smile upon the protestors. But like you, I have grave fears.
(Update: This op-ed by Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post captures my own overall view pretty well.)
I have no special expertise on Iran and so am only able to add my deep concern, sympathy, and support to the brave people in the streets seeking change in Iran. I also do understand that, from the US government's point of view, it all looks ... complicated. As indeed it is; I am far from indifferent to the concerns of realism and unanticpated consequences of events in places we barely understand.
Still, at this moment, I would hope that the United States government would not only support the specific rights of the protestors to peaceful assembly and free expression - but that it would say unequivocally that the United States stands for liberty and with those who seek it. Is that really so controversial or so hard?
Unable to sleep last night, I found myself picking up two books. The first is a now nearly forgotten Hungarian novel - yet one of the most compelling on the events of the European 20th century, George Konrad's The Loser (1982). I found myself reading the chapters on the Hungarian Revolution, its failure and the aftermath. But of course, the core of the Hungarian Revolution, as the chapter notes, is that it was a revolt less against one's own regime than against an outside imperial power, the Soviet Union.
The second is a book of poetry - short epigrams, passages, sketches from a journal - to which I have often returned in my life, Rene Char's Leaves of Hypnos (1946), his private journal from his years as a Resistance fighter in the Second World War. When I say Resistance fighter, I don't mean one of the "brave" French writers of those years, risking a 'no' from the censor, I mean someone who fought for years, rising to become the commander in charge of reconnaissance of that zone of southern France at the time of D-Day. (The translation to which I have linked at Amazon is by the very fine American poet, Cid Corman.) I found myself drawn to this passage, No. 22:
TO THE PRUDENT: It is snowing on the maquis and there's a perpetual chase after us. You whose house does not weep, with whom avarice crushes love, in the succession of hot days, your fire is only a male nurse. Too late. Your cancer has spoken. The country of your birth has no more powers.
The original French, sorry for the lack of diacritical marks:
AUX PRUDENTS: Il neige sur le maquis et c'est contre nous chasse perpetuelle. Vous dont la maison ne pleure pas, chez qui l'avarice ecrase l'amour, dans la succession des journees chaudes, votre feu n'est qu'un garde-malade. Trop tard. Votre cancer a parle. Le pays natal n'a plus de pouvoirs.
Let Marianne, the goddess of liberty, smile upon the protestors. Yet I hope I will not find myself going back to another passage from Char's poems, one of the justly most famous:
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Bitter future, bitter future, a dance amongst the rosebushes ....
Update: Scrolling through the comments, it seems I wasn't sufficiently clear on a couple of points. First, I do take the realist concerns entirely seriously; that's why I raised the Hungarian revolution, and The Loser in particular, which has much discussion of the costs of failing. However, I am not convinced that raising liberty as something the United States supports as such is inconsistent with prudent realism. I do not think that general value is addressed by raising specific freedoms such as assembly or expression, as President Obama has done.
Second, I do not suggest that the administration acts in bad faith in making these difficult judgment calls between realism and idealism; I might well make them differently, but that's what presidents have to do. It is a function of being president, one might recall, however, that applied, or ought to have applied, equally to Bush, Clinton, and those who came before.
Third, if this is not the moment for the President to speak forthrightly on a general American commitment to liberty in the aspirations of oppressed people in the world - and I agree, it might not be, or at least that is a judgment an administration could certainly make in good faith - still, I should want to know under what conditions, if any, it would be appropriate for the President of the United States to express such a sentiment. I do not mean by this a merely general expression of support for liberty as a universal value, but rather that the United States is and has been committed to liberty as a value, and that it should be. If now is not the moment, as it possibly might not be - it would nonetheless be helpful to have some idea of the baseline for when it would be.
- Mousavi and Ahmadinejad are quite similar politically from what I have read and seen. There is little if any evidence that Mousavi would represent anything more that minimal change if elected.
- The protests in Los Angeles by the Iranian/Persian community in favor of Mousavi are confusing. Mousavi has confirmed that the community that fled Iran in the late 1970s are not welcome back (to say the least).
- I have yet to see any evidence of vote rigging on the part of the Iranian government by these protesters, media, or the foreign governments that seem to all be putting in their two cents (besides ours, of course). The argument that we/everyone I know overwhelmingly voted for Mousavi and the results don't reflect this is not very compelling. Young urban people prone to protest don't usually reflect the nation as a whole whether it be in Tehran or New York City.
Much of this is the fault of the Iranian government for not having a more transparent election process. However, I still would like to have something more than accusations. I think, gasp, Obama is handling the situation quite well by saying very little. If vote rigging is exposed then the best thing would be for us to have stayed silent. The only thing that would allow the Iranian government to survive if vote rigging was exposed was if they could rally people around the flag by saying we were meddling.
And what do folks think would happen in these good ole ewe es of ay if huge crowds gather without a permit, block streets, to protest and the crowd does not disperse when ordered to do so by the cops?
Good on the demonstrators, and good on Obama for speaking out for their right to speak out:
and in case y'all are wondering, ewe es of ay ==> U S of A
I think you're working off an out-of-date set of circumstances. A week ago, Mousavi could be seen as politically similar to Ahmadinejad, but he's now "the opposition leader," and the political realities of that have trumped whatever he was before.
Iranian-Americans do not protest because they want to go back to Iran. They protest because many of them still have family in Iran, and even those that don't will still see Iranians as their own people.
The purpose of an election is not just to pick a new leader. It's to facilitate the transfer of power peacefully, and to do that, it needs to convince the losers that they lost. So saying that the Iranian government is at "fault" while insisting that we should wait for evidence of whether or not the vote was rigged is missing the point. The election was illegitimate, whoever ended up with more votes. Even America's vote audit procedures don't begin with the assumption that the vote was correct, they look for evidence to that effect. (Otherwise, why do an audit?)
If anyone is interested in helping, you might want to try:
Why We Protest - IRAN
http://iran.whyweprotest.net/
I've found #IranElection on Twitter to be a source of up to the second information:
Twitter - #IranElection
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23IranElection
I grudgingly think it's best that the US stay as uninvolved as possible, though. I don't see much likely outcome from stronger US rhetoric on the subject (much less actual involvement) than just providing nationalist ammunition for middle-of-the-road people to rally around their leader against the external threat. Taking sides and making it plain that the US prefers a revolution to succeed makes it easier to paint the Iranian protesters as some sort of 5th column for the Americans, whose victory would serve US interests.
I think focusing on denunciations of government atrocities is better. European countries should also take the lead on that more, because countries like Germany that are major Iranian trade partners have more leverage, and are harder for the Ayatollah to use a bogeymen.
It is interesting, though, how the Bush->Obama change is really making these despots squirm, because Obama is popular with their own people and much more difficult than Bush to hold up as bogeyman. Did you notice how the Khamenei speech spent a bunch of time attacking Bill Clinton (even bringing up Waco!) in an attempt to try to head that off, and convince his people that the Democrats are bad too and it wasn't just Bush/Reagan/Republicans?
"I would hope that the United States government...would say unequivocally that the United States stands for liberty and with those who seek it. Is that really so controversial or so hard?"
It's not enough to merely say "is that really so controversial or so hard." The question that should also be answered in this post is, what good would it do?
Prof. Anderson, what good would you see coming out of a statement made in "support," either for the Iranian people or for the US position?
After sixteen years of Clinton and W, it's nice to again have an adult in charge of foreign policy.
The question is whether it is wise. Like it or not, there's a good argument that such a statement would do more harm than good for the protesters' cause.
Should Obama make feelgood statements at the expense of damaging Iranian democracy?
From the most authoritatively authoritative of all the authoritative authorities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_(goddess):
It appears to me that "Marianne, Goddess of Liberty" is a French thing, and much much worse, is the "Goddess of Liberty" that gave us the French Revolution, The Reign of Terror, and the Napoleonic State that terrorized Europe.
I, for one, do not wish that "Marianne, Goddess of Liberty" smiles on the Iranians, because they will surely end up worse than they are.
The United States does not appear to be turning a deaf ear to pleas from those arranging the protests in Iran, because those people do not appear to be asking for American help (which, against the background of relevant history, would not be surprising).
I root for the good guys in Iran -- to the extent they are identifiable -- and against the authoritarian religious zealots. I also root against more counterproductive American adventurism in that part of the world. When it comes to "helping" Iran, we seem to have done quite enough for a while.
I thought carefully about this. Then I recalled the history of the various Marianne's in France, including 2000's Laetitia Casta as Marianne, then thought about this N-quiteSFW, and there you have it.
"Hopefully things will turn out well, though I don't have that much optimism for that. Civil wars are always bloody, and asymmetric ones where one side has the people but the other side has the troops, even more so.
I grudgingly think it's best that the US stay as uninvolved as possible, though"
Except for that whole collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe thing. Sheesh, has it been so long ago that people have forgotten? Or were you not paying attention due to acute cognitive dissonance?
Pretty convenient the claim that we should stay uninvolved. This neo-isolationism from the so-called Left is a sight to behold.
I also, don't see the difference between what Obama said, professor, and what you say, he should say?
Maybe he can give the Iranians a "reset" button so that they can start anew as though nothing ever happened, the way he had Hillary give the Russians one. Sadly our politicians of all stripes insist on engaging in policy-by-PR-stunt.
I suppose Obama can solve all the domestic problems by pressing his "easy" button while he's at it....
It is not only the opinions of the xenophobes that matter. Not in the short run, as it happens, and even less in the long.
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe was more of an independence movement, of countries freeing themselves from the Russian Empire, than it was an internal revolution. Sure, the governments they overthrew were nominally domestic, but they were propped up by Russia, in some cases pretty directly, by Russian tanks. The exception is in Russia itself, of course, but there actually wasn't much of a "collapse" at all there except in name, as evidenced by the fact that the KGB still runs the country.
If we were talking about an independence movement here, I could see US support being useful.
Well, in the Iranian theocracy, liberty and those who seek it are enemies of the regime that rules Iran for God. What could be more important? They do not see things the way we see things. I do not think a theocracy is a desirable form of government, but I also do not think it is prudent for the U.S. to take action that would antagonize Iran unless it somehow serves a clear national interest.
It is ironic that you write these words one moment before talking about Hungary in 1956, and one minute after admitting you have no expertise on Iran.
During the 1956 uprising in Hungary, and to some extent during the 1991 shi'a uprising in Iraq, the U.S. took a position much along the lines of what you propose — "we stand with the revolutionaries." The protesters took this as a sign that the U.S. would intervene with force.
But of course the U.S. was in no position to deliver on this expectation, and the revolutionaries felt betrayed.
All people are perhaps allergic to foreign powers intervening in domestic political struggles — but Iranians especially so.
The Tobacco Rebellion of 1890, which was one of the first times the traditionally quiescent shi'a clergy entered the political arena, came about when the shah granted the British an unpopular tobacco concession. Russia supported the monarchy during the constitutional revolution of 1906. Then there is the whole issue of the U.S. role in overthrowing Mussadiq and the illegitimacy it lend to the shah. The Soviet Union also tried to influence the course of the revolution after 1979 by supporting the Tudeh Party; when this became public knowledge, the Tudeh was purged.
The common thread in all these events seems to be that foreign powers who intervene in Iranian politics at revolutionary moments do so at their peril — the intervention usually backfires.
Recall one lesson from a much darker revolutionary moment. During the summer of 1918 (July, IIRC), Lenin was on the verge of seizing power in Petrograd. The revelation that he was on the German payroll, effectively acting as an agent of Imperial Germany, prevented him from doing so (temporarily, alas).
In the recent revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, the ancien regime had but one leg to stand on: "all those protesters are the agents of nefarious foreign NGOs seeking to destabilize our country." But President Bush tread lightly, in a way very reminiscent of Obama today, immediately discrediting the dictators' position.
Proclamations of solidarity with the Iranian protesters may salve your conscience. But they will do no good, and might well inflict a lot of damage. (It is unsurprising, therefore, that some news reports claim the protestors are asking the U.S. *not* to issue such proclamations.) Do you really want the U.S. to play into the hands of the likes of Putin and Khamanei?
If Iranians see the uprisings to be authentically Iranian, they are more likely to succeed.
And yet, Fedya, you remember the reset button.
Would you have been able to quote chapter and verse from some kind of bland "General Communique on Mutaul Cooperation between the United States of America and the Russian Federation"?
But you know how it is with translations you read when you are a teenager - they get intertwined with your feelings about the original, even if you've read the original - I can't help but love the Montcrieff translation of the Red and the Black, even though it really does feel utterly unlike the sharp staccato writing of the original.
"If Iranians see the uprisings to be authentically Iranian, they are more likely to succeed."
Of course. But the protesters are not protesting because the see the Supreme Leader as insufficiently Iranian, are they? We would do well to support them in their grievances, to the extent to which those grievances appeal to universal (ok, pomos, transversal) values.
I should think that speaking to those values should be sufficient, as I perceive Obama to be attempting to do, with less alacrity than I might prefer.
It's a long tradition on volokh for the posters to admit they have no particular knowledge of the topic at hand and then immediately criticize, impliedly or directly, Democratic politicians for their positions.
My personal favorite was "Hey look someone wrote an article about privatizing trademark. I don't know anything about trademark, but privatizing stuff is good, right?"
"Garde" is noun whose masculine and feminine forms are identical. A "garde-malade" is a sick-minder--someone who helps you go to the bathroom and get dressed but not someone who helps you get better, because you're past that; an in-home caregiver--and is usually female. For instance some dictionaries, feeling obliged to give every noun a gender, will list "garde du corps" (bodyguard) as masculine and "garde-malade" and "garde-enfant" (babysitter) as feminine.
TO THE PRUDENT: It's snowing in the back-country and we are always hunted. You whose house doesn't weep, in whom greed has crushed love: during all those hot days, your "fire" was just a sick-minder. Too late. Your cancer has spoken. Your native land has no more strength.
You refer to the election as illegitimate. Why? In my earlier post I mentioned that I was perplexed by the opposition, media, and many countries' comments that the election was rigged or otherwise unfair. I've seen no evidence or even reports of ballot boxes missing, people being turned away from polls, people being intimidated from going to the polls, etc. Mousawi was allowed to campaign freely. I agree that there are aspects of the election process in Iran that seem odd too us such as government newspaper endorsements or religious endorsements but these don't alone make for a "rigged" election. In fact, there wasn't a single news report election day that mentioned any irregularities and Iran was blanketed with foreign reporters eagerly looking for such a story. Iran is a conservative, religious country that just re-elected a conservative, religious president. The L.A. Times headline currently reads "Streets of Tehran erupt in fiery chaos" not "Streets of Iran erupt in fiery chaos." The Times then goes on to mention that "thousands continue to protest" in "two protest sites" and that crowds continue to battle police although the police aren't seen in any of the pictures. Wow. I live in L.A. That's a normal Saturday night. I have my doubts about the election but I would still like to have some evidence.
He had nothing, nothing to do with it.
The regime in Iran caused this by being so blatant in their fake results. If they had said Ahole got 43% and Mousavi 35% and there would be a runoff, there would have been grumbling but since those results are plausible, no mass movement.
The regime got greedy or stupid. Or both.
The regime stirred embers that have been smoking for far longer than January 20, 2009 or the Cairo speech.
After 30 years of repressive and incompetent government, a sizable number of people in Iran had enough.
O had nothing to do with what has happened in the last week. It would have happened with George Bush or Bill Clinton or John McCain or Sarah Palin or Joe Biden.
Two pieces of evidence caused at least some people to cry fowl--at least from what I have read.
1) There was a very fast count. My understanding is that Iran uses paper ballots, which means it should be slow and meticulous. That the results were in so soon after the polls closed caused many to suspect fraud.
2) The results didn't make sense. For example, Ahmadinejad carried Mousavi's home town by a landslide, which seems suspicious. It would be akin to Barack Obama carrying Utah. Yes, it is theoretically possible, but just not likely.
You haven't been paying attention. I have seen claims:
in 130 towns there were more ballots cast than registered voters; truck arrived with 70 ballot boxes- 30 sealed; 40 seal broken- those with seals broken were heavily for incumbent; in Tehran out of ballot papers by mid morning.
He helped make this possible by not being an anti-Islamic belligerent jerk and by showing respect for the Iranian people and their culture.
"He had nothing, nothing to do with it."
I believe you are wrong. That Obama was speaking with respect was noticed. Many Iranians didn't wish to be isolated from the international community. Obama was offering negotiations.
Mousavi played on how much better he would do speaking for Iran.
Let's not forget that Obama has spoken directly to the Iranian people before the election - Obama's Nowruz greeting to the Iranian people was an end-run around the regime and a tangible encouragement for the Iranians to seek change, as this anecdote from an Iranian-American girl visiting family in Tehran illustrates:
Arguably, it was Barack Obama who brought down the virtual wall between Iran and the West with his conciliatory and hopeful Nowruz (Iran's New Year) message on YouTube. I looked on as my friends and family watched his message with adoration in Tehran. "Why can't he be our president", one aunt gushed. It hit a chord, mainly because it made Ahmadinejad look foolish.
I don't think you understand how highly regarded Obama is in other countries. It is what he says when he speaks. It is the tone he uses.
You underestimate the significance of his greeting to Iran, and his Cairo speech. It is hard to characterise him as The Great Satan- he doesnt look or act the part.
He gave Iranians hope that a better President could negotiate with Obama.
This might be why the old refrain of "Death to America!" was, in Khamenei's friday speech, bizarrely changed to "Death to England" (England as 21st-century bogeyman, really?). Also why he spent such a large portion of his speech trying to attack Democrats, while dancing around Obama specifically, spending more time on the Clintons as a way to try to tarnish him by proxy. I mean, when an Iranian Supreme Leader has stooped to complaining about Waco, you know he's on the defensive. I almost wonder if he actually set out to find anti-Democratic-Party propaganda, and came across some militia-type right-wing stuff, which would explain how Waco, of all things of the past 20 years he could've chosen, found its way into his speech.
As others have noted, there was evidence of vote-rigging. But my point was a different one: An election is legitimate only if those conducting the election do so in a way that allows the electorate to conclude that is the results reflect the vote. Otherwise, it's just what some guy in the government says, and has no legitimacy beyond the power of that guy. It's the same as not holding an election. If no one is allowed to look for evidence of vote-rigging, none will be found, but that doesn't mean we should sit back without judgment while saying "Well, how do we know the vote is rigged?"
Initially, the opposition demanded that the government prove that a legitimate election took place. The government's response didn't give them evidence that the vote was rigged, it showed that the government was not interested in a legitimate election, and the Iranian people responded to that. Who actually had more votes just doesn't matter anymore.
Agreed. Obama is too young to remember, as are most reading this post no doubt, but in the mid 70's college campus sidewalks across this land were spraypainted with "Down with the Shah", nicely stenciled markings, very tasteful, and all the tasteful pink academics were on board with the effort to remove this obviously evil man, emblematic of US imperialism, scourge of all mankind... it was the good fight... an extension of the good fight... the one they seemingly still haven't stopped fighting.
We see how that all worked out... human waves died as martyrs... small children sent out into the minefields in front of the assault... so no surprise that it's taken a generation to raise up a generation to speak out in Iran... as we're seeing now.
The mullahs seized power in a revolution. Be careful what you wish for, and be especially careful of what you actively support.
Obama's support for free assembly and speech are enough here.
Mr. Anderson's post is definitely more substantive than other conspirators' posts at Volokh Conspiracy that express "utter disgust" at the administration's approach to this issue. Also, I'd like to thank Mr. Anderson for choosing to leave his post open to comments.
peacepolice officers, who have become a para-military system BTW, will shoot protestors if ordered to do so.Here is a link to an old piece by Greenwald (HT LewRockwell blog): here
1) Assuming there was pervasive fraud, then what?
2) Assuming there was no pervasive fraud?
Either way I can see how peaceful protests would beneficial to Iran and these uSA. I can also see how violent protests would benefit Iran and these uSA. And I do not put it beyond Iran and these uSA to use provocators. I just do not know enough. I read somewhere that the opposition leader was involved with creating Hizzbolah in Lebanon. True? I do not know.
If these uSA must say anything then let it be a statement that encourage restraint on all sides, that violence not be used, that protestors respect property and the government not abuse peaceful protests.
We have fraud in our elections here too. Pervasive enough to alter a, say, Federal election? I do not know. I do know that the process to try to invalidate an election due fraud renders the excercise worthless.
Remember old jokes about Florida borrowing Chicago voting booths and Chicago politicians winning the election? How about the origins of "do you need a roof on your church" or "walking money" or "little Jose crying because his father came out the grave to voe for LBJ but did not pay him a visit?"
the protests are about a lot more than the elections now. The grievances have broadened, first to protest the brutality of the reaction to the first protests, and second to air general dissatisfaction with the autocratic regime.
Like others here I sympathize enormously with the protesters (the clip of "Neda" being shot really got to me), and sadly realize there's nothing we can do for them but to express our sympathy- and even that might backfire.
You might be too young to remember, but the Shah imposed extreme brutality: "torture methods [that] included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails." As Joe Klein has pointed out:
Klein goes on to say:
Reagan and Rummy assisted Saddam with lots of useful goodies, like cluster bombs, anthrax, bubonic plague and deadly pesticides (deadly against humans, that is).
Iranians remember the way we supported the Shah, and Saddam, even if we don't. So the best thing we can do for the protesters is shut up, and try to learn something from our mistakes.
If protests erupt in Saudi Arabia, even smaller in scale, the Sudis would react in an incredibly brutal way. We need consistency on how we treat other governments. I have have heard that the Saudis have used machine guns against protestors. True? I do not know but if they did no one would be surprised. It is not our business what Suadi Arabia's government does within the confines of their borders but if condemn Iran we must also condemn Saudi Arabian electoral frauds ... oh, wait, they
do not have electionsbegan holding some sort of election.Is Iran a more open society than Saudi Arabia? I think so but the house of Saud is our bud.
Shame on volokh.com.
Why don't you do the world an even bigger favor and shoot yourself in the head before your brain manages to find the "Post Comment" button again?
That's for sure.
===================
I hope he does it with one of these.
The upshot: just by looking at the last two digits in the official reported totals, one can determine that the numbers were likely (>99% certain) completely fabricated. The election was stolen not by hard-to-execute measures like fake ballots, but just by writing in different numbers!
And the USA, specifically Jimmuh Cahtuh and that blithering idiot Brzezinski, had a hand in setting up the mullahs, and then encouraging Saddam Hussein to frickin invade them after their creation. Call it: Foreign policy by ADD.
For half again as long as the Shah, the mullahs have been prime motivators and paymasters for international terrorism and holy war, in addition to their internal heinousness, the results of which we're seeing on YouTube now. A bad situation made much, much worse. Thanks, Jimmuh.
I agree with you, best not to get involved heavily in this process.
Anyone else struggling?
And, finally, who cares if we are used as scapegoats by Khamenei? When since WWII has there been a facist in the world who did not blame America and the Jews? Do we really credit the Iranian people with so little intelligence - ah, of course, they will cry, mine lying eyes doth deceive, the Americans are shooting my friends!
He doesn't have to 'take sides', but he could call for a recount and condemn the use of irregulars, the blatant suppresion of free speech and the barbarism. He could even say that any regime which resorts to the same against its own people is not legitimate at all.
delenda: I agree mostly with your also blaming the mullah. At some point they take ownership of their problems. But you cannot easily discard 20+ years of KGB Stasi style repression.
As to how our own governments would react to massive protests here, LewRockwell provided a link to wikipdia's Free Speech Zones. Let's take the beam off our own eyes first.
20 plus years? Are you sure.
Free speech zones are not kill zones/beat the crap out of the opposition zones.
"The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he would be with a free Iranian society. In this he is no different from his allies like the Congressional Black Caucus and Bill Ayers, who have shown themselves perfectly comfortable with Castro and Chàvez. Indeed, he is the product of a hard-Left tradition that apologized for Stalin and was more comfortable with the Soviets than the anti-Communists (and that, in Soros parlance, saw George Bush as a bigger terrorist than bin Laden).
Because of obvious divergences (inequality for women and non-Muslims, hatred of homosexuals) radical Islam and radical Leftism are commonly mistaken to be incompatible. In fact, they have much more in common than not, especially when it comes to suppression of freedom, intrusiveness in all aspects of life, notions of "social justice," and their economic programs. (On this, as in so many other things, Anthony Daniels should be required reading — see his incisive New English Review essay, "There Is No God but Politics" , comparing Marx and Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb.) The divergences between radical Islam and radical Leftism are much overrated — "equal rights" and "social justice" are always more rally-cry propaganda than real goals for totalitarians, and hatred of certain groups is always a feature of their societies."
I was working from memory. wikipia says Savak was in business from 1957 to 1979:
What do you think would happen if the ewes get out of the pen, en masse? Silly Iranian mullahs. If they only had setup a Free Speech Zone they could have avoided bad PR.
Obama is profoundly uncomfortable with Iranian mullahs, this is self-evident since for starters they have a religious injunction against recognising his official awesomestness. More seriously, it actually is self-evident.
And anyone who holds Jam's views on America should really live somewhere else. God knows I would not live in such a country as s/he describes.
Actually, if I was king you would like it very much.
Would you care to answer the question, What do you think would happen if protestors, en masse and against police orders, decide to leave the reserved Free Speech Zone?
If I become convinced there is a "foreign monster" that that needs destroying, I will first arrange to take care of my family and financial house (it is my first oath) and then I will volunteer and go into battle. And I do not mean joining the uSA's military. I will go and join those on the ground. I will not grab your son and enslave him in my quest.
Would you accord my sons the same courtesy?
Would you also join the battle of your own free if you believe in a cause strong enough?
BTW, I do have causes that I am perfectly willing to go to war over. Do you?
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