“We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

McCain:

LARRY KING: If you were president and knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, you know where, would you have U.S. forces go in after him?

MCCAIN: Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation.

… Yeah, I’d say we made the right choice on election day.

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I’m stunned right now just like everyone else. I think most people never expected this day of closure would come. Almost a decade after the original attacks, the shock that the perpetrator has finally been killed is nearly as shocking as the initial attacks themselves.

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As the impact of the revolution settled in, some members of the movement that toppled Mr. Mubarak vowed to continue their protest, saying that all their demands had not yet been met. In Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the new Egypt, protesters met in small clusters, arguing about the path forward, as thousands of volunteers cleaned the square.

[…]

As soldiers removed some barricades on the square’s periphery, volunteers with brooms swept streets and scrubbed graffiti from a statue in a nearby square.

Hah! Best revolution ever.

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It’s not hard to understand why the Iranian government is cheering events in Egypt. Watching what’s going on in Egypt right now must be hard for American diplomats and CIA personnel on the job long enough to remember what happened in Iran in 1979. The two situations are eerily similar in many respects, and not just in the rhetoric of their faltering leaders. Ponder the similarities:

* Mubarak is an autocratic ruler who has been in power for decades, as was the Shah. In both cases they have been supported by the United States even though we don’t really like them but because we think they’re a crucial partner in a strategic region (during the Cold War the boogie man was the USSR with which Iran shares a 1,000+ mile border, today the boogie man is terrorism).

* In both cases, the White House administration in office during the unrest is one that talks a good talk when it comes to human rights promotion in general but doesn’t necessarily walk the walk when it comes to the country in question (Carter of course talked about human rights more than any other president but it’s hard to point to any lines he ever drew in the sand with regard to Iran’s treatment of its own people as he was agreeing to deliver, for instance, more AWACS military surveillance aircraft than the U.S. itself had deployed at the time).

* In neither case has the army turned out to be nearly as loyal to the ruling faction as it had been assumed beforehand (in Egypt Mubarak is of course a former military officer so the military’s apparent siding with the protesters is a bit of a shock; in the case of Iran the army has always been associated closely with the king, so much so that it came close to being disbanded out of mistrust under the Islamic Republic). Coincidentally, Mubarak’s chosen branch of service was the Air Force, as was the Shah’s.

* In both cases the autocratic ruler has announced a last ditch change in government (while maintaining the head himself) in hopes it will assuage the public unrest.

* In both cases the rulers even have relationships with Israel that are out of step with those of the surrounding region, not that that’s directly related to the current unrest.

* Egypt, like Iran during the Shah’s rule is notorious for corruption.

* In both cases there is an easy link to U.S. support of the regime. In the case of Iran there were countless examples. In Egypt today, protesters are picking up tear gas canisters fired by the police and realizing that they have “Made in the U.S.A.” stamped on them.

* In both cases you have an American government unprepared for the situation. Vice President Biden’s foolish recent comments that Mubarak isn’t a dictator and shouldn’t step down echo Carter in the waning days of the Shah’s rule.

* In both cases, Americans by and large are unaware of of the situation in Egypt and their perceptions of the country are rooted in ancient stories and stereotypes.

* In both cases there is a popular figure who returns amidst the chaos who has called for reforms while outside of the country for years (in the case of Iran this was of course Khomeini; in the case of Egypt this is Mohamed ElBaradei). Though this connection is tenuous at best since ElBaradei wasn’t exiled by Mubarak and there is no religious authority he can claim.

* Ironically, the Shah himself is buried in Egypt (which is where he fled to from his own country in 1979 while Mubarak was serving as vice president).

(One missing key element from all these comparisons though is that Mubarak has not tied his fates to the success of any far-reaching, lopsidedly carried out and ill-paced modernization program like the Shah’s White Revolution.)

So the question is, which side of history will the United States end up on this time around?

Update: While I’m listing similarities, I might as well also mention the low hanging fruit of comparisons– the ones that are so obvious that I didn’t mention before when I was typing up this post. For instance, both governments hold elections regularly but they’re also recognized universally as rigged. Both governments have rubber stamp legislative branches. In both countries human rights advocates have long-complained of torture and an unfair judicial system, both countries have been the recipients of staggering US military aid (Egypt receives $1.5B worth annually; in the case of Iran however most outright aid had ceased in the mid 1960s and by the late 1970s all military transactions were conducted on a cash basis because Iran was flush with oil money after OPEC staged a series of oil price increases), etc.

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Paul Ryan (R-Wis)’s Republican rebuttal from what looked like the back of a poorly-lit auditorium fell into the predictable role of being a debbie downer after an inspiring speech. Also, did anyone else think he looked (and sounded) an awful lot like Gabe from The Office?

Is this Gabe or Paul Ryan? I’m not sure.

Incidentally, the fact that there is a separate “Tea Party Response” to the State of the Union is the most solid evidence to date that there is indeed an ongoing civil war within the GOP. The two factions’ split can only become more and more evident from here.

Update: One moment that sticks with me in the president’s speech is when he said that we need to celebrate not just the people who win the Superbowl, but also the people who win the science fair. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see the number of people giving him a standing ovation for this line for the length that they did.

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Not long ago at Groundswell Educational Films (the nonprofit where I work) we paid a visit to J. Fred MacDonald’s archival film collection here in Chicago. Fred’s archive, which included millions of feet of old films was an incredible thing to see for a budding documentary-filmmaker like myself. On the day we visited him he was just about to donate his collection to the Library of Congress and retire from the historical film repository/stock footage business.

We caught him before he donated the material and talked to him about one of his projects, the American Indian Film Gallery, which will continue on the web, retirement or no. Here’s the video we put together introducing visitors to Fred’s online Native American film collection. It was a lot of fun to shoot in such an extraordinary environment but I must say it was also a little sad knowing that such an incredible collection was leaving Chicago for good. But hopefully the Library of Congress will make it accessible to researchers and filmmakers for generations to come.

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Personally I think they’re missing a tremendous opportunity by not providing a download button for the video (as well as the documents and images and audio), but people will find ways to rip them anyway. The quality isn’t really usable for any serious professional purposes, but this is a damn cool tool for documentary research and free low quality archival screener material. Hopefully they are telecine-ing the films at a decent enough quality that they have full-resolution digital masters lying around on hard drives for filmmakers who want them and are willing to pay a nominal fee.

They say they plan to digitize an additional 100,000 more items per year (though at this rate it will take more than 100 years to put everything online!). Hopefully other presidential libraries and major archives will follow their lead and put their materials available online as well.

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Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen, then:

And now:

The opening of the Michigan Ave bridge over the Chicago River then:

And now:

The Wabash Ave bridge then:

And now:

Michigan Ave by the Chicago Cultural Center (then a library):

And now:

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Unfortunately, she was right.

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Noticing that only a few dozen entries have been cast ahead of its January 21st deadline, I thought I’d enter (the top 20 photos get made into postcards available at the NARA gift shop). Unfortunately their database of Chicago pictures that are digitized is somewhat sparse (and most aren’t explicit as to their location), but here are two photos whose locations I recognized. Hopefully I’ll have time to do some more photos like these– I had about twenty of the National Archives’ Chicago photos whose locations I recognized printed for free at CVS.

Montrose Beach jetty, Chicago, Illinois, 1973.

Montrose Beach jetty, Chicago, Illinois, 2010.

Loyola stop, Red Line, Chicago, Illinois, 1973.

Loyola stop, Red Line, Chicago, Illinois, 2011.

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