Bus loads of protesters were stopped and unloaded from their buses by "black-clad police" and literally herded. When the massing was sufficient, as the barely controllably distraught Tehran caller to CNN described first hand, hundreds of the regime's Basij thugs poured out of an adjoining mosque and commenced a massacre with axes, clubs, guns and gas.American leftists seem to prefer hacking at Straw Men.
One can see the mind of such apologists at work at the Huffington Post.
Rather than interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, i.e. Iran, which would make the Iran people hate us, our president is going to let things go without much comment. Enough of our arrogance and cultural imperialism. But rather than do nothing at all about the nature of the Iranian dictatorship, the weiner dialogue is off.The Republicans are faulting President Obama for not taking a "strong enough stand" in support of the freedom marchers in Iran. Yet if the Republican/Religious Right/Neoconservative agenda had come to full fruition over the last 35 years the Republicans would have plunged America into our own version of the misbegotten theocracy destroying Iran today. I know. As a former Religious Right leader I worked to make America "safe" for "Christian values" and dangerous to everyone else. Thankfully I, and those like me, failed.
Had we succeeded America would be another version of Iran. Instead of people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson having become marginalized they'd be sitting in Washington advising whomever was the next Republican president. Instead of environmental protection and new mileage standards for cars there would be new anti-gay laws on the books.
Update: Now it turns out that Obama's interference in Iranian internal affair has upset the Iranian government:
TEHRAN (Reuters) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor toward Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologized.
[....]"Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about ... I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said....
From: http://www.jihadwatch.org/
We're meeting for coffee and chit-chat this evening at VPL. You can come and join us for discussion too. Atrium at 7:00 p.m. outside Blenz.
2 comments:
Well, insane anti-Christians and moral relativists aside, I'm not sure it is a bad thing Obama says little given that it is next to certain he will never do anything aggressive towards Iran (unless, maybe, they bomb Chicago). At least, he is not giving people in Iran any reason to hope anyone is going to help them. So, they can find the resolve to fight and/or die accordingly.
In the new Obama world "order", everyone is on their own, no one can trust America to keep its old-school trade, financial, or military agreements, or look to it to take the lead in sticky situations. So, those who truly need to rely on America will have to find new ways to negotiate/provide financing accordingly. Obama talks of multilateralism but his anti-Americanism actually pushes the world to a greater reliance on bilateralism as new alliances must be formed while the dominant power is a blank card. No one sane is going to sit around and wait for the United Nations, or even NATO, to save them.
The world will become more insecure and hence, perhaps, maybe more realistic, about certain differences, in a way even the HuffPo will begin to recognize. Will this provide a necessary impetus for rebuilding the covenants by which alone we humans defer our violence?
Maybe, but for us it means being hardened to the fact that standing up for those who want freedom in "far away" lands (like, say, Europe), while something we must find ways to do where we are, this is less and less the concern of American leaders. Thus, inevitably, we must become more interested in our own country/local scene and in building it up as a free society in need of appropriate partners around the world.
See you tonight.
We can't fight for everyone's freedom, true; and if we could, a you rightly point out, they wouldn't really have it in an authentic sense. But this is not about faraway people in far off lands: it's about us, as it must be, about how we envision our own purpose as a national people. It's not so much a matter of whether we storm the Halls of Tripoli or only determine that we should and will if we so desire. It's a matter of how we define our place in our own minds. What kind of people are we? And that depends not at all on Obama but only on us as individuals. What are our values? Are we men or are we metro-sexuals?
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