Yes, it is a good idea to spread the story of this abomination. If we wait for the MSM to change their tune ( the song-and-dance first originated by Jimmah) poor Iran will indeed be lost.
At the same time it is crucial to understand the background and context of these farcical Iranian “elections”.
Here is Ms. West’s take on recent events:
Having been in transit during the start of the Iranian election protests, I’ve taken a little time to come up to speed on the issue. Scanning English-language (UK) papers in airports, I will say that my initial reaction to the euphoria I saw breaking out all over the West -- especially the US? -- to the obtusely labeled “green” revolution was, Why should we be so happy about Mousavi? When I learned that Mousavi was Mullah Rafsanjani’s boy, that A-jad was Mullah Khameini’s boy, my wonder deepened, as in: What’s the diff?
Well, I haven’t “been in transit” unless you count major avoidance as transit. I just couldn’t bear the predictability of the whole thing. The “whole thing” is a rigged election followed by killing young people. You could smell it coming a mile off. I’m too tired to be outraged anymore. Our pusillanimous President does nothing but cringe and play nice. No use speaking truth to power when power is busy bowing and scraping to those who want to kill us, too, not just their own people.
Ms. West turns to John Bolton’s essay at Politico to back up her assertions:
Iran’s “democracy” under the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is a wondrous thing, as the June 12 presidential election and its riotous aftermath proved.
First, only candidates screened and approved by the mullahs in the Guardian Council could run - in this case, exactly four presidential candidates out of nearly 500 who applied. Second, Iran’s highest official is not the president but, rather, the supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Third, Iran’s election officials are not independent but rigorously controlled by the supreme leader. Fourth, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and other security forces stand ready, willing and able to preserve public safety if the “wrong” candidate appeared to win or protested in defeat.
And fifth, whoever won wasn’t going to change Iran’s 20-year campaign to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons or its role as the central banker for international terrorism. The supreme leader and the IRGC control Iran’s foreign and national security policies, under both “reformist” presidents like Seyed Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alike.
Credulous foreign reporters missed all of this, partly because they spent their time talking to middle-class Iranians or Iranian ex-pats who think like them rather than doing hard investigative work to understand what was actually afoot.
“Credulous”? That’s being kind. They’re lazy. They’re ignorant. They’re overpaid. Big time malfeasance in the media corps. If any military person filed an after-action report which resembled what the MSM is churning out on Iran, he’d be on his way out of the field of action real quick. We can’t afford these people any more. The media class is a parasite.
Mr. Bolton continues:
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Perhaps these reporters never covered elections in Chicago. Some commentators predicted that President Barack Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo would benefit Iranian “moderates,” and some compared the main challenger’s wife to Michelle Obama. Even Obama, self-referential as always, was caught up in the rapture, citing his Cairo speech as signaling “the possibility of change” in Iran.
Oh, they’ve covered Chicago all right. And any time Obama is in the Chicago picture frame, they cover it with flowers and kisses. They people can’t become much more craven without reverting to a form of invertebrate.
Ms. West quotes John Bolton again, this time from Fox:
When Bolton further noted that Mousavi had been the Ayatollah Khomeini’s prime minister that was more than enough for me. Still, there was more. As Bolton put it to Fox’s Greta van Susteren:
“Well, he [Mousavi] was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s prime minister. I mean, let’s get started there. So that qualifies him. He is the person who negotiated with A.Q. Khan to set up the beginnings of the Islamic revolution’s nuclear weapons program. He’s fully committed to Iranian terrorism, a lot of it began under his administration. So whatever changes there might be inside Iran, make no mistake, the foreign policy would remain essentially the same.”
As Ms. West said in the beginning: what’s the diff?
There is more, much more, at Andrew Bostom’s site, particular posts on background and context which Ms. West has linked in her post. Thus, I won't repeat them here.
An essay to be highly recommended. We are fortunate to have Ms. West's voice on the internet. It is always reasoned and careful.
I'm returning to a horizontal position with a pillow over my head, the position I'd assumed before all the email horrors began to trickle in. It is awful to know there is nohting, not one damned thing, we can do to save those young people.
May God have mercy on Iran. And on us, for the stupidly short-sighted and interfering foreign diplomacy that helped land Iran in this mess. We certainly were not innocent bystanders.
20 comments:
Ditto.
Carter has been the worst president in US history. His mistake will be remembered for the next centuries if not millenia. Even as a non believer I can only pray that Obama won't be that bad...
This article by Gary Sick quotes the Moderate Mullah Mousavi as demanding reform "that returns us to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution."
Yippee.
islam o' phobe: This article by Gary Sick quotes the Moderate Mullah Mousavi as demanding reform "that returns us to the pure principles of the Islamic Revolution.".
And there you have it, folks! Islam is going to "reform". It's going to become more intolerant, more violent, more misogynistic, more puritanical, more pious and, of course, more terrorist!!!
As I have repeatedly noted, Mousavi represents ZERO change. Only the riots in Tehran represent anything worthy of notice or commendation, for they are making the mullahs appear powerless. How sad that the only way to make the mullahs look any worse will be to goad them into machine-gunning down a few crowds of protesting people.
One can only wonder if the MSM would even give such a terrible event one single second's air time. It is just as easy to presume that they would, for once in history, abandon their usual credo of "if it bleeds, it leads" and ignore the situation entirely.
I hold we have no dog in this fight. But that does not imply we have no interest that there be a fight, that it be as viscious as we can help it be, and that both dogs emerge severely mauled. (My sincere apologies to animal lovers for the unhappy, but apt, metaphore.)
And, Dymphna, I especially like your phrase, "The media class is a parasite." As the ancient Weathermen might have put it, and with more melodrama: It is "the fascist insect that sucks the blood of the people."
I'm with Top Kafir.
I don't really care what goes on there. Unless Iranians are planning on using bullets to get rid of the mullahs, their efforts are likely to fail and result in imprisonment, torture, and death for themselves and their families. My view is that they either go out blasting or leave well enough alone.
Yes, the best possible outcome of the election was fraud, an uprising and brutal crackdown.
Yes Ransfanjani and Mousavi are only less odious than Khameni and Ahmadenijad, however that difference is worth supporting....but the real benefit of this episode is that its moved beyond Mousavi and Ahmadenijad....its moved past Mousavi, Mousavi if he wants to survive will have to ride towards new more radical reformist policies.
However even if this all dies down and nothing changes, something has changed, the educated youth of Iran have been radicalized and they are the deep seeds of Irans and Iranian cultures own demise. They are the Wests 60s New Left radicals, the baby boomers who will march through the institutions with a giant chip on their shoulder and the impetus to so change the system from the inside as to destroy it.
That should be the focus of the West, the role that the KGB, Cubans, and Soviets played....funding these peoples inside war on Iran, lawfare, money for New Iranian Leftist radical groups, front groups funnelling money into the effort to tear down Iran in a multitudinous attack from the inside by its own radicalized anti Iranian anti Islamic young people.
No need to reinvent the wheel.
PRCalDude: Unless Iranians are planning on using bullets to get rid of the mullahs, their efforts are likely to fail and result in imprisonment, torture, and death for themselves and their families. My view is that they either go out blasting or leave well enough alone.
I, too, am somewhat amazed that the Iranian crowds, when assaulted by a single leading officer or advancing motorcycle cop, do not enclose - amoeba-like - around the individual and tear them from limb to limb.
Some of the footage at HotAir (in #7 of 14), shows a motorcycle cop narrowly escaping a crowd that burns his bike and pursues him (well-beaten), to the local precint station.
EscapeVelocity: That should be the focus of the West, the role that the KGB, Cubans, and Soviets played....funding these peoples inside war on Iran, lawfare, money for New Iranian Leftist radical groups, front groups funnelling money into the effort to tear down Iran in a multitudinous attack from the inside by its own radicalized anti Iranian anti Islamic young people.
I like the way you think but it is not enough.
Iran is far too close to acquiring nuclear weapons for such a wait-and-see attitude. The mullahs must be crushed, now. Not next year, not next month, not next week, not tomorrow but NOW.
A nuclear armed Iran will go down in history as this new century's greatest strategic blunder.
The whole thing smells like a counterintelligence mission. Why publicly rig an election when you control all the candidates? To get the underground opposition to reveal themselves so you can kill them.
EscapeVelocity, why do yo think Iran's youth are the seeds of its downfall? Iran has has owned the schools and the news for 30 years, time to mold the minds of what is now more than 70% of their population. If anything, Iran's youth should be some of the most fervent Muslims anywhere in the Islamic sphere.
There is no time to wait and see with Iran. I do care what goes on over there because letting Iran become armed with nukes will be one of the biggest mistakes of all time. The pigs that rule over Iran with an iron, bloody fist need to killed however, by whatever means gets the job done. Tomorrow will be too late should Iran get their hands on nukes of any kind.
Waiting and playing footsee games with sanctions and "tough talk" have gone no where and will go no
where.
No matter what comes out of these protests, Iran HAS changed. The POTUS is to cowardly to even lend verbal support to these brave Iranians who are dying at the hands of the mullahs and Islam. Even the Leader of Israel has come out strongly in support of those battling the mullahocracy in Iran. The mullah obamaham goes out for ice cream and plays golf. How fitting and typical.
We can thank Jimmy Carter for much of this mess that has brought Iran to where it is now and the administrations that followed have not helped out either. I think Dymphna summed it up rather well in closing:
May God have mercy on Iran. And on us, for the stupidly short-sighted and interfering foreign diplomacy that helped land Iran in this mess. We certainly were not innocent bystanders.
Amen, Dymphna, Amen.
And on us, for the stupidly short-sighted and interfering foreign diplomacy that helped land Iran in this mess
Iran would have been in this mess regardless. The emerging secular and democratic Iran that existed before the Shah is just as repugnant to a devout Muslim as the Shah himself, because both are ultimately products of the infidel. The Shah is pretext, the corrupting influences of the infidel are the ultimate reason for the Revolution. Look what happened after the Shah was deposed: the secular allies of the Muslims were quickly executed or imprisoned once their usefulness had ended.
randian,
Well obviously a lot of them have a problem with the status quo in Iran. They have access to the internet and have seen the freedom that the West offers.
No doubt many of them arent fully radicalized yet, but that is what the West should do, infuse them with feminizm, victimization politics, militancy, anti religion, anti establishmentism, total disregard for societal and civilizational tradition, the ideas of the New Left tweaked for Islam and Iran.
Well obviously a lot of them have a problem with the status quo in Iran. They have access to the internet and have seen the freedom that the West offers.
Iran has something the rest of the Muslim Middle East doesn't, the legacy of Persia. The Muslims never fully destroyed Persia's non-Muslim past like they did elsewhere in the Muslim sphere, nor were they able to replace the language with Arabic like they did in most of North Africa. There is a tension in Iran, a dim memory of what Islam did to them and an unconscious desire to escape it. The Revolution's attempt to complete the destruction of Persian history by bulldozing Persian ruins is something people still remember there. Of course they can't escape Islam without help, its hold is too strong on the minds and hearts of Iran's people. Even if the Mullahs were deposed, it wouldn't change anything because the people would simply revert to the mental prison of Islamic norms. So long as our President is an admirer of Islam, they will not get that help.
Mousavi IS of the Mullahs, but the open revolt against the Mullahs is more than him, and he's crossed the Rubicon. Either the movement around him kills the Mullahs regime, or Mousavi and his followers are dead. There are no other alternatives.
Second, the rebellion is not about Western Democracy, but power sharing among the people, who are mostly urbanized and middle class, vs. the rural revolutionary vanguard who get all the goodies. It is a power struggle.
If the people win, Iran will not become our friend. There is a good chance, however, that Iran would cease to be our sworn enemy.
If Mousavi and his forces win this one, the Mullahs regime is dismantled, Khamenei, Ahamedinejad, the IRGC, and much else of the regime ends up dead or in prison. There is a chance of a broad, and probably "stick-able" deal with the people of Iran for them to drop nukes in exchange for security guarantees and dropping Hezbollah/Hamas, along with economic assistance. There is no chance with the Mullahs.
It would not be a Western regime with a Wsstern conception of human rights and rule of law, but better than what we see now. It's a net win for the US security interests if the Mullahs are overthrown. It's a net loss if they stay.
Yes Mousavi is tarnished. We take men as we find them, and it's no longer about him. It's about the Mullahs. Most Iranians want them gone, and wish to live like Turks, Algerians, Tunisians, and so on. Who are not our friends. But at least, not our explicit enemies.
Of course they can't escape Islam without help, its hold is too strong on the minds and hearts of Iran's people. Even if the Mullahs were deposed, it wouldn't change anything because the people would simply revert to the mental prison of Islamic norms. --- radian
I fully agree with this. And Islam is no Christianity, and that eing the case the New Leftist ideological fight with Islam will be much tougher. Protestant Christians being Classical Liberals and allowing the space for free thought and opposition organizations to flourish and attack Christianity itself and Western Civilization in general.
However tough the fight is, its still a fight worth persuing. That is the misreading of Reagan, its not about how hard the struggle is, but about pursuing the struggle to promote and defend liberty regardless of the odds. Its not about doing what is possible or likely, its about doing what is right and good, regardless of the odds.
A New Left style attack on Islam and the Iranian system and regime is the best policy that should be instigated, supported and well funded....focussing the alienation and radicalization of the beat down educated youth into instruments to do just that, attack Islam from the inside.
I certainly agree that Obama has seriously seemingly rose colored views of Islam. However he did make some of the points of this article in his few comments about Iran over the last few days, such as that Mousavi and Ransfanjani arent Liberal Messiahs that some in the West make them out to be.
Whiskey I dont disagree with what you say there, at all.
However there is no reason not to support Mousavi and Ransfanjani, and cultivate the future seeds of the deconstruction of Islam and Iranian traditional civilzation in its newly resentful beatdown youth.
Furthermore Whiskey, I think that division that you pointed out, the true conservative of Iran is rooted in Persian history, tradition, and culture....should be fully developed and pushed by teh New Left Baby Boomer Iran movement, as an assault on the Establishment, status quo, legitimacy of the Islamic Revolutionary regime. Another source of division and identity crisis, politics, victimization, etc et all.
It was the educated Left in Iran who agitated against the Shah who was bringing in reforms but not fast enough for their liking. However, their installing the Ayatollah in his place made no sense whatsoever considering their complaints about the Shah. They substituted a theocracy and thugocracy for a secular monarchy that was divesting power.
I remember seeing an interview with an Iranian woman lawyer who bemoaned the fact that she was less free to pursue her various progressive causes and cases post Shah. Well what on earth did she expect from an Islamic mullah? Iran went backward by centuries as was perfectly predictable by anyone with the slightest familiarity with Islam and sharia law. (That would exclude Jimmy Carter and his entire advisorship).
The Left are seriously disconnected from reality and unable to foresee the results of their actions. Their one genius is to undermine and break things and some breakage is now again underway in Iran, but to what end? They prefer the mullahs' minion behind door #2? Poison by another name is just as toxic.
From our point of view, the more unrest in Iran the better, but what are these people driving at? How do they picture their ideal life under an Islamic state? It seems unlikely they're aiming at emulating Turkey's separation of mosque and state when they VOLUNTARILY brought in a relic from centuries ago to rule them.
What do Leftists in Iran want? They love totalitarianism. Is it that they thought THEY would be in power, that the ayatollah would be just a white bearded symbolic figure like Santa Claus? Just as Western leftists imagine that after using Muslims as a battering ram to break down order, those Muslims will retire quietly to their caves and leave ungodly atheist leftists they despise to rule the rubble?
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Baron,
At least most of the Left and the Right are together on this, and it will serve to help educate more of the 'dhimmidiots' about Sharia Law. I hope you are well. Thank you for keeping up the great work! Last week I was Checking out: iran.twazzup.com/ and that got me to see the brilliance of: twitter.com
Wanting help managing 'my channel' got me to discover: tweetdeck.com &
twitterfeed.com/ & twitrobot.com
Go for it!
:)
absurd thought-
your Supreme God says
there is NO terrorism...
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
don't speak out against evil
respect mullacracies
pretend they are civilized...
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
create religious police
bust women for showing skin
men for not having beards...
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
MAD mullahs should be in charge
beating students and children
and freaking about tweets
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USpace
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All real freedom starts with freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech there can be no real freedom.
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Philosophy of Liberty Cartoon
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Death By Stonings Are Honorable
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PS - Let's get more CJs tweeting, leave Tw add. on blogs - HaltTerrorism.com please RT
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:)
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