Last week, Ali Gharib made the important point that what’s happening in Iran is thus far not a rejection of the Islamic republic, but a struggle over its founding principles. Reviewing Moussavi’s formal statement Saturday, Gary Sick described it as diagnosis of “a revolution gone wrong,” writing that Moussavi has “issued a manifesto for a new vision of the Islamic republic.”

In an especially good post, Spencer Ackerman flagged a key passage from Moussavi’s statement:

If the large volume of cheating and vote rigging, which has set fire to the hays of people’s anger, is expressed as the evidence of fairness, the republican nature of the state will be killed and in practice, the ideology that Islam and Republicanism are incompatible will be proven.

This outcome will make two groups happy: One, those who since the beginning of revolution stood against Imam and called the Islamic state a dictatorship of the elite who want to take people to heaven by force; and the other, those who in defending the human rights, consider religion and Islam against republicanism.

As Spencer notes, that last bit is a pretty clear rebuke to those Western critics who, in criticizing the brutality of the Iranian regime, have tried to present Islam and democracy as irreconcilable.

Speaking of which, conservative scholar-activist Martin Kramer, in a comically mendacious (and, as usual, Rashid Khalidi-obsessed) dispatch, tries to argue that the “events in Iran have left Obama’s simplistic mental map of the Middle East, first learned from a few Palestinian activists and an old Hyde Park rabbi, in shreds.”

But, in fact, what is in shreds is the representation of Islamism — peddled for years by Kramer, Daniel Pipes, and ideologically affiliated think tanks and publications — as wholly and irretrievably hostile to modernity, to human rights, and to democracy. Having spent years vilifying the Islamist discourse of struggle and sacrifice as deployed by Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, these pundits have now been pantsed by the Iranian demonstrators deploying the very same discourse on behalf of freedom and reform. Moussavi has declared himself “ready for martyrdom” — will conservatives now condemn his “death cult“?

The point here is not to call out those whose skewed analysis of the Middle East strongly informed America’s disastrous and costly attempt to implant democracy there by force. Okay, that’s part of the point. But the larger part is to note how significant it is that the Iranian clerical-dictatorial regime is being challenged from within Islam, and that a very credible scholarly-religious critique that has long been suppressed by the regime now seems to have found a vehicle in Moussavi and the movement around him.

Even in the best outcome, I think it’s likely that the Iranian government will continue to be, in key respects, Islamist-controlled (matching the Islamist-controlled government in neighboring Iraq.) But it’s important to understand that this, much more so than any Western-imported concept of “secularism,” has the potential to really spur the already vigorous debate in the region over the arrangement of a fair and just society, by underscoring Islamism’s contribution to that debate. As with President Obama’s wise caution in regard to the demonstrations, the most productive thing the U.S. do, while continuing to voice support for human rights, is to get out of the way and make space for the debate to occur.

Last week, President Obama reiterated that despite the turmoil in Iran, he still plans on pursuing a “tough” diplomatic approach with the country in order to prevent a “nuclear arms race”:

Now, with respect to the United States and our interactions with Iran, I’ve always believed that as odious as I consider some of President Ahmadinejad’s statements, as deep as the differences that exist between the United States and Iran on a range of core issues, that the use of tough, hard-headed diplomacy — diplomacy with no illusions about Iran and the nature of the differences between our two countries — is critical when it comes to pursuing a core set of our national security interests, specifically, making sure that we are not seeing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East triggered by Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon; making sure that Iran is not exporting terrorist activity. Those are core interests not just to the United States but I think to a peaceful world in general.

We will continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us. But even as we do so, I think it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we’ve seen on the television over the last few days.

Today on CNN, Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) agreed with Obama, saying that it is necessary to “sit down” in order to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program:

LUGAR: We would sit down because our objective is to eliminate the nuclear program that is in Iran. [...]

But in direct answer to your question, of course, we really have to get into the nuclear weapons. We have to get in the terrorism of Iran in other areas in the Middle East. Now we have a new opportunity in which we might very well say we want communication with Iran. [...]

This is not imposing our will, but it’s fundamental to our democracy and to the development of democracy and or better governments in Iran at this point.

Watch it:

Lugar has been one of many Republicans who have been coming out and rebutting right-wing criticism on Obama’s approach to the Iranian protests. Last week, he said that becoming “heavily involved” in the Iranian election would be detrimental to U.S. interests.

Lugar also said today that “openness of the press” is important in Iran because “we need to be able to talk to people, hear from people, argue with people.” “We don’t want to have to use Tweeter [sic],” he added.

Transcript: Read more

Matt Corley already commented on a section of this clip, in which Sen. John McCain treated Iran’s Supreme Leader with the same “abject solicitousness” that Charles Krauthammer condemned from the president. But I think the segment is worth seeing in its longer form, as it neatly encapsulates the conservative attempt to use the Iranian protests as an instrument to regain control of the U.S. foreign policy conversation, inconsiderate — indeed, proudly defiant — of the potential negative consequences for the protesters’ cause, or for the protesters themselves.

Watch it:

McCain states that any consideration of the historical context within which an American intervention might be viewed in Iran amounts to “a betrayal of what was declared on the Fourth of July, 1776.” He then launches into a remarkably incoherent mishmash of shopworn Cold War romanticism, half-remembered historical references, and shameless grandstanding, after which Neil Cavuto asks the obvious question:

CAVUTO: All right, so let’s say the commander, supreme leader, ayatollah hears that, Senator, and says yeah that’s all well and good but I’m going through with this, I’m cracking down on these guys, and it could be a very ugly, bloody weekend. What is the United States to do then? What is our posture going to be? How do we move forward? Because this could get very bloody.

MCCAIN: (Pause) Well, you know, and there may be those indications, since the Supreme Leader said they were not gonna tolerate further demonstrations in the street. If they do, we have to judge it by what the situation is as it unfolds, and by the way, the French president, the German chancellor, and the British prime minister, far more strong in their words in support of these protesters than the President of the United States. Interesting turnaround.

…After all the wind, a politician’s dodge. The potential consequences to Iranian demonstrators? Not McCain’s problem.

Full transcript below. Read more

San Francisco’s alternative news source, Beyond Chron, pointed out yesterday that San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken was honored by the vehemently anti-immigrant group, Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), when they awarded him with their “Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration” last week.

According to Beyond Chron, Van Derbeken won the same award that was bestowed upon Lou Dobbs for “attacking San Francisco’s two-decade-old Sanctuary Ordinance and perpetuated harmful stereotypes against immigrant children.” Beyond Chron claims that Van Derbeken is partly responsible for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “hasty” decision to issue a new policy “that puts innocent children in danger and undermines the fundamental right to due process.”

During his Q&A that CIS conveniently edited out of their video of the event, Van Derbeken admitted that he has often been accused of discrimination and biased reporting:

Q: Have you been accused of being racist or –

MR. VAN DERBEKEN: Yes.

Q: – intolerant or anti-immigrant or –

MR. VAN DERBEKEN: Yes, yes, yes. (Laughter.) Hysterical, unfair, biased, awful, evil, anti-Christ, yeah. (Laughter.)

At another point, Van Derbeken was asked who the “voices of sanity” were on the subject of immigration. To which he replied:

MR. VAN DERBEKEN : Well, they’re viewed as lunatics. I mean, the people who are offended by this are thought of as being right-wing lunatics, in the context of this sort of closed loop of San Francisco politics.

It turns out Van Derbeken and CIS share something in common. This past week, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund released a new report that called out CIS, along with several other anti-immigration groups, for having “inflamed the immigration debate by invoking the dehumanizing, racist stereotypes and bigotry of hate groups.” The report tied their hateful rhetoric to an overwhelming rise in hate crimes directed at Latinos and individuals “perceived” as immigrants.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

President Obama’s measured response to Iran’s pro-democracy demonstrations has driven conservatives crazy. With the notable exceptions of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, many conservatives are rending their garments and gnashing their teeth at the president’s cautious response. Robert Kagan went so far as to accuse President Obama of “siding with the Iranian regime”; House Republicans compared themselves to Iranian protestors; and a number of conservatives have spoken as if Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric alone –- and not Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” or the human rights activism of Eastern European dissidents –- was responsible for ending communist rule in Eastern Europe.

All of this overheated grandstanding over to the Iranian protests has exposed a deeply silly strain of contemporary conservativism. Stunts like comparing their vacuous Twittering to the use of technology to organize demonstrations by Iranian protesters or calling President Obama a “cream puff” are juvenile to most observers.

But the height of conservative inanity during the protests has been the almost narcissistic focus on American action -– in particular being “steadfast” (in what?) and assuming that Iranian protesters “await just a word that America is on their side.” Because obviously people can’t act unless they know where the United States stands in bright, screaming neon letters. This particular silliness is tied in with the previously mentioned misreading of the end of the Cold War, in which conservatives believe that Reagan’s speechifying caused the end of communism.

What the particular silliness that is the conservative response to the Iranian protests reveals is the more fundamental moral and intellectual bankruptcy of conservative foreign policy thinking. There is apparently little more to it than sloganeering, where somehow the utterance of words by the United States magically transforms their sentiments into action. Rather than thinking through what the United States’ interests, ideals, and objectives are and how best to obtain them, conservatives have decided that it’s enough to simply shout what we want at the top of our lungs and demand the world bend to our wishes. It’s as though conservative foreign policy thinking amounts to nothing more than the applied power of positive thinking. Read more

Last month in the Washington Examiner, former House speaker Newt Gingrich denounced President Obama’s supposed plot to “release trained terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay into American suburbs.” The men he was so afraid of are innocent Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, who have since been released in Bermuda after spending seven years locked up in Guantanamo. According to 2008 State Department Human Rights report, these men faced “severe cultural and religious repression” at the hands of the Chinese government. In 2001, they stayed in a Uighur camp in Afghanistan and “were later turned in to the authorities by Pakistani villagers in return for an American bounty,” even though were never a security threat.

However, in his column, Gingrich said they posed a “paramount threat and “have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups.” In an interview with Fox News, Gingrich added that the United States should just send them back to China.

One of Gingrich’s Republican colleagues is now calling out his ignorance. At a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Human Rights on Tuesday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said that Gingrich belongs in the “hall of shame” for fear-mongering about the Uighurs. He also said that the Bush administration unjustly detained these men at the bidding of the Chinese government in a “pathetic” attempt to gain the country’s support for the Iraq war:

The Bush administration…held Uighurs in Guantanamo as terrorists, and they did this, I believe, to appease the Chinese government in a pathetic attempt to gain its support at the beginning of the war against Iraq, and also to ensure China’s continued purchase of U.S. treasuries. Many, if not all, the negative allegations against the Uighurs, can be traced by to Communist Chinese intelligence, whose purpose is to snuff out a legitimate independence movement that challenges the Communist party bosses in Beijing. [...]

In the hall of shame, of course, is our former speaker, Newt Gingrich. His positioning on this should be of no surprise — and is of no surprise — to those of who, during Newt’s leadership, were dismayed by his active support for Clinton-era trade policies with Communist China.

Watch it:

Through their translator, the Uighurs have expressed dismay at Gingrich’s ignorant remarks. “How could he speak in such major media with nothing based in fact?” related the translator. As many human rights experts noted, the Uighurs would likely have been tortured if returned to China, as Gingrich had hoped.

Transcript: Read more

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been having a tough time with the current situation in Iran. He has been criticizing President Obama’s “hands off” approach and encouraging him to get more involved (despite expert opinion that says otherwise). But former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — a McCain supporter whom McCain recently called “the smartest man in the world” — said this week that he thinks Obama “has handled this well.”

Last night on Fox News, McCain and Sean Hannity joined in with the right wing’s Reagan-era hysteria, with Hannity arguing that Obama should offer “some moral support the way that Ronald Reagan offered moral support” to anti-communists. But in this instance, McCain got carried away, crediting Reagan for something that happened well before he became president:

McCAIN: You and I are both students of history and we’ve seen this movie before. When Ronald Reagan stood up for the workers in Gdansk in Poland, when he stood up for the people of Czechoslovakia, in Prague Spring, and America did. And some good Democrats did, too.

Watch it:

Perhaps McCain needs a new history lesson. The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia when Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek allowed greater speech and assembly freedoms when he came to power… in January 1968. Ronald Reagan had just completed his first year as California’s governor at that time. Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops invaded eight months later to end the reform movement.

Since the uprising in Iran over its disputed elections, conservatives of all stripes have been quick to invoke their hero Ronald Reagan as a guidepost from which to criticize Obama’s response (as they often do with just about any issue). But as Matt Duss noted, referring to McCain, “Indeed, we’ve all seen this movie before”:

It’s the one where conservatives deploy a potted history of the Cold War — in which Reagan spoke and the walls came tumbling down — to cast international politics as a zero-sum contest between good and evil, and to cow progressives into a more aggressive rhetorical posture toward America’s adversary of the moment. It is usually hidden under the guise of “solidarity with captive peoples” and absent any genuine consideration of the practical effects on the peoples concerned.

If McCain and company are going to continue to rely on Reagan for guidance, they should at least try to maintain the correct historical time-line.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio who is already facing a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into his controversial immigration enforcement tactics “scoffs at the possibility that a federal civil rights and racial profiling investigation into his immigration raids and crime sweeps could be expanded into a broader look at his office’s use of power and finances,” according to the Phoenix Business Journal.

“I have nothing to hide. Let them look…They are just coming down here hoping to find something,” said Arpaio. However, it appears that federal officials might find more than Arpaio is willing to publicly admit. Maricopa County Supervisors already voted against accepting $1.4 million in state funding for Arpaio’s immigration enforcement. A Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles published in the East Valley Tribune chronicled the high cost associated with Arpaio’s immigration enforcement activities. According to the Tribune, the MCSO budget (excluding jails) nearly doubled from $37 million to $72.5 million since 2001. As of 2008, Arpaio’s office created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months. Meanwhile, crime rates are up and even the conservative Goldwater Institute has asked the state attorney general and Maricopa County attorney to investigate Arpaio’s office’s alleged practice of declaring unsolved crimes solved.

Arpaio took on the DOJ earlier this month when he accused officials of “not playing fair.” Arpaio has declared he won’t back down:

ARPAIO: Every law enforcement agency the DOJ has investigated in the past has bowed down or rolled over to the federal government. This agency and this Sheriff will not. Washington should not tell an elected Sheriff how to conduct his law enforcement responsibilities.

Arpaio will meet with Rev. Al Sharpton, who accused Arpaio of racial-profiling and called for his resignation, in a debate today. Last week, Arpaio forced his inmates to cook 5,000 pounds of beef liver for his birthday dinner.

In the midst of what is essentially a less skillful/more mendacious rewrite of Robert Kagan’s column from Tuesday, Charles Krauthammer daydreams about the Iranian demonstrations turning into “a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.”

Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited. [...]

[W]ith Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception — Iraq and Lebanon — becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

First, a note of caution: I myself am also very interested in what a green victory could portend for political reform in region, but if the last years have taught us anything, it’s that when conservatives — particularly Charles Krauthammer — start to expound theories of Middle East transformation like this, people in the Middle East should start stocking up on water, food, and gasoline for their generators.

It’s clear from Krauthammer’s conflation of the Iranian regime with “Islamism” more broadly that’s he’s ignorant, or at least dismissive, of the diversity of Islamist thought, and of the role that Islamist thinkers and movements have and will continue to play in Middle East politics. It’s also clear from Krauthammer’s hailing of Iraq’s “young democracy” that he’s unaware that the main parties in power in Iraq — both Sunni and Shia — are themselves Islamist parties. (In regard to the lazy Communism=Islamism equation, I dealt with conservative attempts to shoehorn Iran into a tired Cold War narrative in The American Prospect yesterday.)

But here’s where I think Krauthammer really gives away the game:

The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

You’ll have noticed that no one in the street in Iran is calling for a return to the “moderate, pre-Khomeini” regime. That’s because the Shah’s regime in pre-Khomeini Iran was an oppressive, abusive authoritarian one, which regularly imprisoned, tortured, and executed its political opponents. It got so bad that, in 1979, they had this whole revolution over it. The Shah’s regime was “moderate” mainly in the sense that it was more amenable to U.S. hegemony in the region. Which, I guess, as far as Charles Krauthammer is concerned, is the point.

The fact that Krauthammer could claim the Shah’s regime as “moderate” while at the same time affecting solidarity with Iran’s “people in the street yearning to breathe free” bespeaks a real contempt for the principles he claims to espouse. Even as he excoriates the president (who, it bears repeating, continues to be praised by Iranian human rights activists for his prudence) for being “afraid to take sides,” Krauthammer himself has taken a side: The side of pure, naked American interest and power, brutally defined and unapologetically exercised. That’s a fair position to take, I suppose, but I just wish he would be honest about it, and stop disrespecting those risking their lives in Iran’s streets by using them as political props.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a non-binding resolution yesterday “condemning the crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Iran.” Roll Call reports that it was “cleared for a Friday floor vote.” Pence, in recent days, has been all over cable news channels talking up his resolution, repeatedly insisting that it was motivated out a sense of loyalty to the “American cause of freedom.”

While the text of his resolution appears to offer unobjectionable support for Iranian freedoms, Pence is using bipartisan support of the resolution to criticize the Obama administration’s response to Iran.

On Fox News this morning, Pence repeated the pitch he’s made again and again on cable news in recent days: “We’ve yet to hear the President express the unqualified support of the American people for the people who are bravely going to the streets in Iran.” But despite his very public campaign for Obama to make such a statement, Pence admitted that he hadn’t actually talked to the President about how to best support the people of Iran:

PENCE: I haven’t talked to the President about it this week, but I do want to say that I think it’s a false choice to say that you can be either about engagement and or speak the ideals of the American people and our historic commitment to freedom. I think you can do both.

Later, Pence cited former President Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate as reason for Obama to combine tough pro-democracy talk with engagement. Watch it:

Despite Pence’s criticisms, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger endorsed Obama’s response. “I think the president has handled this well,” he said. Similarly, Iranian human rights activist and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi called Obama’s comments on Iran “sufficient” and said “what happens in Iran regards the people themselves, and it is up to them to make their voices heard.” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) took a similar view, saying, “For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy and to use us, really, to retain their power.”

Pence also may want to consider how the demonstrators feel about the U.S. inserting itself into their struggle. Former Iran correspondent for Time magazine Azadeh Moaveni reported that there is “a resounding belief that this time the United States should keep out.” As for Pence’s criticism that the U.S. posture toward Iran should include Reagan-style pro-democracy rhetoric, Obama already has that covered. In his speech in Cairo earlier this month aimed, in part, at Iran, Obama declared:

America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. These are not just American ideas; they are human rights. And that is why we will support them everywhere.

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Two years after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) swept up and detained thousands of workers from six meatpacking plants across the country during one of the nation’s largest immigration raids, a new report released by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) today details how ICE officials terrorized UFCW members under the “standard operating procedures” of the Bush administration.

On December 12, 2006, ICE used 133 warrants to arrest 1,297 workers–the vast majority U.S. citizens. One U.S. citizen spent $90 on a cab ride back home once ICE released her after realizing they had made the “mistake” of detaining her for 12 hours in a location 300 miles away from her workplace.

The UFCW accuses ICE of having engaged in racial profiling, as witnesses testified that minorities were “singled out,” saying “…race was, almost without question, the sole criteria for harsher interrogations and treatment to which certain workers were subjected…” A UFCW member is quoted in the report as saying:

“It’s so sad and it hurts a lot to be targeted because we are Mexican…I thought maybe I should hang around a lot of white people so they wouldn’t think I was illegal.“

The UFCW also claims that ICE systematically ignored due process laws. According to the UFCW, workers detained during the Swift raid were denied legal counsel while they were being held at an Iowa military base. The UFCW claims that, in some cases, ICE even gave false information to lawyers, telling them that they would soon be granted access to their clients while the detainees were actually being transferred to out-of-state facilities.

At the time, many believed the Bush administration’s harsh immigration tactics were meant to help make the case for comprehensive immigration reform. Former Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said that the his department’s tactics reflected DHS’ “determination to make a down-payment on credibility with the American people.” However, the Bush-backed immigration bill failed during the summer of 2007 and the large-scale raids continued up until Bush left office.

Bush may be gone, but the aftermath of the raids endures. The UFCW report claims that the previous administration’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics have stirred “hysteria around immigration and immigrants.” Immigrants who fear being turned over to immigration authorities have been reluctant to report abuse or crime to the police. According to the report, Latinos or individuals “perceived” to be of Latin American descent face even more discrimination and racial profiling in their communities. The UFCW also discusses the raid’s cost to taxpayers. It’s estimated that the Bush administration’s immigration raids may have cost ICE $154 billion of taxpayer’s money.

In a press call today, UFCW president Joe Hansen called for “a new chapter in the immigration debate” that “works for America’s workers.”

Our guest blogger is Nina Hachigian, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Chris Bowers took major exception to an article I recently wrote supporting US funding for the IMF. I was motivated to write the article by the neocon rants equating money for the IMF to money down the drain — despite the fact that the IMF was bailing out countries that the US would certainly not let fail, at a fraction of the cost of us trying to do it alone. As I wrote, that is an argument that I don’t consider very serious.

But some progressives in Congress also wanted to tie the IMF funding to specific changes in how the IMF conducts its business, with an eye toward more sensitivity to poor countries and greater transparency. I am very sympathetic to these goals, and this argument IS serious.

I think we should give the new Administration a chance to engage, however. It is sometimes hard to remember, but we are coming off of eight years in which the US disparaged and belittled multilateral organizations and often ignored them. The Administration now, wisely, wants to reengage. From the IMF, the US wants not only to continue to save countries from bankruptcy, but also to become a forum for examining China’s undervalued currency. In pursuing a broader agenda, the Administration can and has pushed for reforms, with some success, and we should give that approach some time to work. It shows more respect for a multilateral process that involves many countries than does categorical US demands. Moreover, if we attach hefty conditions, other countries might too, and that will complicate the whole process greatly.

Second, we are still in the throes of a once-in-a-century economic crisis. The IMF has already relaxed some of its conditions to ensure that it can act quickly and not cause additional social harm. But I fear that some of the new requirements that the members of congress want, like requiring Parliamentary approval for loan packages, could slow the process down too much at this juncture, and, in the end, cause more harm.

Finally, the US has been pushing hard for underdeveloped countries to get more of a say in IMF decisions. That pressure has had resulted in a marginal increase in voice for the underrepresented, with the promise of more to come. The answer to the problem of badly designed loan packages for poor countries is for poor countries themselves to have a greater hand in decision-making.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With foreign journalists effectively being ordered out of Iran, the circle of available public information about what’s going on in the streets of Iran will narrow to videos and emails sent to blogs (like Huffington Post’s live blog, run by Think Progress alum Nico Pitney) and Tweets coming from inside the country. As our information becomes more limited, the debate as to what the Obama administration should do with regard to the pro-democracy protests in Iran is heating up. Conservatives like John McCain and Eric Cantor say the United States should make a noisy show of support for the protesters, believing that by being “steadfast” we can somehow bend the will of the Iranian regime.

President Obama has taken a different tack, stating in a press appearance that he is “deeply troubled” by the post-election violence and affirming “the democratic process -– free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent –- all those are universal values and need to be respected.”

At the same time, the president has made clear that the choice of their country’s leadership is ultimately in the hands of the Iranian people. On Monday, he struck the made “very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be.” Speaking Monday with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, Obama struck the same note, saying the course of the protest movement “is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide.”

While this measured, delicate approach may not satisfy the consciences of some observers, it’s probably the correct approach for the United States to take. On the one hand, it couches the Iranian protesters’ courageous battle on behalf of their votes in terms of universal values of democracy and human rights rather than making it a conflict between the Iranian government and Washington. On the flip side, it also acknowledges the history of U.S. involvement in Iran’s internal politics, and recognizes that this history means full-throated, direct American support for the protests could undermine them by giving the hard-liners an excuse to crack down.

It’s equally important that Iranians make democratic change themselves, without the United States taking or being seen to take credit for such change. Too often during the Bush administration, conservatives exploited positive developments toward more democratic systems in places like Lebanon and Egypt (the so-called “Arab Spring”) to vindicate their own policy preferences. But these developments soon faded as violence in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories grew, and the chaos began to be associated with U.S. promotion of democratic governance. Trumpeting democratic reform as the result of U.S. policy serves more to undermine it than to facilitate its spread.

The moral posturing from the United States that conservatives advocate also undermines the universal potential of democratic ideals and human rights. The example of the Iranian people forcing democratic change on their own, without moral preening coming from the United States, reinforces the universality of democratic ideals and provides an example for aspiring democrats elsewhere in the region. Rather than having to rebut false charges that democracy is an alien, “Western” concept, local reformers can point to the Iranian example that democratic aspirations are universal and indigenous.

By framing American concerns over Iran’s election and the resulting protests in the language of both universal human rights and national self-determination, the Obama administration has thus far managed to thread a very difficult needle without undermining the efforts of pro-democracy protesters. As the situation on the ground in Iran develops, so too should the Obama administration’s response. If pro-democracy opposition leaders call for more vocal American support, they should receive it. If the ruling elite engage in a bloody, Tiananmen-style crack down, it should receive the full measure of repudiation and outrage from the United States and its government.

But until then, President Obama’s caution and framing of the protests in terms of universal democratic values is the right way to go.

Our guest blogger is David Nassar, a Vice-President for Strategy with Blue State Digital. In April, Nassar was part of the U.S. State Department’s New Media Technology Delegation to Iraq

In the last days there has been an explosion of Tweets out of Iran, and a resulting boom in the number of stories covering it. There are now nearly 5000 in a Google News search ranging from the Atlantic, to the Christian Science Monitor to Wired. Everyone is touting Twitter and debating the end of the mainstream media.

Most of the focus has been on the tool, and for sure Twitter is amazing. Twitter makes it so simple to post updates about what is happening around you that anyone can do it. That has generated the volume coming in and as enough voices tell similar stories, patterns have emerged that cannot be denied, which is why everyone from CNN to FoxNews has become more engaged.

Beyond the tool though, lost in that debate is a strong analysis of the motivation behind its use. To the extent it has been covered, people have talked about where CNN failed. However, it is not only that mainstream media has shortcomings, which it does. Rather, it is that Twittter is now able to challenge mainstream media for credible reporting. This is historic. If we are going to understand the potential for what is happening with Twitter in Iran, we need to look closely at this.

First, there is the quality of the content. People watch mainstream media to get information and because that information has credibility. However, if they are more likely to get good content from alternative outlets that is better than the mainstream media, they will gravitate towards it. How do we assess quality? One way is clearly presentation, and CNN beats Twitter there hands down. However, Twitter crushes CNN on authenticity. And, as we have learned over the last few years, authentic voices rule the internet.

Second, there is the human connection. The success of mainstream media is driven by our mutual agreement as viewers that the source is credible. Note Al-Jazeeras failure in the USA as an example. What Twitter and Facebook and the others are doing by connecting people is generating credibility by connecting thousands one at a time, rather than all at once with a click. Those connections are happening at lightening speed. If thousands of people are following posts by an activist in Iran, that lends credibility to the source by our mutual agreement to listen to him/her. This is real alternative media but coming to you with a shared sense of agreement that blurs the line between it and a “mainstream” product.

When you combine good content, with ease of use and the power of human interaction, what you get is the reporting out of Iran on Twitter. It’s a world where those doing the reporting are generating their own credibility in real time and that credibility is then fueling more activism. It’s a brave new world. Like any new world there will be risks and challenges, not the least of which is the potential for this kind of reporting to develop a mob mentality. But that is for another piece. For now, I am watching this and am amazed.

Firedoglake reports that Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant leader of the Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) who was recently charged with the murder of a 9-year-old Hispanic girl and her father, co-hosted the 2007 Washington State Illegal Immigration Summit that reportedly featured presidential candidates Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, and Fred Thompson.

The Reagan Wing, a conservative blog dedicated to picking up Ronald Reagan’s “sword” still features a plug for the summit which it describes as “the pinnacle Conservative event of 2007“:

In addition the event is co-hosted by Minutemen American Defense, a Washington state-wide American citizen defense coalition headed by Shawna Forde, a re-born Rock promoter from the days of the music world-shaking Seattle Rock explosion. Shawna will speak.

Representatives (or the actual candidates) will appear from Presidential campaigns for TOM TANCREDO, DUNCAN HUNTER and FRED THOMPSON.

Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist, who has tried to distance himself from Forde in recent days, also headlined the 2007 event.

The summit, which featured the slogan “The Great Gringo awakens from siesta,” was reportedly attended by “white supremacists, militia types, neo-Nazis, and skinheads.”

Right wing anti-immigration groups are frantically trying to distance themselves from Forde. The anti-immigrant group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), issued a press release this afternoon denying any association with Forde after a video popped up of Shawna Forde speaking as a FAIR activist. The blog Long Island Wins reports that web pages from Gilchrist’s website where he supposedly defends Forde are nothing but broken links in a google cache. VDARE, “the homepage of educated racism” has reportedly also “scrubbed” all of its web pages that once supported Forde. So far, CNN’s Rick Sanchez has been one of the few mainstream journalists to question Forde’s connection to the larger movement against immigration.

SANCHEZ: The nation’s largest minuteman group has distanced itself from Forde we should say. And we’ve learned that within Minuteman circles she is considered a bit of a loose canon. But you do have to wonder: how did Shawna Forde–a supposed fringe element–turn up on PBS as a player in the anti-immigration movement?

Watch it:

Immigration advocates are outraged at the mainstream media’s lack of coverage and are asking their supporters to share the story of the 9-year-old victim’s death. Today, Crooks and Liars posted an emotional recording of the 911 call placed by her mother on the day of the attack.

Yesterday, President Obama explained his relative public silence with regard to the situation in Iran, saying, “It’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the U.S. president meddling in Iranian elections.” Later in the day, on Radio America’s Dateline Washington, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) responded to Obama’s measured statements on Iran by calling him a “cream puff” and predicting that under Obama’s leadership “things” will get “very bad, very quickly”:

DATELINE: What is the best way to approach this? … President Obama though says that we don’t want to take sides too publicly because then the ruling regime there could use us as the straw man to beat back this public uprising. How do you read this?

ROHRABACHER: Well I think that Mr. Obama, if he continues to have these types of attitudes, we’re going to see things get very bad, very quickly. Already the North Koreans have challenged him and realized that he’s a cream puff, if that is what he is indeed going to be as a President.… [N]ow if the Mullahs in Iran are permitted to just roll over opposition something like Tienanmen square, we will have missed a great opportunity.

Later in the interview, Rohrabacher said that he had distributed a video to the people of Iran that declared “we’re with them, be courageous, don’t let this moment go by” and that Ronald Reagan “always knew that — at the very least — we should be vocally supportive of all those people who are oppressed.” Listen here:

Rohrabacher’s view of Obama’s actions on Iran is not shared by some of his Republican colleagues in Congress or even some conservative commentators. Indeed, as Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) said on CBS’s Early Show yesterday, “I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.” Likewise, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) told Politico that Obama should “absolutely not” be more forceful on Iran. Pat Buchanan wrote on the conservative TownHall.com that “[t]he Obama policy of extending an open hand to Iran is working and ought not be abandoned because of the grim events in Tehran.”

But perhaps the most compelling endorsement of the Obama administration’s reaction to the election crisis in Iran came from Morehead Kennedy, who was held hostage for 444 days by Iranian revolutions while serving as acting head of the U.S. Embassy’s economic section in Tehran in 1979. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Kennedy “praised Joe Biden’s reaction to the protesters Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, in which the vice president cast doubt on the election results but shied away from a more pronounced condemnation.” “It’s very counterproductive to interfere in someone else’s election. I think the best thing the U.S. can do is shut up,” he said.

Marco Rubio, who recently announced that he will run for Mel Martinez’s Senate seat in Florida, came out yesterday in favor of making English the official language of the United States, randomly pointing out that his name is spelled the same way in both Spanish and English.

Rubio’s new position echoes a recent MSNBC report which discussed the recent “revival” of the controversial pro-English movement which some say is motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment and reeks of “self defeating” “simple racism.” Rubio’s hard-line immigration position has helped win him the support of right-wing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who called Rubio “a real diamond in our own back yard.” Meanwhile, Miami blogger Kyle Munzenrieder pointed out that Rubio must be hoping to “appeal to Florida’s Hispanic voters simply because he is Hispanic,” as his positions are not in line with the interests of the Hispanic and immigrant communities.

Yet while Marco Rubio supports English-only legislation, he’s still willing to talk about his campaign in both languages. Watch it:

Munzenrieder reminds readers that Rubio has also been accused of sending English- and Spanish-speaking voters conflicting messages:

“Great Marco, just about everyone names is spelled the same in English in Spanish. Good for you. We just wish your politics were the same in both languages. Unfortunately, what you say to your English-speaking supporters isn’t always what you say to your Spanish-speaking supporters.”

Munzenrieder is referring to critics who have accused Rubio of resorting to “hateful fear-mongering” when discussing the Obama administration in Spanish and taking a more “neutral” tone in English. Chances are Rubio probably hasn’t mentioned his pro-English position nor Demint’s endorsement to the Spanish-language media.

Dear Mr. Kagan,
First, let me just express sympathy for your situation. These last years have been extraordinarily unkind to your grand theories about the transformative potential of American explosives. President Bush’s “global war on terror,” the invasion of Iraq, his so-called “freedom agenda,” turned out to be a real carnival of bad ideas, for which you were a key intellectual barker. It’s hard out here for a neocon.

But I have to say, Mr. Kagan, your op-ed this morning is really beneath you. You can’t actually believe that President Obama is “siding with the Iranian regime” against the Iranian people, or that Obama’s outreach to Iran depends upon keeping hardliners in power, can you? You’re far too intelligent to buy the brutishly simplistic “realism” that you attempt to hang upon President Obama’s approach. These sorts of claims are better left to your friend and occasional co-author Bill Kristol, who uses his series of valuable journalistic perches (with which he inexplicably continues to be gifted) to launch an endless stream of comically transparent bad faith arguments. You’re better than that. You’re the smart neocon.

Aren’t you? While it’s nice that you recognize that “it’s not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” — though that was the stated preference of a number of your fellow neoconservatives — your claim that President Obama’s “strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of” Ahmadinejad is the kind of thing I thought we had left back in 2003, when opponents of the Iraq invasion (that is, the people who turned out to be right) were tarred as being “objectively pro-Saddam.” It doesn’t smell any better six years later.

You state that President Obama’s “goal must be to deflate the opposition, not to encourage it. And that, by and large, is what he has been doing.” How then to explain his State Department reaching out to Twitter and asking them to delay their scheduled maintenance, in order to allow the continued use of this technology that has proven so important to enabling communication within and out of Iran? That one gesture neatly encapsulates, I think, the difference between Bush and Obama on “democracy promotion.” Bush believed in America bringing the gift of freedom to the people of the world. Obama believes in practical steps to put the tools of freedom in the hands of the people themselves, and then creating the space for people to use those tools.

Just to be clear, most of us who “railed against the Bush administration’s ‘freedom agenda’” did so not out of any hostility toward freedom or democracy, but out of the belief, now completely vindicated, that strong, stirring words in favor of democracy mattered little if the policies behind them were counterproductive to the actual cause of democracy, as Bush’s policies were. By backing pro-democracy rhetoric with American war and occupation, President Bush and his conservative supporters cast the cause of freedom and democracy into disrepute, from which it must now be rescued and reclaimed by more responsible hands.

Very best,
Matt

Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri is Iran’s most prominent clerical dissident. He was the designated successor of Ayatollah Khomeini, but Montazeri’s criticisms of the authoritarian nature of Khomeini’s government earned him rejection by Khomeini, followed by years of house arrest.

Montazeri issued a statement today strongly supporting political and religious pluralism, and cautioning both the regime and the demonstrators against violence:

The distinction of a powerful government — Islamic or non-Islamic — is its ability to heed both similar and opposing views and, with religious compassion, which is a prerequisite of government, allow all the strata of society, whatever their political beliefs, to participate in the running of the country, instead of totally alienating them and constantly increasing their [the dissidents] number. Since this government is known as a religious government, I fear that the conduct and actions of the officials may ultimately harm the religion and undermine the people’s beliefs. [...]

I urge all the people, in particular the youth, to pursue the realization of their rights with patience and grace, to maintain calm and security in the country by virtue of sagacity and intelligence, and to refrain from aggression or any action that may harm their image and legitimate demand, and which would give an excuse to those of unfit character, who infiltrate the crowds, to create turmoil and disorder, and set people’s homes and belongings on fire, in a bid to generate an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. [...]

I advise all the officials, as well as the military and security forces, to uphold their religion and not sell their souls; they must understand that the term “officials are excused [because they are only doing their duty]” would not be accepted by the Almighty God on the Day of Judgement. They must regard the protesting youth as their own children, and refrain from violent and cruel actions. They must learn from the mistakes of the predecessors and understand that, eventually, those who oppress the people will receive their just comeuppance. In this day and age, one cannot hide the truth from the people through censorship, closures and restrictions of communication means.

In conclusion, I beseech the Almighty God to grant success to all those who serve Islam and the Muslims, and honor and glory to the dear Iranian nation.

Unlike allegations of vote fraud from American congressmen and former presidential candidates, this is the sort of statement, a respected clerical authority making an appeal for justice, tolerance, and non-violence on the basis of Islam, that could has the potential to really change the outcome on the ground. Hopefully more clerics will join with him.

Earlier this month, U.S. citizen, Irving Palomo, was detained and put in a van headed for Mexico due to an ICE mix-up. A few months ago Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen who suffers from mild retardation, was deported to Mexico. Mexican officials then deported him to Honduras, and Honduras deported him to Guatemala. After spending four months in Latin American prisons and homeless shelters, Atlanta airport officials tried to deport Lyttle again on his way back to his home in North Carolina.

Now a Louisiana newspaper is reporting that Diane Williams, a U.S. citizen of Caucasian and Native American descent, was recently deported to Honduras due to a mistake made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Williams was finishing up a prostitution sentence in Texas under a fake alias when she received a deportation order from the U.S. government. Two weeks later she found herself pleading her case at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Williams claims that she was pressured by ICE officials to waive her right to judicial review. “They didn’t read nothing to me. They just told me to sign,” says Williams.

Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project in Seattle, told Louisiana’s Daily Comet that ICE officials “cut corners” and “are pushed to deport people quickly.” According to the newspaper:

Immigration-rights advocates say thousands of people with credible claims to U.S. citizenship are detained every year by an overloaded immigration-enforcement system, in part because of pressures on agents to show results in numbers of deportations and a lack of adequate civil-rights protections.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) conservatively estimates that approximately 100 U.S. citizens are accidentally ensnared by the country’s broken immigration system each year. Joanne Lin, legislative counsel with the ACLU in Washington, told a Tennessee newspaper that these mistakes are indicative of “a whole host of immigration enforcement and due process problems that exist in the system.” As immigration restrictionists incessantly call on immigration officials to ramp up their deportation efforts, ICE can barely handle the deportation work they’re already doing.