Happy Islamofascism Awareness Week!

Did you get a tree yet?

That's right, self-promoter David Horowitz has inaugurated a series of events on college campuses to raise awareness of the greatest threat to humankind, evah! Actually, "series of events" is probably a big strong, since barely half of the campuses Horowitz claimed to be holding events actually are:

We contacted those institutions, alerting them to the fact that their name was being used, and wondering what exactly was taking place. … It’s important to note though, after we contacted those institutions, most of those institutions indicated that no such events is taking place on those campus. And many contacted the sponsors and told them, “do not use my institution’s name in your campaign,” including some very renowned universities such as Yale and Princeton.

This is the most embarrassing thing to hit campus since parachute pants.

The truth is that there's almost no evidence of a Islamic jihadist movement within the United States. To the extent that it exists in other countries, it was on the verge of being crushed immediately after 9-11 until we turned attention to Iraq and did nothing but rescusitate it after that. The "awareness" should be on how unseriously the White House took the threat before the attacks, and how much they've done to make America less safe on the global stage after it.

Some of these nutcases actually think that we're going to be forced to convert to Islam en masse, with the country transformed into a giant arm of the caliphate. That's ridiculous, the Cold War was about 50,000 times more dangerous than a group of fanatics in caves. We have made US citizens more vulnerable to attack, by keeping them in the middle of a civil war in Iraq, but the idea that we're about to be taken over by an Islamic theocracy is absurd. It's not going to happen. And we shouldn't let those who profit from fear to demagogue us into another bloody war:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality...

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Planet Neocon, Fareed. And you spent some time hanging out there, too, as I remember. But welcome back.

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn't have a nuclear button yet and won't for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can't be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a "residual rationality," he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history's greatest mass murderers.

I'm glad some of the elites ar seeing the insanity of those who claim that Iran is about to strike us any minute and that some son of a blacksmith who runs the traffic lights in Tehran is "worse than Hitler":



The only reason Iran has any leverage at all on us is because we have 165,000 Americans stationed in the country next door. The "awareness" should focus on getting us out of there.

Babies As Far As The Eye Can See

We really have become a nation of children, so worried about the harming power of words - WORDS - that we'll put together a Senate resolution condemning them when they are used in a pun. The latest mau-mauing from the right concerns Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the UN and Columbia University. We are for some reason given the impression that "President" must mean some sort of ruler/despot, which shows both how strong the Imperial Presidency has grown in this country, and how globally illiterate Americans, and particularly the media that seeks to inform them, are (and the media deserves practically all the blame here). Ahmadinejad is like the Speaker of the House of Iran. He actually wields a little less power than that. He doesn't control foreign policy, he doesn't control the military, he doesn't control Iran's weapons arsenal. What's more, he's very unpopular in his own country, and is unlikely to win re-election. The only thing an outcry like this does is increase the power of someone who is essentially powerless. The mullahs are using him as a lightning rod so they can curtail civil liberties and dissent at home. While we focus on one guy, ordinary Iranians see the man attracting all this criticism and rally around him.

In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Ahmadinejad would just wither on the vine if we'd only stop screaming about him. But the neocons won't, because they have a very specific plan that Matt Stoller outlines well.

1) Empowering Ahmadinejad: He's not particularly important within Iran, but this kind of mindless attention helps him domestically.

2) Leading Us into a New War: Wars require villains. Ahmadinejad, as an ineffective buffoon with a weak domestic power center, wasn't enough of a villain. He must be built up into an all-powerful character that can only be removed by American force. The divestment from Iran campaign, currently swirling around the states, is accomplishing this, and will almost certainly continue, at least PR-wise, into the next Democratic administration. This will make negotiations much harder and the path to a military strike much more likely.

3) Attacking Free Speech at Columbia: Dismantling or weakening institutions that stand up against the right or could conceivably do so is one of the long-term conservative movement strategic interests. The Freedom Watch ad calling Columbia University 'appeasers' is meant to intimate, and it often works in subtle ways.

Are we so fearful of losing our own democracy that we think one lone nut's words can take it down? That's ridiculous. We've weathered the storm of dissent before and we will again. Neoconservatives want to mirror the mullah-led state of Iran here in America because it would make it easier to take the country to war that way. And a pliant media, mindful that black-and-white worldviews and good-versus-evil constructions are easier to market, willingly goes along, setting up Ahmadinejad like he's Sinestro or something. Meanwhile this isn't mentioned.

While all eyes are on Manhattan, precious few are watching what's happening in Washington. On Thursday, Senators Jon Kyl and Joseph Lieberman filed an amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill that would make it official U.S. policy to "combat, contain and roll back" Iran and its surrogates in Iraq. Section 5 calls for the United States to formally designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. If passed, this amendment would open the door even wider for military action against Iran.

Why hasn't this bit of news sparked similar debate?

Because our traditional media are a pack of babies whose buttons are easily pushed by the babies on the right. Who are afraid of somebody saying something. Please.

Chemerinsky Redeemed

Erwin Chemerinsky, the esteemed legal scholar who was unceremoniously dumped as Dean of the new UC Irvine Law School after catcalls from the conservative noise machine, has been rehired by the school.

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Erwin Chemerinsky have reached an agreement that will return the liberal legal scholar to the dean's post at the university's new law school, the university announced this morning.

With the deal, they hope to end the controversy that erupted when Chemerinsky was dropped as the first dean of the Donald Bren School of Law.

Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Chemerinsky is a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreement about midnight Sunday, sources told The Times.

Practically the whole faculty was going to walk out if they didn't set this right, so it's not surprising. Apparently LA County Supe Mike Antonovich and OC Republicans won't get their way on this one.

But I still think the point is valid that if Chemerinsky has to jump through this many hoops to get a UC job, why exactly is John Yoo still employed at Berkeley?