Thursday, June 18, 2009
"Memo to the Left"
Over at Pajamas Media, Frank J. Fleming has a good satirical piece posted about the post-election protests in Iran, titled, "Memo to the Left: How About Redirecting the Rage and Scorn?" It starts out:
"Okay, liberals, I have a radical idea I want to run by you: the Iranian government is bad and worthy of some of your outrage.In fairness, liberal blog sites such as HuffPo have done an admirable job of providing a steady stream of text, photos and videos from Iran, clearly in support of the protesters. Broadly speaking, conservatives, centrists and liberals in this country seem reasonably well united in support of those Iranian citizens who are taking to the streets to protest against the Iranian government and the fraud it apparently perpetrated last week. There is sniping about President Obama's reaction (or lack of it) from different quarters, but the story is not really about him. The President's assessment that "difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised" is probably largely correct, looking at Mousavi's history -- and I think ABC's Jake Tapper has it about right -- but hopefully what it going on in Iran right now will end up being more about a metamorphosis in the political structure of the country than about Mousavi as a particular leader.
"Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy. Iran is not a beauty queen speaking out against gay marriage, or Sarah Palin. Why in the world would you want to direct any scorn towards a brutal theocracy seeking nuclear weapons? It’s not obvious, but let me explain.
"Now, I know it doesn’t take much to convince conservatives to be against Iran. You just tell them, 'It’s full of foreigners.' And they’ll be like, 'What?! Let’s nuke it! Let’s nuke it now!' Liberals, of course, are more sophisticated and will take a much more measured approach. When you tell them that Iran has an evil government worthy of outrage, they’ll point out the obvious — that it’s not America."
In the unfortunate event that there is a return to status quo ante in Iran, it will be harder for those on the left in the U.S. and in Europe to support negotiations without preconditions in the same sense that could have been possible a week ago. The regime has been de-legitimized in their eyes. Over the past week, those on the right probably haven't changed their views too much about the Iranian regime, though perceptions about the Iranian people may have changed.
2 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Jun 18, 08:31:00 PM:
"...perceptions about the Iranian people may have changed."
If nothing else, the unfair perception of them being cowardly may have been put to rest.
By 
Dawnfire82, at
Thu Jun 18, 08:44:00 PM:
I just read that Khamenei is going to be speaking tomorrow at Tehran University where students were murdered by the Basij the other day.
The senior governmental leader going in person to lead Friday prayers at the location where the government just murdered innocents. Seems like a choice occasion for a martyrdom, doesn't it?
