One word: balls.
The Ukranians had their orange or yellow or rose or whatever revolution last year, throwing out Russian-manipulated polls and ushering in a yearlong government lead by a man allegedly poisoned by Cream of Dioxin Soup.
The Russian puppet regime could have cracked down on them. Hard. Put instead, things got worked out, and there’s even been a follow-up election.
Meanwhile, the Iranians continue to allow their mullahs to rule over them, and despite past agitations by students and ongoing skirmishes by Kurdish separatists, Khatami still rules as the Persian Oracle of Islam and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still rattling sabres like this recent metal-waving incident for the benefit of the AP:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday again criticized Israel and called on Jews to leave the Mideast and “return to their fatherlands” in Europe.
“We say that this fake regime [Israel] cannot … logically continue to live,” he said, according to a translator for The Associated Press.
Ahmadinejad, in a wide-ranging news conference that included international journalists for only the second time in his short term, said anti-Semitism drove Jews out of Europe into Israel.
“We believe that Jews like any other human beings have the right to live in happiness and prosperity and to benefit from security,” he said, according to a CNN translator. “Allow them to go back to their own fatherlands and countries.”
“Human beings?” Never mind the constant stream of propaganda calling Jews monkeys and pigs and dogs courtesy of Iranian-funded publishers and broadcasters. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.
“Drove Jews out of Europe?” Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Jews driven out of Arabic and Islamic nations to Israel in retaliation for the establishment of Israel and rejection of any comprimise solution by the international community in the late Forties. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.
So how is Iran not like the Ukraine? Well, the last Iranian elections had any reformist or non-Islamist candidates hamstrung or cut entirely from the ballow, and what was the reaction?
Okay, so it was an angry one. But angry crickets. Or no consequence. Progress halted, back to the Seventh Century with Twenty-first century technology, like a baby with an AK-47 instead of a bone rattle.
Are the students too cowardly to riot in the streets again, are they just waiting for the Americans to do something to provide the opportunity to revolt, or are they waiting for Ahmadinejad to fulfill a deep-seeded Islamic wish of scorching Tel Aviv before rising up and turning back the fundamentalist restrictions on Iranian society?
Don’t call it a UN or International effort to stop Iran. UN’s punished Iran by putting them on the nonproliferation committee as a deputy chairman. UK’s Jack Straw has already pulled out his prayer rug and bowed towards Tehran in fear. The Chinese are making deals for more oil to fuel their growing economy, and Russia keeps selling the rope that Iran will hang the Jews with.
If they’re going to act, they may want to act soon, because if Ahmadinejad has placed civilian and academic institutions on top of buried nuclear sites, there’s going to be awful lot of dead students when the bunker-busters start dropping.
Not to mention the proud history of slaughtering or expelling entire Jewish communities for refusal to adopt Islam. There was a thriving Jewish community in Cordoba — until the Almohads yemach shemam expelled them, along with the other Jews from those parts of Spain that the Almohads conquered. The Rambam and his father were among those who were forced to leave with only the clothes on their backs. The same persecution later spread to Morocco (forcing the Rambam to flee again), Yemen, and other parts of the Muslim world.
Leave aside for now the repressive laws that the Muslims have long imposed on Jews for the ‘privilege’ of living in Muslim countries. Leave aside the collaberation of the Iraqis, the Palestinians and others with the Nazis and the massacres of Jews in Muslim countries before and during the second world war. When can we drop this fantasy that Muslim mistreatment of Jews is a recent phenomenon and is strictly a response to Zionism? Let’s stop confusing cause with effect.
Problem is, Iran is likely to be attacked from the outside soon. I’m not against that- given their behaviour, it’s the least bad way to deal with them.
But preparations for an attack on a country have the side effect that people in that country tend to circle the wagons. I’m not saying that it should be so. In an ideal world, people would support a more civilised foreign government over a lunatic domestic one, but in this world, they often won’t.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that the attack on Iran should be canceled because of this, I’m just saying that less Iranian opposition to the regime is an unfortunate side effect of the preparations for it.
When your house is on fire, you should dissolve the fire, but you shouldn’t be surprised if, unfortunately, this involves things getting wet. If a country’s government is acting in a way that threatens other countries (ok, I guess that’s an understatement here), and nothing short of military force can stop it, then you should attack that country, but you shouldn’t be surprised if, unfortunately, this involves a bit more support for the government in that country for a while.
As for the Ukraine comparision, I guess the difference is that in Iran, the regime *did* crack down on them, hard. Opposition protest after opposition protest was dissolved by government forces. Under such circumstances, it’s a bit more difficult to have a color revoultion than in Ukraine, where protestors assembled in the midst of the capital for days without being thrown out.
I have been informed that I have overlooked one recent example: Nepal.
Unfortunately, I have heard that there are several nuclear facilities underneath Jewish areas of Tehran. Iran is hiding behind Tehran’s 20,000 remaining Jews.
chsw
chsw…that sounds like quite the rumor. Bizzare indeed.
Though I am not old enough to know the holocaust, I just never thought civilization would dare travel this road of persecution on such a scale again. Yet, every day it seems we move closer and closer to the inevitible. A war I dare not think about. I just hope enough nations will step up before it comes to that. BUt it is looking so bleak…sigh.
SpongeBob,
If we are lucky the US will stand with Israel. don’t expect any others. Maybe Oz will, but they have only moral support to offer in this case.
The Iranians have until their lunatic government shoots the first nuke at somebody or arranges the first terrorist nuke attack. At that point all other considerations will become moot, and the US and Israel must respond with massive retaliation if only to warn other nutjobs that there are hideous consequences for themselves if they start with the nuke fireworks. If the Iranians don’t want to be fried by being in the middle of a nuke exchange they must act now to overthrow the Mad Mullahs. It’s their primary responsibility, after all,m they put these nutjobs in power 27 years ago. Anyone with a brain could have seen it was a stupid mistake at the time, and it’s now up to them to rectify it. Their lives are at stake.