This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins. What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.
This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.
The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.
In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.
I have read several different rumors that today will be the day that the mullahs will drop the iron fist on the demonstrators in Iran.
Ronald Reagan once supplied the push that toppled the Soviet Union by demanding: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I cannot see the same push coming from Obama toward the mullahs. So the scene is set for Tiananmen West.
For the sake of the people of Iran, I hope that Krauthammer and I are both wrong about this.
It is interesting to note that the backlash from the dictators/mullahs/bad guys occurred at the same time (in concurrence with?) the dems attack on President Bush and our troops.
I fear you and Krauthamer are right. Obama doesn’t want to appear to be “Meddling” — meanwhile, Iranians bleed and die in the streets in the name of freedom, and the country that was once known as the great experiment in democracy does nothing for fear of offending sensibilities.
The O isn’t going to take on a “foreign” cause when he’s so busy changing us.
The implications run somewhat deeper than even the Krauthammer article suggests. Consider that the desire for freedom, inheerent in all of us, was fanned to a peak in Iran, by the events in Iraq, and those events by… guess who?
Is it too much to suggest that it’s possible one reason Obama isn’t lending his moral support to those seeking freedom in Iran, is because he recognizes that if Iran’s islamist regime falls, George W. Bush will get the credit for starting that ball rolling?
Obama = submission
BO only wants to meddle in popular causes – like the Israeli/Palestinian problems. He has no problem slapping Israel.
What a naive, egotistical moron!