For those who say the US shouldn't meddle

[DarrinS]

in Iran...


Why do the demonstrators have signs written in English? Who are they for?

[clambake]

because they're talking to you.

[clambake]

i'm from n. ireland and i'm quite sure that the US is the only place on earth where english is spoken.

[Wild Cobra]

in Iran...


Why do the demonstrators have signs written in English? Who are they for?

Good point.

Thing is that Iran has a vibrant history of free enterprise before President Carters policies caused political negative regime change in Iraq and Iran. The people of both countries enjoyed far more freedom than today, and it wasn't so long ago for them to forget.

[Winehole23]

in Iran...


Why do the demonstrators have signs written in English? Who are they for?

The rest of the world. Farsi isn't widely read/understood.

[boutons_deux]

The lingua franca of the world/business/Internet is now English.

Are you so egocentric that you think they are signs JUST for America?

[DarrinS]

Great Moments in World History

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

"It's not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling ... in Iranian elections,"

[DarrinS]

From the front lines

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1245...s_opinion_main

President Obama's speech was good; he says that he will support us. He also said that nations must decide the fate of their countries by themselves. I agree with him, but now we don't have any power to change the situation, so we need help and attention.

We ask the president not to accept this coup d'etat.

[urunobili]

dunno but it's better to stay away from WTF they decide to do...

[Winehole23]

*Tough talk* from the POTUS would give the Ayatollahs ammo against the the protesters. It doesn't help the protesters. It just makes us feel better. It's childish and selfish.

Really Darrin, what business is it of ours if Iran is free or not?

[boutons_deux]

St Ronnie was all Hollywood, no substance. His "tear down" schtick was pure Hollywood, had NOTHING to with the financial/industrial collapse of Soviet Union house of cards, destroyed by the collapse in oil prices/demand in the severe early/mid80s world-wide recession and $100Bs of hard $$ wasted in Afghanistan.

[DarrinS]

*Tough talk* from the POTUS would give the Ayatollahs ammo against the the protesters. It doesn't help the protesters. It just makes us feel better. It's childish and selfish.

Really Darrin, what business is it of ours if Iran is free or not?

This seems to be the prevailing liberal philosophy.


I would think that the benefits of a free, democratic Iran would be blatantly obvious to anyone.

[DarrinS]

St Ronnie was all Hollywood, no substance. His "tear down" schtick was pure Hollywood, had NOTHING to with the financial/industrial collapse of Soviet Union house of cards, destroyed by the collapse in oil prices/demand in the severe early/mid80s world-wide recession and $100Bs of hard $$ wasted in Afghanistan.

Your little comments never add to anyhthing on this board. Just saying.

[coyotes_geek]

This seems to be the prevailing liberal philosophy.


I would think that the benefits of a free, democratic Iran would be blatantly obvious to anyone.

And what would the costs be? Got a way to get Iran to become free and democratic that doesn't involve another war?

Don't you think that we've already got enough on our plate without getting involved in another nation-building campaign?

[DarrinS]

*Tough talk* from the POTUS would give the Ayatollahs ammo against the the protesters. It doesn't help the protesters. It just makes us feel better. It's childish and selfish.

Really Darrin, what business is it of ours if Iran is free or not?

Actually, I don't even want him to "talk tough". The dude is a master of words and I just wish he would use his gift to embolden the demonstrators. Let them know we are all watching. He kinda made it sound like we don't care who wins.

[Winehole23]

This seems to be the prevailing liberal philosophy.

As expoused by Henry Kissinger, for example.

I would think that the benefits of a free, democratic Iran would be blatantly obvious to anyone.

Go ahead, name the benefits.

[clambake]

Good point.

Thing is that Iran has a vibrant history of free enterprise before President Carters policies caused political negative regime change in Iraq and Iran. The people of both countries enjoyed far more freedom than today, and it wasn't so long ago for them to forget.

the shah was a butcher and you're an idiot.

[coyotes_geek]

the shah was a butcher and you're an idiot.

But he was "our" butcher...........

[clambake]

But he was "our" butcher...........

i couldn't have said it better

[Winehole23]

He kinda made it sound like we don't care who wins.

It's called diplomacy. The opposition loses legitimacy at home if it appears the US is helping them, particularly given the history of US meddling in Iran. You don't get that?

Also, Mousavi is not what you'd call a Jeffersonian democrat. He's a Khomeini crony, a former hardliner himself, and isn't "anti" the Islamic Republic. On the contrary, he sees himself as an extension of it, as does much of his popular support.

[DarrinS]

Hopenchange for America, but not Iran.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061803495.html

Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word that America is on their side.

And what do they hear from the president of the United States? Silence. Then, worse. Three days in, the president makes clear his policy: continued "dialogue" with their clerical masters.

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

Moreover, this incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren't dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

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.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the ins utions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs's disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, President Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the an hesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

[Winehole23]

Are you capable of responding in your own words, D? I wonder sometimes.

[DarrinS]

It's called diplomacy. The opposition loses legitimacy at home if it appears the US is helping them, particularly given the history of US meddling in Iran. You don't get that?.

Being anti-American in Iran isn't what it used to be. The hundreds of thousands of Iranian protesters aren't chanting anti-American slogans.

[DarrinS]

Are you capable of responding in your own words, D? I wonder sometimes.

Well, you just regurgitated the same position that John Kerry put forth in his op ed from a couple of days ago. Can you?

[FaithInOne]

Personally, I couldn't care less about either side in Iran. I like that Obama is not playing into this circus.

Better to be fighting each other than us