Fighting the Taliban by Lowering Taxes
Matthew Yglesias suggests that one thing that could aid the fight in Afghanistan would be to lower tariffs against Afghan goods and motivate our allies to do the same.If I’m reading these slides right then textile products made in Afghanistan are not eligible for duty-free sale in the United States. Changing that rule might encourage some factory-building in Afghanistan. Similarly ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 5, 2009 09:23
Iran Banned Chanting “Allahu Akbar”
On the Rachel Maddow show last night, NBC Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reporterd that the government in Iran has actually banned the chanting of the phrase "Allahu Akbar!"The cries that they have been calling out at night, a lot of people have heard them. They have been calling out "Allahu Akbar." Sometimes, they were calling out, "I am Neda," as ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 24, 2009 14:24
Obama Must Take Unspecified Action Now!
In my opinion, Barack Obama has already said too much about the Iranian situation, though at least he had the wisdom to emphasize that the United States "is not interfering in Iran’s affairs." That's to the good. What I do not get, though, is exactly what some of his critics on the right are clamoring for apart from a strongly ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 13:12
Obama Condemns Iran Violence
In a White House press conference still underway, President Obama condemned the actions of Iran's government in his strongest language to date: President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared the United States and the entire world "appalled and outraged" by Iran's violent efforts to crush dissent, a clear toughening of his rhetoric as Republican critics at home pound him for being too ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 13:02
Iranian Regime Forbids Memorials for Victims
I've been reading on several different sites the news that the Iranian regime is actively forbidding memorial services and any signs of mourning for those people who are the victims--to the point where they have actually had victims buried in secret in the hopes that their families won't find out. I think that this, more than anything else, might ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 12:53
Barnett: Iran Mullah Overthrow by 2010
Thomas Barnett predicts that, "Iran will experience an overthrow of the mullahs' rule by 2010." A slightly bold prediction, you say, but not exactly a hard one to make given ongoing events? Does he get extra points for having written the above in the summer of 2003 and publishing it on page 380 of Pentagon's New Map? Considering I'd be leery of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 11:32
The Lunacy of Iranian Sanctions
Daniel Larison makes an excellent point against those people who are now calling for increased sanctions against Iran:This is madness. Have the current sanctions brought the regime anywhere close to its knees after decades? There is not a single example where economic sanctions actually compelled a non-democratic regime to change course on an internal political matter. We have no reason ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 23, 2009 00:04
‘Watching the Fall of Islamic Theocracy’
The protests in Iran have entered a third week and the state media acknowledges that the death toll has reached 19 and that hundreds have been injured. Fareed Zakaria, a man not noted for idle leaps, proclaims, "we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy." In an interview with CNN, he explains: No, I don't mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 21, 2009 08:24
Iran Heats Up, Obama Goes for Ice Cream
On his own blog and at Hot Air, Patrick "Patterico" Frey has the surreal juxtaposition of purported Iranians Twittering the horrors of protesting an evil regime intermixed with CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller's account of President Obama taking his girls out for ice cream. As Josh Trevino tweets, "Obama going for ice cream has all the symbolism of [Cowboys quarterback ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 21, 2009 07:29
No Preconditions
Andrew Sullivan writes that "No Recognition Of Ahmadinejad" must be considered "the first and absolute requirement of all Western governments." In my New Atlanticist post "Negotiating with Iran without Preconditions," I recall this famous exchange from the July 24, 2007 CNN/YouTube debate: More commentary and analysis at the link.Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 17, 2009 12:17
We’re All Iranians Now!
Amidst the blogospheric solidarity for the Iranian protestors, it's worth pointing to news that has been overshadowed by those events: The UN and OSCE monitors are leaving Georgia. Despite declarations that "we're all Georgians now," the fact of the matter has been from the beginning that neither the United States nor Western Europe had any appetite to go toe-to-toe with the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 16:12
Information Deficit Disorder
Via Twitter, James Poulos passes along an interesting piece by Conor Friedersdorf titled "Iran, Twitter, and The American Information Elite." Basically, he noticed over the weekend that all of his blogger/journalist friends were intensely aware of what was happening in Iran whereas other well educated people he encountered hadn't the slightest clue. I can't help noticing that information elites are able ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 09:38
Revolution is Not a Spectator Sport
Like James Poulos, "I like the Iranian reformers more than I like the mass politics of solidarity by symbolism." As such, I'm sympathetic to John Cole in thinking that the rabid coverage of the Iranian election controversy by enthusiastic American bloggers who know next to nothing about Iran is overblown. (I include myself in the decided non-expert on matters Persian category.) ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 16, 2009 09:07
Iran Elections: What Happened? What Now?
Over at New Atlanticist, I've published my thoughts on this weekend's Iranian election mess in two separate posts: Iran's Elections: What We Know (And What We Don't) and Iran's Elections: What Now? The short answers: "Not a whole hell of a lot" and "The same thing we do every day, Pinky." I'm reasonably sure that the elections were stolen. Indeed, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 15, 2009 15:14
Iranian Interior Ministry Leaks On Election Outcome?
The Guardian is reporting that, according to unnamed sources in Iran's Interior Ministry, Friday's election results were the result of a computer program asked to elicit a "plausible result" and were prepared prior to the election.The figures have been accompanied by claims from unnamed interior ministry sources that fake statistics were fed into a software program and then distributed to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 15, 2009 11:31
