whom revolutionaries (very, very quickly) organized, e.g., Havel.

There are revolutions where there are lots and lots of often non-compatible ideas of what it means to win or exact concessions–Russia, France, Portugal—examples of singular clear ideas–the communist revolution in China—no clear and/or explicit ideas explicitly until very near the end. And we can mix and match: the Cuban revolution had clear leadership, but Castro and Che embraced communism after they won. Iran 1979 is a case of few if any clear and/or explicit ideas, as Khomeini was famous about messages that were all things to all people, hence his support from secularists and Marxists like the Fedayeen.

My points are (i) again that there's a difference between asking what lead the tsarist state to collapse to opposition and why did the Bolsheviks win, and (ii) there are too many variations in the experience of revolutions to make general statements apart from fairly trivial ones.

Another reader:

Mr. Larison’s examples are faulty. Successful revolutions may well have organized groups with well-developed systems of ideas that express their desired outcome. They may well have a pre-existing cadre of leadership. The October Revolution in Russia and the Chinese Revolution spring to mind. But the example he chooses to demonstrate the significance of these factors, 1848, actually demonstrates the exact opposite of his claim.

The French portion of the 1848 Revolutions may well have been the most long expected and planned for revolution in modern history. Specific figures developed coherent ideologies of revolt, clandestine organizations etc. well before hand. Paris was notoriously legion with revolutionaries in the 1830s and 1840s. Early innovations in secret police work were famously associated with Paris. The 1848 revolution in France did not succeed in because of these revolutionary organizers and their various plans. It may have failed in June because of them. The revolutions in Italy and Hungary were able to draw on well established nationalist ideas and leaders to legitimate those revolutions. The essential demands of the German part of 1848 developed almost instantaneously with the Mannheim Demands in February 1848. All of these revolutions in 1848 were far better organized and led revolutions than the grand-daddy of them all, the 1789 French Revolution.

No one expected a revolution in 1789. The initial leadership certainly had no intention of permitting anything like the radicalism that developed. They had only very hazy positive ideas of reform. They got far more than that. So much so that one of the most important leaders in 1789, Mirabeau, began plotting against the revolution. Revolutions may be planned, but the plans are only tangentially relevant. Revolutions happen when the authority of the pre-existing regime collapses. Those ‘revolutionary’ ideas and programs are generally the efforts of ‘revolutionaries’ to organize and legitimate forces they cannot control.

Consider the German revolution of 1918. The “leadership” of that revolution (at least until January 1919) was a Majority SPD party that in reality did not really want a revolution . They had gotten all they really needed in the September reforms. All the Revolution in November did was saddle them with total responsibility for the mess that the Kaiser’s government had created. They were, as the SPD’s “leader” said, the “liquidators of the old regime”. And though they might not have wanted a revolution, they got one because they Kaiser’s government had become a hollow, useless husk. Similarly, the February Revolution in 1917 was essentially leader-less because it was, essentially, the collapse of the old regime’s ability to command consent. Who was the “leader” of East Germany’s revolution in 1989? Many people, but the key was the failure of the old regime. The key events of that revolution were the unwillingness of the SED to open fire on the Leipzig crowds in October and their inability to recover from a routine bureaucratic flub, i.e. the opening of the wall. Leadership, programs, plans are all well and good once the revolution has happened. They simply do not matter that much in starting it.