David Aikman
Musings and commentary on the world scene from Senior Fellow David Aikman
Iran: The Regime Tightens the Screws
Thu 16 Aug 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Internal factors may yet destabilize the government of Iran, but don’t bet your foreign policy on it.
The photographs were deeply unsettling: seven bodies swung in the breeze from public gallows in the city of Mashad, Iran’s second-largest city. “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) shouted the crowd assembled to watch the public executions. In case the grim message was being overlooked, local TV carried a live broadcast.
This is Iran, early in August 2007, and apparently in the grip of the most intensive crackdown on dissent and political opposition since a purge of the country’s universities in 1984. According to some people, the crackdown on real and suspected opponents of the regime may be as murderous as the Ayatollah Khomeini’s execution of regime opponents in the year 1980, within months of his taking power.
Citizen Reporters in China
Mon 30 Jul 2007 by David Aikman
Cell phones and Twitter accounts are upsetting the status quo in China.
When demonstrators turned out by the thousands in Xiamen, Fujian province, on China’s coast opposite Taiwan, police knew they had a different problem from normal. Protests by ordinary Chinese citizens, mostly against land seizures by pushy developers, take place by the score on a daily basis in China. They are a nuisance to the authorities, and worrisome, but they are ordinarily suppressed by large police contingents before things get out of hand.
Xiamen, on June 1 and 2 this year, was different. Not only was the demonstration much larger than usual—by some estimates 8–10,000 people—but also the demonstrators were summoned, essentially, by cell phone text messages and Internet blog sites.
Another Middle East War?
Fri 20 Jul 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Aikman surveys the many tangles of the current situation.
Most Americans numbed by daily casualty reports coming out of the war in Iraq—the drip-drip-drip of American fatalities and the veritable torrent of deaths of Iraqi civilians murdered as they shop for groceries—probably just wish the Middle East as a whole would disappear.
Unfortunately for weary Americans, it won’t. The most war-prone region on the planet won’t go anywhere just yet, and there is a strong probability that, before the end of this year, it may have exploded yet again into a cross-border conflagration.
Meet Mr. Adamov
Fri 13 Jul 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
The Bush-Putin meeting brings back memories of Putin’s earlier career.
At the beginning of July, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with President Bush in the Bush family summer retreat at Kennebunkport, Maine. It could turn out to be one of the most crucial meetings in Russian-US relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Hold that Ad
Tue 10 Jul 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Perhaps China has been too successful at censorship.
It was some eighteen years ago that the world was trying to absorb what had taken place in China’s Tiananmen Square in Beijing on the night of June 3–4, 1989. Six weeks of sometimes chaotic, always spontaneous, and invariably exhilarating demonstrations had taken place in Tiananmen Square, after the death of Hu Yaobang, a Chinese leader associated with reform, on April 15.
Accounting for Tenet
Wed 20 Jun 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
David Aikman looks at the actions and explanations of former US Director of National Intelligence George Tenet.
Washington insiders have seen it happen so often that they roll their eyes every time it takes place. A national policy is deemed to have been a failure and an individual deeply involved with it resigns or is fired by the administration in office at the time. Then he attempts to redeem his reputation (and finances) by accepting a huge advance from a publisher for a tell-all book and by appearing on TV shows defending his reputation.
By saying this is what has happened with former CIA director George Tenet in the case of the publication of his book, At the Center of the Storm (advance $4 million), is not intended to depict the man as a scoundrel.
Six Days and Forty Years
Mon 11 Jun 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
David Aikman looks back on the Six Days War and its unexpected outcomes.
The Six-Day War of 1967 was one of the most startling military victories in history. In the course of six days, from June 5 through June 11, the Israeli Defense Forces essentially wiped out on the ground the air force of Egypt, crippled for years the air forces of Jordan and Syria, and triumphed over the armies of those three Arab states deployed against Israel.
More significantly, after just a few days’ fighting, Israel found itself in military control over 1.2 million Arabs in the West Bank (part of British Mandate Palestine and annexed by Jordan in 1950) and Gaza (before 1967 under the control of Egypt). Arabs killed, wounded, and imprisoned were in the scores of thousands; Israeli casualties were listed at the almost mythical level of 777 (which seems small but is a higher proportion of the 1967 Israeli population than all the 57,000 Americans killed during the Vietnam War).
The Atheist Onslaught
Fri 25 May 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
David Aikman considers the “new atheists” and new prospects for civility from unexpected sources.
An interesting publishing and cultural phenomenon has been afoot in the U.S. since the fall of 2006. To a degree unprecedented in recent publishing history, to my knowledge, at least four books by self-described atheists, all of them militantly attacking religious belief, have made it to The New York Times best-seller list and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
Virginia Tech Considered
Fri 11 May 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
David Aikman considers the factors surrounding the massacre and makes a suggestion for workable gun control.
More than two weeks have passed since the bloodbath on the campus of Virginia Tech University (officially Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) in Blacksburg on April 16 2007. The President of the U.S., George W. Bush, expressed horror at what happened and the Governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, returned early from a trip to Japan, declaring in Virginia a state of emergency. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is, of course, Korean, sent his condolences, as did Pope Benedict XVI. An entire army of counselors descended on the campus from various corners of the U.S., and some of them are still there.
Much of the world press drew predictable conclusions: the Virginia Tech massacre, European newspapers said, would not have happened had it not been so hideously easy to obtain guns in the U.S.; or, the culture that has romanticized gun-ownership and gun-usage played into the hands of a deranged, alienated psychopath. Britain’s Economist tried to straddle the fence with the subhead: “The horror might have happened anyway. But gun control might have made it less easy.”
Death Penalty Reconsidered
Fri 04 May 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Thoughts on Amnesty International’s death penalty statistics.
Amnesty International is an international human rights organization that draws attention on a regular basis to the plight of political prisoners in various countries of the world. But for many years it has had a standing campaign to abolish the death penalty.
Proponents of the death penalty have traditionally argued that it is needed by society to provide retributive justice and to grant some sort of emotional “closure” for the families of murder victims. Opponents argue that it is inherently barbaric, that it is an irreversible punishment if the executed person turns out to be innocent, and that it doesn’t deter murder at all. Proponents tend to regard Amnesty International as an international meddling group determined to impose do-good liberalism on everyone else. Opponents regard it as a champion of global humanity, civilization, and progress.
