At least 19 are dead in today’s clashes inside Iran. One can safely assume that reported number is low. The citizens are rising; the mullahs are pulling out all the stops trying to crush the uprising before it reaches that critical mass where it is no longer controllable.
We watch.
We have a relatively mild statement from the president of the United States condemning the mullahs actions against their own people. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was well out ahead of Obama on this and condemned Iran on Tuesday.
We talk. We write. We analyze.
The Iranian people bleed.
They bleed for even a modicum of the rights we possess – and all too often ignore – to our shame.
The United States of America was founded on and long stood for individual liberty. For the rights of the individual over the coercion of the government. For freedom to believe in whatever God we wished to. For the freedom to assemble. For the freedom to say what we wanted to.
Most of the western nations now stand for the same things, thanks in large part to the example the US set. They are no longer ruled by monarchs. Those that still have monarchs have constrained their royalty to the will of the people rather than being subject to royal whim.
I watched in dismay as the west ultimately ignored the crushing of liberty in Burma. Before that, I was dismayed by the completely ineffective talk-talk over the mess in Sudan. I have watched the debacle in Somalia, the genocide in Rwanda and far too many wordy and useless responses from the democracies of the west to the rape, murder and violent suppression of liberty for far too long.
Absent real moral courage on the part of the west, I fear for the Iranian people who are rising now only to be cut down by the minions of a repressive government that values itself above the worth of its people. It is time to make a stand here in the west. Stand for democracy. Stand for liberty. Stand for something bigger than we are as individuals.
Free Iran.
Will Obama, our “girlie man” President, act with conviction, purpose, and deciveness to support the Iranian revolution of 2009?
Saint Obama will vote “present” on doing anything meaningful to help the Iranians. He may issue more “statements”, but even here he will not say anything meaningful that could be seen as the EVIL USA “meddling” in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation.
Obama will sit on his thumbs before saying anything of consequence.
Absolutely great post. I posted a link to it at my blog.
I wish our president had said what you so eloquently did.
It interests me that in the USA and the media there is not the typical “lets go to the UN” nonsense. I guess the UN has proved itself to be worthless and Obama is attempting to live up to that example.
Free Iran. Yeah. That was the cry in 1979. Look what the Iranian people gave the world. The ayatollahs. Bloggers shouldn’t be projecting their hopes for Iran on the demonstrtors. That will work as well as it did for the voters that projected their hopes on BHO.
I backed Bush’s policy of defending and spreading democracy.