“Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades.” — Victor Davis Hanson.

“The consequence of this moral and cultural relativism is that people are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior. Such moral equivalence rapidly mutates into moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a “victim” group while those at the receiving end of their behavior are blamed simply because they belong to the “oppressive” majority. This is on repeated display over a wide range of domestic issues such as family breakdown, drug abuse and the various demands of the “victim culture,” including the response to examples of Muslim aggression. …There is a tendency to equate and then invert the behavior of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims, so that self-defense is misrepresented as aggression while the original violence is viewed sympathetically as understandable and even justified.” — Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan.

Well said Victor and Melanie! Indeed, whenever the topic turns to Israel and Palestine one finds the masses of conventional “wisdom” become the harbingers of extreme irrationality.

Example number one came from Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who in the wake of activist aggression resulting in 9 dead labeled it “Turkey’s 9-11.” Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Sure, numb skull, it’s just like 9-11, except 3,000 or so less dead and instead of hijacked airplanes flown into buildings it was a lawful attempt to search for terrorist supplies. After all, when it comes to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas have used Red Crescent ambulances to ferry arms and militants and international commercial shipping to deliver weapons. No other country but Israel would be expected to put up with such nonsense. But nonsense is precisely what we get from closet anti-Semites in Turkey.

Throughout Europe the typical cry that Israel acted “disproportionately” continues. It makes one wonder what the heck Europe would consider “proportionate.” This is the same world community that, as Victor Hanson above retorts, said virtually nothing when North Korea sunk a South Korean ship (an act of war) a few weeks ago, or when Russia put its boot on the neck of Grozny, or nowhere near “the scale of violence, given what we see hourly in Pakistan, Darfur, and the Congo.”

How’s this for proportionate:

Israel (foolishly) withdrew from Gaza years ago, ceding control to Hamas, which proceeded to launch thousands of rockets into Israel. Israel then enacted this blockade for self defense, simultaneously pitying the residents of Gaza from their elected terrorist leaders by delivering food and supplies, “including [from just January to March alone] 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food” to the very Palestinians trying to kill them and destroy their state.

As columnist Mona Charen reminded, Israel (1) asked the flotilla organizers to deliver to a predetermined port first for inspection, but were refused, (2) ignored Israeli Navy requests to change course, (3) and boarded with only the minimally-defensive weaponry, including a single pistol for each soldier, the primary weapon being a paintball gun. In return (4) the “activists,” which included members of a group with known ties to Hamas and other global jihad terrorist groups, and who seemed fully prepared and preordained for violence and martyrdom, complete with chanted references to a massacre of Jews in Arabia by Muhammad, (5) began to beat the Israelis with metal rods, knifes, tossed stun grenades, and possibly fired guns.

Were it not obvious enough that the intentions had nothing to do with “relief” for Palestinians, today (6) refused the supplies Israel detained from the blockade, our NATO “ally” Turkey appears to have officially sealed a “strategic alliance between Turkey, Iran, and Syria,” notably detailed by Seth Cropsey. There’s a reason why Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his parliament that “today is a turning point in history. Nothing will ever be the same again.” (7) This wasn’t a reaction by Turkey to Israel, it was a proactive decision. Their plan was to provoke a response, and that’s exactly what they got.

One day, however, Turkey might wish it hadn’t made a deal with the devil in Iran.

Let’s play “Compare & Contrast.”

[Washington Times] Iran is poised to begin producing nuclear weapons after its uranium program expansion in 2009, even though it has had problems with thousands of its centrifuges, according to a newly released CIA report.

“Iran continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so,” the annual report to Congress states. … The CIA report is the latest official study expressing concern over Iran’s continuing nuclear activities. The International Atomic Energy Agency on March 3 issued a report warning that continuing nuclear activities in violation of U.N. resolutions raise “concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Remember just a few years ago, right before the election cycle of 2008 had begun, right when the world was oh so concerned that the wicked Neocons and their ‘Israeli puppeteers’ were promoting a policy of aggression against poor misunderstood Iran?

Remember the Bush-era CIA? Remember their 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran? Danger? What danger? Nukes? Ah, Iran stopped trying to go nuclear yeaaars ago! Remember that? Google does:

NIE Report: Iran Halted Nuclear Weapons Program Years Ago
December 03, 2007 11:51 AM

ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, Jonathan Karl, Luis Martinez, Kirit Radia and Jennifer Duck Report: In a stunning reversal of Bush administration conventional wisdom, a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program over four years ago.

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” reads a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate key findings.

Yes, nothing to see here. Move along, move along. It’s just Dick Cheney and the Neocons lying again. We’re not naive. Iran is responding to international pressure. Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid said so, so it MUST be true, right? What say you now, Harry Reid? This new report seems to “directly challenge some of your administration’s naive rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.”

New York Times
U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy. … The estimate does not say when American intelligence agencies learned that the weapons program had been halted, but a statement issued by Donald Kerr, the principal director of national intelligence, said the document was being made public “since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed.”

Rather than painting Iran as a rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with the bomb, the estimate states Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.” The administration called new attention to the threat posed by Iran earlier this year when President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

Yet at the same time officials were airing these dire warnings about the Iranian threat, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency were secretly concluding that Iran’s nuclear weapons work halted years ago and that international pressure on the Islamic regime in Tehran was working.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, portrayed the assessment as “directly challenging some of this administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.” He said he hoped the administration “appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy,” and called for a “a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran.”

What’s changed? Nothing, except a blatantly politically-motivated intelligence agency wished to discredit the GOP prior to the 2008 election cycle. And how’d that work out for them? Well, ask the Democrats.

However, the times are a changing, because it would seem that those Democrats have also done some things to tick off the CIA, for now we have this new “No, no, Iran is dangerous after all!” report just days after the Obama Administration came down hard on Israel for their settlements and stance toward Iran.

Please pass President Obama a handkerchief so he may wipe all that egg off his face.

But which CIA do we believe? The one that says Iran is dangerous now? The one that said Iran wasn’t dangerous in 2007? Or the one that said Iran was dangerous in 2003?

And what’s the point of the NIE if they perpetually revise their assessments in 180-degree hard turns every few years? And what’s the point of an intelligence agency that’s so politically motivated?

For that matter, what’s the point of a free press that habitually takes sides? Please pass them a handkerchief as well. Or a chisel. That egg has hardened.

TEHRAN – Iran’s supreme leader, spurning what he described as several personal overtures from President Obama, warned Tuesday that negotiating with the United States would be “naive and perverted” and that Iranian politicians should not be “deceived” into starting such talks.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 70, said Obama has approached him several times through oral and written messages. It was the second time that Khamenei, who wields ultimate political and religious authority in Iran, has referred to the president’s outreach.

The White House has not confirmed sending letters to the Iranian supreme leader but has acknowledged a willingness to talk to Tehran and said it has sought to communicate with Iranian leaders in a variety of ways.

I guess the Ayatollah doesn’t believe in “reset buttons.” And so once again we find the liberal’s notion of engagement lacking once it hits the hard shell of reality.

This week also marked the 30th anniversary of the U.S. hostage crisis in Iran, in which another equally inept American President displayed a lack of courage in the face of harsh adversity. Then again, at least Jimmy Carter tried once to stand up to the mullahs (before giving up after one bad day in the desert). Obama, on the other hand, simply responds with meaningless jargon, which no Iranian hardliner will ever respect, much less fear.

And just how impotent does Obama look in their eyes? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reportedly asked Iran to “explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced nuclear warhead design.” That’s pure contempt for every olive branch Obama has offered.

Indeed, anti-Ayatollah protesters in Iran are likewise fed up with the Obama administration’s refusal to promote democracy and angered by what they see as his betrayal of their Summer uprising. Here’s ABC News’ Jake Tapper:

“Obama, Obama, you are either with them or with us,” anti-government protestors chanted in Farsi in an amateur video.

Such an appeal, directed specifically at President Obama, is new among Iran’s anti-government protestors.

The Associated Press called the appeal startling.

Perhaps it’s startling for your average pro-Obama media lapdog, but for anyone who paid attention to the headlines in Iran over the past few months, it’s not.

Michael Goldfarb worded it best, “It’s like Battered Wives Syndrome, except President Obama is the bride with the black eye and Ayatollah Khameini is the abusive husband.”

Tammy Wynette, anyone?

In just the past 72 or so hours President Barack Obama has both become the first president to ever refuse to meet the Dalai Lama, and denied funding to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. Both are policies based in appeasement, and the president’s track record on that is quite disturbing.

Beyond the historic snub, it’s naive to think that China will bend to Obama’s will just because he won’t take the moral high ground on Tibet. Denying funding to an Iranian human rights group on the basis that Iran might become more transparent and cooperate on nuclear proliferation isn’t just naive, but dangerously incompetent. (It’s insulting too, considering just days ago the U.S. government extended $400,000 to a human rights group run by Saif and Aisha Qaddafi, son and daughter of Mouamar Qaddafi, — despite bipartisan disapproval on Capital Hill — just after Libya gave a heroes welcome to the Lockerbie bomber.)

Also recently, the Obama administration threw its full support behind deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, despite the fact that a Law Library of Congress’s Directorate of Legal Research review found the removal legal under the Honduran constitution, and, reminds columnist Jonah Goldberg, “even though Zelaya was never supposed to be on the ballot in the first place and the only way he could be on it would be through unconstitutional election fraud.” (Note, Zelaya’s actual deportation was not).

I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise. Members of the hard Left have a long history of an attitude of liberty for me, but not for thee. Obama’s actions were best summarized by Charles Krauthammer: “When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom.“

In the words of Michael Goldfarb, the Obama Administration officially “certified” the Iranian “election.” Nice.

“He’s the elected leader,” says Obama press secretary Gibbs. Elected? Really? Who elected Ahmadinejad? Does a council of 12 unelected religious clerics with absolute omnipotence over all legislative and judicial ability make an election? Every time the Obama administration attempts to coddle the Iranian theocracy all they do is undercut the will and influence of the Iranians who risk their lives to thwart that illegitimate regime.

Here’s Francis Fukuyama on the political architecture of Iran. Basically, imagine if the Bill of Rights had included an Amendment 10b that stated, “an unelected council of religious clerics lead by a supreme leader may at will define, qualify or overrule all these previous amendments.”

Political scientists categorize the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “electoral authoritarian” regime of a new sort. They put it in the same basket as Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. By this view, Iran is fundamentally an authoritarian regime run by a small circle of clerics and military officials who use elections to legitimate themselves.

Others think of Iran as a medieval theocracy. Its 1979 constitution vests sovereignty not in the people, but in God, and establishes Islam and the Quran as the supreme sources of law.

The Iranian Constitution is a curious hybrid of authoritarian, theocratic and democratic elements. Articles One and Two do vest sovereignty in God, but Article Six mandates popular elections for the presidency and the Majlis, or parliament. Articles 19-42 are a bill of rights, guaranteeing, among other things, freedom of expression, public gatherings and marches, women’s equality, protection of ethnic minorities, due process and private property, as well as some “second generation” social rights like social security and health care.

The truly problematic part of the constitution is Section Eight (Articles 107-112) on the Guardian Council and the “Leader.” All the democratic procedures and rights in the earlier sections of the constitution are qualified by certain powers reserved to a council of senior clerics.

These powers, specified in Article 110, include control over the armed forces, the ability to declare war, and appointment powers over the judiciary, heads of media, army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another article lays out conditions under which the Supreme Leader can be removed by the Guardian Council. But that procedure is hardly democratic or transparent.

Author Mark Bowden (Guests of the Ayatollah; Blackhawk Down) summed it up similarly:

“The term “republic” is double-talk. The elected government is run by a small group of privileged clerics who decide what candidates and what laws are acceptable, who control the military and the secret police, and whatever else they wish, and who stifle dissent, beating up or locking up those they don’t like….

All laws and candidates for any public post must be approved by him [the Ayatollah] and the Guardian Council, a twelve-member body of clerics and judges that he appoints. The elected government of Iran is a kind of toy democracy that serves at his pleasure. It consists of an elected president, currently the populist ultraconservative former mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad, the Majlis, and a judiciary. The mullahs tolerate just enough of a semblance of democracy and freedom to maintain the pretense of a democracy

…. [After Khatami's 1996 election] There was a brief blossoming of free speech and debate, opposition newspapers sprang up, and Iran began to smell the prospect of real freedom. There was heady talk of Iran “evolving” peacefully toward democracy. Khatami encoded the hopes of many in the legislation that would have freed Iran’s lawmakers from the veto power of the Guardians Council.The mullahs stopped that fast. Ayatollah Khamenei vetoed the legislation, which provoked some rioting on college campuses in 2003 and some spontaneous heretical Pro-American displays, but such outbursts were quickly subdued. Early in 2005, the Guardians Council simply crossed all reform candidates off the ballot

…. Writers and artists must be licensed to work for any of the major news outlets, or for their work to be published or shown. A jury representing the ministries of information and culture weighs applicants and decides which pass political and religious muster

…. In the current crackdown more than a hundred reform newspapers and magazines have been banned. Many formerly tolerated journalists are out of work. To attempt any unlicensed work means risking being hauled in to chat with a polished but unyielding middle-management Information Ministry zealot with the power to fire, arrest, torture, and even execute enemies of the state, although in the Land of the Bordbari [Iran], such measures are no longer frequently required. Some writers are silenced by threats to keep their children from acceptance at universities, a critical path to future success.Without a free press it is hard to know how most people feel about progress toward the umma [community of Muslims].”

Here’s Bret Stephens:

In other words, Mr. Obama seems to have thought that a considerable part of America’s Iran problem was simply an America problem, to be addressed by various forms of conciliation: Mr. Obama’s New Year’s greetings to “the Islamic Republic of Iran”; the disavowal of regime change as a U.S. objective; the offer of direct talks without preconditions; withdrawal from Iraq; the insistence, following the election, that the U.S. would neither presume to judge the outcome nor otherwise “meddle” in an internal Iranian affair.

What did all this achieve? Iran’s nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of “meddling.”

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be “realism”?

A more common sense form of realism would reach different conclusions. One is that the “bloviations” of Ahmadinejad are not just politically motivated, but are also expressions of contempt for Mr. Obama. That contempt springs from a keen nose for weakness, honed by the habits of dictatorship and based on an estimate — so far unrefuted — of Mr. Obama’s mettle.

Second, as long as Tehran can murder its own people, scoff at a U.S. president and flout U.N. resolutions without consequence, it will continue to do so.

Third is that the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regime isn’t its “isolation.” (What kind of isolation is it when Ahmadinejad’s “election” was instantly ratified by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev?) Nor is it its vulnerability to a gasoline embargo, vulnerable though it is. Its real weakness is its own domestic unpopularity, which has at last found expression in a massive opposition movement.

The fourth is that Iran’s nuclear programs have now reached the stage where they can only be stopped through military strikes — probably Israeli — or an internal political decision to abandon them. The prospect of another Mideast war can’t exactly please the administration. So how about trying to achieve the same result by leveraging point No. 3?

Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama’s solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama’s spine. If that means “democracy promotion” and tough talk about “regime change,” well, it wouldn’t be the first time this president has made his predecessor’s policy his own.

There are some interesting comparisons between Iran’s latest revolutionary movement and Poland’s Solidarity movement in the 1980s. Western assistance came both vocally and covert — via American companies providing Western intelligence agencies with printing presses and other equipment and utilities to assist the organization of the Polish protesters. The movement was already there and in full swing, the West just provided a little extra support where it counted.

Read the comparison in the WSJ today. Here’s the conclusion — it’s not too late for Obama and the West.

All of which means that there are opportunities for the Obama Administration to exploit, provided it envisions a democratic and peaceful Iran as a strategic American aim. That doesn’t mean military confrontation with the mullahs. But it does require taking every opportunity to apply consistent pressure on Iran while exploiting its internal tensions and contradictions.

“I often wondered why Ronald Reagan did this, taking the risks he did, in supporting us at Solidarity,” Mr. Walesa wrote in these pages after Reagan died in 2004. “Let’s remember that it was a time of recession in the U.S. and a time when the American public was more interested in their own domestic affairs. It took a leader with a vision to convince them that there are greater things worth fighting for.”

The circumstances aren’t so different. With similar vision and leadership, the endgame could be the same.

The following is from a Washington Post article titled, “Arab Activists Watch Iran And Wonder: ‘Why Not Us?’”

Across the Arab world, Iran’s massive opposition protests have triggered a wave of soul-searching and conflicting emotions. Many question why their own reform movements are unable to rally people to rise up against unpopular authoritarian regimes. In Egypt, the cradle of what was once the Arab world’s most ambitious push for democracy, Iran’s protests have served as a reminder of how much the notion has unraveled under President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 30 years.

“I am extremely jealous,” said Nayra El Sheikh, 28, a blogger and Sharkawy’s wife. “I can’t help but think: Why not us? What do they have that we don’t have? Do they have more guts?”

The frustration comes against a backdrop of deep-rooted skepticism among pro-democracy activists that U.S. policies under President Obama will help transform the region, despite his vow to engage the Muslim world in a highly publicized speech here last month. Some view Obama’s response to Iran’s protests, muted until Tuesday, as a harbinger of U.S. attitudes toward their own efforts to reform their political systems. The Egyptian government, they note, is a key American ally, and U.S. pressure on Egypt for reforms began subsiding in the last years of the Bush administration.

“When Obama does not take a stance, the very next day these oppressive regimes will regard this as a signal. This is a test for his government,” said Ayman Nour, a noted Egyptian opposition politician who was recently released from jail. “If they can turn a blind eye to their enemy, they can turn a blind eye to any action here in Egypt.”

The Obama administration has been worried all this time about interjecting too much into the Iranian election, but as Michael Goldfarb has noted, with an Iranian population mostly under the age of 30, tired of their oppressive theocracy, and looking next door to several successful and fair elections in post-Hussein Iraq, it’s far more credible that we the West should be worried about not interjecting ourselves in Iran’s affairs enough.

Seriously, a grander diversion from the Iranian quasi-revolution than Michael Jackson’s death couldn’t have been masterminded by a decade worth of planning by Hezbollah.