http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8576/pub_detail.asp
February 1, 2011 Egypt: Obama's Iran <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/authors/id.64/author_detail.asp> John Howard http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110131_Obamafire.jpg Americans of a certain age did not think it possible that any president could accomplish the level of incompetence and destruction wrought by Jimmy Carter. His monumental achievement provided a benchmark against which all others may be measured and provides a handy guide for how best not to deal with everything from the domestic economy to American confidence. But Carters greatest talent for devastation was in the field of foreign affairs; his saddest, most enduring legacy. It is in this area that he achieved his most lasting damage, single handedly creating the most dangerous international problem with which we are now confronted. The residue of his tenure has been expensive, indeed. In transacting his naïve human rights campaign, Carter never paused to consider whether those he urged toward democracy enjoyed a culture that would support one. When he took office, Iran was a stable, pluralistic nation beginning to emerge on the world stage as a regional power of the first order; a steady support for American interests. When OPEC flexed its petroleum enhanced muscles by attempting to extort regional foreign policy concessions from the United States by increasing the price of oil or withholding it from the market, it was Iran, under the Shah, that often lowered prices and increased production to vitiate the impact of Arab moves. As proud Persians with a history of antipathy toward Arab ambition, they had no sympathy for Arab aspiration. It was an authoritarian system, to be sure, but it was a stable one and Iran was a friend to the United States. All religions were tolerated and it had active, vibrant, successful and large Jewish and Christian communities. Like his neighbor Hafez al-Assad, the Shah kept a tight lid on Islamic radicalism; the bitter fruits of Arab conquest. He had no patience for subversion but his universities were hotbeds of free thought and Iranians enjoyed levels of day to day personal freedom and prosperity unequaled in less secular neighboring Arab countries. http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110131_ShahIran.jpg The Shah of Iran, last ruler of the Pahlavi dynasty. The Shahs attempt to keep order in a society inherently chaotic because of cultural cross currents wrought by centuries of conflict between Persian civilization and Arab conquest, troubled a profoundly ignorant, but certain, Jimmy Carter. Where the Shah saw the order required for progress, Carter saw repression. Carters one dimensional fundamentalist world view could not conceive of the notion that societies must be undergirded by a tradition and culture that celebrates the sanctity of the individual to enable them to support democracy. His simple minded idea, if one can, without smiling, charitably bestow upon it that title, was that human rights must trump all other considerations regardless of whether or not a nation enjoys a culture capable of supporting a system of individual rights that will sustain a democracy. American culture is necessary for American democracy. Our system works because Americans are what they are. They understand that cultural limitations are necessary for a free society to flourish. They are what they are because they are the children of the Enlightenment endowed with Enlightenment values and the tools of thought that define and drive our culture. We have intrinsically accepted the limits we know are necessary to support a free nation. We instinctively know that toleration of alternative points of view is necessary to protect our own right to speak and think. We intuitively accept the idea that our religious sensibilities are private matters of conscience; that all are entitled to their own religious truth and that religion has its place as a matter of culture but not as a matter of government. It is those cultural assumptions that are necessary to support American democracy. Carter, in his patronizing condescension, lectured the world on the requirement for democratic tolerance without understanding that it must be buttressed, first, by democratic institutions. In homage to his elite northeastern patrons, he stabbed friends and allies repeatedly in the back and undermined their efforts to keep their nations orderly as they moved gradually but inexorably toward more open societies. When Carter took office, Iran was in the midst of achieving a level of prosperity that supported great universities and liberal education. A large and growing middle class, in a repeat of historical human development that occurred in every single democratic society except our own, was demanding more influence in the affairs of state and the Shah was slowly opening up government institutions to broader participation. That made sense, of course, because Iran enjoyed a rich history of freedom, tolerance and pluralism two thousand years before European philosophers ushered in Enlightenment thought and the beginnings of western democratic aspiration. In 500BC, Persian emperor Cyrus the Great propounded a code that institutionalized religious freedom and tolerance and forms of individual liberty. The Iranian people were, under the Shah, highly educated and motivated to achievement and social improvement. The shoots of democratic freedom were everywhere even as the Shahs secret police kept a tight lid on Islamic radicalism with its exploitation of democratic yearning. When students rioted in the streets of Teheran, the Shah found no American support for all his assistance in achieving American Middle Eastern goals. The rioters expressed goal was democracy; their desire, they said, freedom. Carter and his allies in the media painted this as an uprising not unlike our own, driven by the innate human desire for liberty. They described the rioters as freedom-seekers, depending on the credulity of a preoccupied public to reflexively support those yearning for liberty and, hence, Carters craven abandonment of an American friend. Instead of condemning the chaos in the streets, Carter and his State Department encouraged the riots as a hunger for freedom; a vindication of Carters simplistic ideal of human rights. This, even as the rioters chanted anti-American slogans and were already condemning The Great Satan. Carter, with the self-righteous certitude that characterized his every act and spurred by the petty fashions of northeastern liberal thought, undermined the Shah and removed his lifeline. In the name of human rights, Carter dictated that Iran should enjoy the great blessings of democracy without the hard work of the development of a democratic culture or the construction of democratic institutions. With Carter Administration connivance, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to the cheers of the Iranian mob and White House celebration; a vindication of religious freedom; the great uprising of liberty in Iran, an advancement of human rights and an important national achievement in the removal of an authoritarian regime. And, now, because of Jimmy Carter, we have the Iran of today with its nuclear ambitions, more completely authoritarian than the Shah on his worst day; an international exporter of terrorism and an enemy of the United States indeed, our greatest challenge in the region. Some improvement. But Carters achievement was so much more profound than the mere enslavement of a population. Before Carter, Islamic radicalism was a small undercurrent in Middle Eastern societies. It was kept in check only through the employment of techniques acceptable solely in authoritarian nations through the denial of some of the fundamental freedoms enshrined in our First Amendment. But Middle Eastern rulers knew, as ours apparently did not, that there must be limits to tolerance in societies that lack Constitutional protections and the cultural and social structures necessary to support representative republics like our own. They knew that it was not enough to declare people free and open societies to the chaos that can emerge when freedom is suddenly thrust upon them without the social and intellectual evolution that accompanied our own. With radical mullahs now safely in charge in Iran, among the largest and richest nations in the Middle East, Islamists gained the power and resources necessary to propel the spread of their toxin as a matter of national policy. Never before in the modern world had a radical theocracy enjoyed the power of national government with which to advance its effort. The result was the emergence of the Islamic radicalism with which we now struggle. Jimmy Carter was, then, in a very real sense, the author of the Islamic terrorism that now warps international relations and upsets American security. The poison that oozed from the mullahs, suddenly empowered by Carter, seeped into countries throughout the Middle East and rose like a toxic cloud over a region already rent by violence and poverty. It gave succor and impetus to a young, rich, vapid playboy from the wealthy, influential Saudi bin Laden family and led him to embrace the growing movement for the caliphate and the jihad necessary to establish it. The blood of terrorist victims throughout the world is on President Carters hands. http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110131_Cartergrin.jpg Carters moves were not, of course, unprecedented. Americas intellectual and media elites had a long and sordid history of subverting American interests by the misrepresentation of what they always characterized as popular movements for freedom. In their parlance, Mao Tse Tung was an agrarian reformer, bent only on freeing the Chinese people from a relatively benign dictator who was, coincidentally, a friend to the United States, so their henchmen in the State Department actively undermined Chiang Kai Sheks government. Fidel Castro was a freedom fighter struggling to liberate his people from the boot heal of the corrupt Batista regime. Khomeini was only a man of religious freedom. In every case, the successor was far worse and far more resilient than those he replaced. And, of course, in every case, the successor has been an effective enemy to our nation. In an earlier age, a nascent conservative movement asked Who lost China? We should, perhaps, now be asking Who lost Iran? Comes, now, Barak Obama, who, in a mirror image of Carters failure, has allowed his State Department to undermine the legitimacy of an important American ally. Indeed, Obamas own words have telegraphed the abandonment of a friend who has been a bulwark of opposition to Islamic radicalism and an important component in the fight against Islamic terrorism. It is Mubaraks policies that have marginalized Islamic radicals and have enabled the small Christian and Jewish communities in Egypt to exist, if not thrive. At the very time that Christians are under attack in Egypt, the Obama Administration is acting as midwife, ushering in what promises to be yet another Islamic dictatorship. All of this is in spite of the fact that Egyptian rioters are, as their Iranian brethren before them, already chanting anti-American slogans. All of this even as a newly vital Muslim Brotherhood has stepped to the forefront of the demonstrations. All of this in spite of the clearly delicate balance that will be upset by the installation of yet another authoritarian theocracy in the Middle East. If the loss of Iran was bad, the loss of Egypt will be geometrically worse. It is larger, wealthier and more important strategically than Iran will ever be. Its capacity for mischief with respect to Israel, sitting, as it does, on its border, is drastically greater than that of Iran. Its ability to threaten other American allies, when combined with that of Iran, may galvanize the entire region against United States interests. One can only imagine how deeply American security interests would be compromised were a new, Islamist government to gain access to intelligence sharing between the CIA and the Egyptian security services. And imagine the threat to American security represented by a Middle East united through its two largest nations in opposition to American ambitions in the region. With the fall of Mubarak, we can expect Islamists to move promptly against secularism and religious pluralism and the coming Christian bloodbath will shock the conscience of thinking people. But thinking people are in short supply in this administration. A largely secular society will see a huge step backwards for individual prerogative and lifestyle choice. And, though significantly less important in the scheme of things, Egypt is also the repository of more important international cultural treasures that Iran. Perhaps that will motivate cultural elites, but I would not bank on it. Their cultural sensitivities are too warped by their political affectations to be of any use. But these are not the concerns of Obama and his administration as they reflexively chant democracy as if it conjured a talismanic magic spell. These are not the concerns of those who would sacrifice United States security for an ideal that cannot be achieved without vast cultural and intellectual change that will be decades, if not centuries, in the making. These are not the concerns of Platonist idealists who pursue goals, domestically and internationally, in complete isolation from experience and reason. Once again, a liberal president has shown the world that the United States is a feckless, inconstant and unreliable friend and that nations trust it at their peril. Forces may yet arise that will save Egypt. But they will not emerge from this administration and future generations may well be left with asking Who lost Egypt? Dont expect to read the answer in the New York Times. But Jimmy Carter may now take comfort in knowing that there is, indeed, a president whose incompetence and capacity for destroying American interests exceeds even his own. <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/> Family Security Matters Contributing Editor <http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6354/pub_detail.asp> John W. Howard is a lawyer ( <http://www.jwhowardattorneys.com/> www.jwhowardattorneys.com), specializing in corporate and business litigation who also founded a non-profit, public interest law firm specializing in First, Second and Tenth Amendment issues. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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