Will Collier says it’s looking like 1979 all over again:
The fantasy that “moderates” within the mullah regime can be coaxed into a “grand bargain” has taken in better men than Barack Obama, but Obama doesn’t even have the excuse of not being aware of that prior history. The level of self-loathing an American has to possess to believe that the Khomeinists are a brutal, terror-supporting regime entirely because the US hasn’t been nice enough to them is pretty staggering.
Khoemeini and his heirs were and are brutal fanatics. Period, dot. They have subjugated and terrorized their own people and done their level best to kill ours for thirty years because that’s what they are and that’s what they do. The devil didn’t make them do it. There’s nothing you or I or Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush or Barack Obama ever could have said that would have changed them. The idea that we’d burn some kind of bridge with Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs behind him is laughable–those guys are never going to be anything other than hostile to us, and Obama ought to be realistic enough to understand as much.
Unfortunately, Obama spent far too much time marinating in Leftoid academia, and invested too much of his political persona in the self-aggrandizing mantra, “Everybody hates us because of Bush” to be able to comprehend the significance of what’s going on in Iran right now. It’s not about us…
…I’ve meet a lot of Eastern Europeans who have pictures of Ronald Reagan on their mantles. They never forgot the way he stood up for them, in public, against the commissars. Iran’s population is going to run off the mullahs one of these years, hopefully this year. When that happens, what do you want them to remember, that we were supporting them, or worrying about what their oppressors would think about it?
I hope that they remember that a lot of us did support them, even if the dictator coddler in the White House doesn’t.
[Update mid morning]
The ongoing saga of the “liberal” reactionaries:
I’m confused. Back when I identified as a liberal, democracy promotion was very much what we stood for. We would have done anything to get rid of the likes of Pinochet and Somoza. When Pinochet was up against it in Chile, every liberal I knew was jumping for joy, cheering on Salvador Allende. Why not the Iranian demonstrators against Ahmadinejad and the mullahs who, in many ways, are worse even than Pinochet? The Chilean dictator didn’t oppress women and gays to anywhere near the extent of the Islamists. He also wasn’t building a nuclear weapon and denying the Holocaust. Is everything standing on its head? What’s going on here? Left is right. Right is left. Liberal is… reactionary?
You’d almost think he has no real interest in either freedom or democracy.
Except that, unlike in Eastern Europe:
1) The US overthrew the last elected government (1953)
2) Supported a cruel dictator with his own torturous secret police (the Shah).
3) Supported Iraq in the Iran – Iraq war, a war in which millions of Iranians died
4) Is currently imposing sanctions on them.
In short, the correct analogy is Great Britain intervening in the election of 1800, or Iran trying to intervene in the 2000 US election.
Once again, no one is saying that we should “intervene.” And we are imposing sanctions on their government, not on the people. Why do continue to insist that the Iranian people are stupid, and uninformed?
And we are imposing sanctions on their government, not on the people. News flash, Rand – sanctions are rarely seen with such fine distinctions.
Why do continue to insist that the Iranian people are stupid, and uninformed? Actually I think they are informed – informed of a history of US “meddling” with them, as documented by my first post.
More simply, they don’t want our help. In a previous thread, I challenged you to provide examples of Iranians looking for US assistance, leadership or encouragement. You have provided none, so I shall assume that you can’t do so.
Until we get at least some indication that our help is requested, we should condemn the violence (which we have) and otherwise keep out.
We should make sure we keep out until they finish rolling tanks down into Tehran.
Rand isn’t saying we should assist. He’s saying we should speak out.
I know what he’s saying. If we speak out in a way which seems to support the dissidents, they won’t need to roll tanks in Tehran.
You have provided none, so I shall assume that you can’t do so.
If I didn’t do so, it’s because I’m too busy to respond to such an idiotic request, not because they don’t exist.
Here, how about this?
If we speak out in a way which seems to support the dissidents, they won’t need to roll tanks in Tehran.
That is nutty.
Eh, BOTH sides are deeply involved in the events of 1979.
And, the head of Mossad says Ahmadinejad ‘s winning would be “good for Israel”
The head of Mossad!
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/06/mossad_head_ahmadinejad_good_f.php
I do want democracy in Iran. The issue is how to get it.
PS — I do believe this Green Revolution has potential to be a game changer — to open up Iran in a very positive manner. Therefore, if Ahmadinejad is rejected, then Obama must extend his hand towards the new government, even more forcefully than he did at Cairo.
However, we must also remember that Mousavi’s followers remain deeply Islamic, even if more open to moderate influence. And, the memory of 1953 and Iranian anger at interference with democracy then is perhaps helping to fuel anger at Ahmadinejad now.
Also note that the Green Revolution’s main chant is Allahu Akbar!
Elsewhere in the blogosphere there has been much mirth at the image of an overweight balding gay Christian Englishman (Andrew SUllivan) enthusiastically shouting
Allahu Akbar!
But hey, if shouting Allahu Akbar! will help topple Ahmadinejad, I’m good to go . . .
= = =
Iran’s national soccer team wore green wrist bands is yestedays match with South Korea. This uprising is far from over, IMHO.
And by not even standing up to the basic points of democracy Obama’s helping…. how?
1) Refuse to offer any moral support to protestors or even say that shooting protestors is wrong. Say you’ll negotiate with the Regime regardless of what they do.
2) ???
3) Democracy in Iran!
Actually Juan Cole explains well why Ahmadinejad is toast:
and now this
It’s interesting that I saw the same video of a protester being dragged off by the police which is where it stopped on CNN. On Fox it continued to show the police running from the crowd when they came to the aid of the man. Regardless of Obama, things are going to change in Iran. While it’s been pointed out that option B isn’t much better than Stolen election option A. It is a move in the right direction for people that do value freedom.
Chris G wrote:
3) Supported Iraq in the Iran – Iraq war, a war in which millions of Iranians died
Actually, we supported both sides in the Iran-Iraq War — since we wanted both sides to lose. The fact that you don’t remember this suggests to me that perhaps you are too young to recall… which therefore suggests you are also too young to recall the Carter administration and perhaps don’t understand the premise of Will Collier’s blog post.
Maybe you should google “Iran-Contra” and report back what you find out….
BBB
Rand wrote:
I hope that [Eastern Europeans] remember that a lot of us did support them
I’ve had a number of fascinating conversations with my European physicist friends about Reagan. One of my friends, an Irish socialist, has an impassioned hatred for Reagan and Thatcher. I watched a heated discussion one evening at dinner when my Albanian friend had to explain to my Irish friend why he was full of ****. Reagan is a hero to many in the Eastern block — because they are the people who were liberated by the chain of events initiated by Reagan. But the hard-core leftist intelligentsia, most of whom have never had to experience (i.e. suffer under) the regimes they promote, have an opposite view.
In another conversation at a physics conference in Berlin, one of my friends, a former citizen of East Germany, expressed reservations about Reagan, saying his speech at the Wall “was not helpful”. A Hungarian friend of mine overheard this and took my German friend to task. The conversation between them got quite heated, and devolved into German, but the impression I got was that my German friend had been a ‘collaborator’ with the GDR regime and my Hungarian friend did not appreciate this. So Reagan is not universally admired even within the Eastern Block. The Communists have a lot of supporters, even today.
So… be careful what you wish for. And even though I would want our President to speak out forcefully in favor of democracy and freedom, I strongly doubt Obama has the intellectual resources to do that. He just doesn’t see America as a force for liberation in the world. It’s why he apologizes for America wherever he goes. His entire adult life, he has surrounded himself with people who see America as an obstacle to freedom and democracy — defined by those people as communism. People like Bill Ayers despise Reagan for what he did to the Communist dream. People like Jeremiah Wright think that racist America created AIDS to kill black people. Obama is a product of that culture.
BBB