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COMMENTARY
July 11, 2009
Not over yet
Now that all the obituaries have been written for the latest mass-uprising in Iran, it is time to revisit that continuing uprising. I was reading just yesterday a glib BBC report on how the mullahs had learned from the mistakes that cost the Shah his power in 1979. He was too lenient with the demonstrators of the day and let things, like mourning at funerals for the slain, get out of hand.The mullahs, we learn, have taken care not to repeat his mistakes, and have muffled the demonstrators through much more effective techniques, that maximize terror while minimizing fatalities. And while naturally a certain number of their subjects need to be killed to clinch the reign of terror, the regime has the wit to seize the bodies and prevent public burials, or any kind of family memorials, for the deceased. Meanwhile, through Internet and e-mail, I've been reading of the latest demonstrations in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Abadan, Ahwaz, Kerman, Mashhad, Babol, and Sari. In addition to direct Iranian information, still escaping the country in electronic tweets, there is the informal network of old Bush-administration "neo-cons" and such like rogues, closely monitoring feeds from their Persian contacts; and downright begging their successors in the Obama administration to make some noise. Certainly we may congratulate the mullahs for having muffled the BBC, and the rest of the western media, who, after losing their front row seats in Tehran, have retreated from reporting that they have nothing to report, thus leaving the rebellious people of Iran's towns and cities to be beaten and butchered in decent silence. The U.S. and other western governments, who could be keeping the heat on the obscene Islamist regime, and therefore commanding the missing media attention, have themselves "moved on" to G8 public relations gestures towards the hungry in Africa. President Barack Obama, in particular, far from resorting to the "crude rhetoric" of freedom that his predecessor employed, when speaking up for the people of Iran, seems relieved to be able to forget about them now. He has moved on to selling out American security interests to Russia, with tantalizing promises to negotiate the U.S. anti-missile system away, in return for feelgood moments with the invaders of Georgia. There is also the little matter of pressuring the people of Honduras to take their Marxist president back, and agree to let him overthrow their constitution, on the model of Cuba and Venezuela. And then, the need to caress Moammar Gadhafi. While I'm sure none of the above is what the new, blissfully amateur White House thinks it is doing, it is doing it all the same. The notion that appeasement is the only path to peace has always had great power over the minds of people who lack moral character. Like Neville Chamberlain and all the less famous freely-elected disasters of history, they think they are being very clever, and that they are morally superior to the Churchillian and Reaganite "peace through strength" types. The people still in the streets of Iran are long past any such illusions. As I've said before, they are also long past disputing the results of their Potemkin presidential election. They are, to paraphrase an old Czech saying from 1968, demanding a new government, while the government demands a new people. It is almost impossible to find out what is happening on the ground there, in the absence of concerted western efforts to find out. I have seen encouraging accounts of full-dress Revolutionary Guards turning against plainclothed Basij thugs, rather than let them attack unarmed civilians. There are crowd-control issues emerging because the mullahs have arrested more prisoners than their jails can hold, and must therefore herd the new ones into such places as sports arenas -- inside which, once there is a quorum, the chants of "death to Khamenei," "death to the regime," and "God is great" simply resume. I have also been seeing reports of demonstrators setting fires in various parts of Tehran -- a serious matter in the middle of a big drought, with dust storms. But of course I am not in Iran, and have no way to confirm these things. Nor, as a gravely responsible journalist, can I take the accounts at face value, even of purported eyewitnesses who may well be far too emotionally involved to describe, impartially, the scene before them. All I or my reader can do is pray. So I suggest we pray very hard for Persia. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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