Watching a Revolution in Real Time

If there were a Pulitzer Prize for blogging, it should be rewarded to Andrew Sullivan for his coverage of the Iranian uprising. The government of Iran has blocked most broadcasts in the country, but the regular person on the street are using cell phones and digital cameras to film the carnage. They are using Twitter to communicate with the world. Sullivan has been tirelessly compiling coverage, as well as collecting a variety of opinions in the US. I doubt he's getting much sleep. I've been glued to my monitor since Saturday. The internet as a medium has reached a new level. I've watched a bit of television news and it's just not enough information.

He makes a great point today, above a youtube clip of gunfire in the streets:

They're shooting directly at civilians, but the civilians are undeterred. Have we ever been able to watch a revolution like this in real time? Has any mainstream media ever been able to broadcast scenes like this? Now that everyone is a broadcaster, revolutions will always be televised (or, broadcast anyway, since much of cable news is uninterested):

Check out his website at the Atlantic.

Breaking: Protestors Fired Upon in Tehran?

Reuters reports

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Armed men fired on people at a rally held by supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi on Monday, killing one person and wounding many, a witness said.

The witness, an Iranian photographer, said people in the crowd had attacked a building housing members of the Basij religious militia, who then opened fire.

What's going on in Iran has a 1989 feel to it. Unfortunately, we don't know if that means Tiananmen or Prague. Gunfire starts to tilt it towards Tiananmen.

This is a huge story, and I'm following closely.

Again, Andrew Sullivan's blog is the place to be.

Cable news is not doing enough. There's almost no coverage.

UPDATE: The shooting was filmed. (click here) Warning: Some graphic images.

Andrew Sullivan: Rescuing America From the Trap

Andrew Sullivan has a great retrospective of his thoughts on the Iraq War and what it means for the future in his Atlantic Monthly blog:

But can we be real for a second? Am I really very "quietly" "hoping" that the US is "defeated"? For starters, what on earth can this mean at this point? Since we deposed Saddam and the WMD threat was a chimera and some kind of ramshackle unstable government has emerged, I'd say the original goals have been met if at a cost - $2 trillion? $3 trillion? Tehran's regional ascendancy? America's moral standing? 140,000 troops still in the country after six years - nowhere near what was planned, promised or envisaged. Getting out now with as little further damage as possible is, I would have thought, a universal goal - especially when the US is effectively bankrupt. I don't think of it as a "defeat" not to be occupying countries no one would have dreamed of occupying only nine years ago. And I certainly believe and have stated countless times that the soldiers and generals who helped do this deserve our immense gratitude and support.

(...)

The reason for my worry can best be described by a series of questions. Why should the US be permanently militarily rooted in a region as thorny and as fraught with danger as Iraq - with permanent bases in a deeply Muslim country and troop levels of well over 100,000 for the foreseeable future? Isn't this a hostage to fortune? Have we not learned from the British imperial experience? Are we really contemplating an America that is not just financing tens of thousands of troops in Japan and Germany for the indefinite future, but also in Afghanistan and Iraq, two of the most unpredictable an unstable "countries" outside Africa on the planet - and the graveyard of countless empires before? My core judgment is no. And after the past eight years, it seems to me that the benefit of the doubt should rest with those of us who want to leave the place as swiftly as possible, with as minimal a presence going forward as is responsible.

Read the whole thing. Andrew Sullivan's best quality as an opinion maker is to asses and re-asses his belief system. Building up to the war and during the early phase, he was a leading advocate of the intervention. He is one of the higher profile mind changers. As his banner Orwell quote says: "To see what it in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." The war wasn't what we thought it would be. It's not treasonous to question this. For the good of the country, it should be wrapped up as soon as possible.

These days Sullivan is one of the loudest Obama cheerleaders. It will be interesting if a few years down the road, we'll have another "I was wrong" introspective in that area.

George W Bush: The Worst President Ever?

I was over at Andrew Sullivan's site today and he thinks, as it stands now, W is even worse than James Buchanan.

I won't go that far. Buchanan watched the South secede without lifting a finger, deferring to President-Elect Lincoln to deal with it. Treason through in-action. You can't get worse than that, so he's still number one.

So let's weigh Bush: his massive government expansion; jaw dropping debts; two long, expensive wars that still aren't won yet (or maybe never); lowering the US image worldwide to an all-time low. This puts him in very clear contention for #2 all-time.

Let's compare a few of the other bad ones:

Jimmy Carter: Nearly destroyed the economy and thought being nice to people would solve international problems. Impotent during the hostage crisis. The old joke about Carter, from somebody marooned on a desert island for four years during his administration: "Next thing you're going to tell me is that he gave away the Panama Canal."

Richard Nixon: The only president to resign and escaped jail only with a pardon by his successor. Conservatives scoff at his liberal policies. Took five years to get Americans out of Vietnam. In hindsight, just how ground breaking was his recognition of China? Somebody was going to do it eventually.

Lyndon Johnson: The Great Government Expansionist before Bush. Started the Vietnam War that he didn't know how to wage and couldn't finish. At least he put through Kennedy's tax cuts and therefore enjoyed a good economy.

Warren Harding: Scandals and corruption but had the good fortune to die before he did too much damage.

US Grant: Administration was plagued with scandal and nearly bankrupted the country. Won the Civil War as a general, so all was forgiven.

Andrew Johnson: The drunken tailor from Tennessee was the only President impeached before Clinton. Had the bad luck to have taken office after the assassination of the greatest president ever, Abraham Lincoln.

It's a tough one. I think Bush takes #2. The US has bounced back from the others, but it looks like things are going to get much worse this time.