Robert Farley can insist it's "unoriginal" all he wants, but this is a great, great post, truly one of the best I've ever read.
And it speaks to a central truth about what's going on in Iran right now -- as much as we'd like to think we can help the Iranian protestors, or influence things, or push the country in a certain direction, it's not about us. What this all boils down to is whether Iran's "Tank Commanders" obey their Guardian Council masters or their better angels. Let's spend the next few days and weeks praying it's the latter.
2 comments:
If a Theocracy uses force against its own people, wouldn't it immediately lose credibility with every non-extremist Muslim in the Middle East?
I just can't see this thing settling down and going away. It will be interesting to see if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad even returns the country.
First, prayers are definitely in order.
I don't think anyone has a complete grip on what is at work, let alone the dynamics of how it might develop. I personally think attempts to analyze (Is Tank Guy most important or is it Tank Commander?) are pretty iffy. Ex: Who knew that Twitter would play a role in what is happening now? I have no doubt that if it wanted to do so, the Ayatollah could invoke enough carnage to put a complete stop to it, but that is almost surely self-defeating. I heard one commentator suggesting that the Ayatollah might abdicate, but that seems so impossible it is easy to dismiss. The President himself is almost irrelevant except as a fulcrum from which power can be leveraged. One thing we Americans know how to do better than the Iranis: if you are going to steal an election, at least make it close, and give it some credibility. If they had announced the same victor with closer results and waited a little longer to make the announcement (so that it might have been at least possible to count the ballots), I doubt any of this would happen. So, is Election Announcing Guy even more powerful than Tank Commander?
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