I either wrote or said on congames that there was a generation of young Iranians who are aware of the rest of the world through various internet networks and cafes, not interested in continued theocratic dictatorship and those about my age that remember a time before the Ayatollahs. I ran is now a country divided by itself into the enlightened and the theocrats. Will the police and military follow orders with near absolute obedience is the question. This represents an opportunity for America to get those results to be safer for Iranians, the region and the world. We can prempt our proclivity for fear mongering.
In two weeks no one will even think about the Iranian election outside of Iran. Iran will go back to their lives under President Ahmadinejad and the rest of the world will find the next “big” story to cover. It is slowly happening already. All the news agencies are getting away from the poll fraud charges and instead reporting it as a freedom march. Most protests will end in a couple of days under fear and disappointment. Very little will have changed except that Iran will apply our media treatment of the this election to the general image they have of westerners.
These protests failed because they didn’t have a majority. Critics called the election a fraud before it started. Western media fed the protests with speculation and bias opinions which has fallen short since it has no real backing. Western media and many of the protesters didn’t pay attention to the legitimacy on the elections, but instead focused on a pipe-dream liberal revolution.
Does anyone else find ironic the fact that “a generation of young Iranians who are aware of the rest of the world through various internet networks and cafes, not interested in continued theocratic dictatorship” whose protest the U.S. is celebrating right now, are the very same ones who would suffer death, dismemberment, poisoning, destruction, and loss of family from an attack on their “strategic” nuclear facilities by Israel or the U.S.?
As with Operation Iraqi Freedom; we just love those people to death.
This movement if successful, will take the United Staes out of the picture for bombing, but not Israel. Centrifuge production does not need to be centralised, making any such bombing efforts exceptionally difficult, but where is Osirak?
Iran has no history of invading or bombing another country in over 200 years. The current Iranian president never threatened to attack another country. He has been misquoted to make a case for attacking Iran.
Like the US overthrown of the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, it is about control of resources. Iran has the second largest natural gas reserves and large oil reserves. Many Iranians like American culture, music, etc., but make no mistake they still hold a grudge for our supporting Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran and the subsequent 8 year war where many Iranians were killed or severly injured by chemical weapons.
Although a number of young people came up to talked to me as I traveled around Iran, my guide told me to tell people I was from Canada to avoid any hostile outburst until I got to know the person. I traveled freely around Iran and stood out from the crowd as Americans rarely travel alone to Iran..
I don’t know what happened in Iran, but neither does anyone else reporting on it. If media access and freedom of speech were to be shut down in a western country it would be a sure sign of a cover-up. But in Iran and many other lesser established democracies, shutting down communication has become a regular practice. It is a practice that has work well in the past, so why not rely on it now? The new forms of communication has rendered the effect useless or harmful. The opposition has found ways to communicate without controls and in the meantime the Iranian government is caught holding their hand over the microphone. If this election shows anything, I think it shows that freedom of speech can no longer be controlled, even by governments. What this election has not shown is evidence of abnormal election fraud. I use the term abnormal because election fraud is evident in every election, but especially in upcoming democracies. I personally haven’t ruled out the possibility of a stolen election in Iran, but find myself playing the devils advocate to make up for the extreme bias of the rest of us westerners. I have no investments in who wins or come out on top, nor do I think the rest of the western world does. So why is everybody so fast to accuse? If we support either side of this election then it will render the will of the Iranians useless. If we continue telling protesters that they have our sympathy and support, then the protest will continue while welding us as a weapon. But is that what we want? Do we want the protesters to continue even if the election results represent the majority of the nation? Is that democracy? There are protest after most election and fraud is found in most of them, but the will of the people will always succeed. If Iran wants change, let them bring it. If the election are fraudulent, let them decide. The power of a nation is in the people, not the government or their guns.
Here’s an article by the very liberal/ bias BBC. It, of course, has the bias narration but it’s good anyways.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8103292.stm
Nathan;
Excellent article to cite, there is no perceived bias, from what I see, which makes it an excellent report. I still beleive that there is a critical mass of the intelligentsia (young, educated, energetic revolutionaries) to overcome the moribound hoary old ayatollahs and clerics. A Shi’a Wahabism doesn’t appear to be the desired future of the educated, educable or those interested in upward mobility for those in Iran.
That being said, a cautionary note suggests that the very idea of totalitarian maintenance is predicated on the guns of “government” turned towards the masses who are themselves frequently divided along many sometimes bizarre demographics.
Iran has not engaged in any wars of conquest or aggression in a very long time. Israel in it’s short existence has, and has had even more extra territorial aggressions.