Skip to main content

The Revolution This Time


President Obama’s muffled response to the revolution in Iran -- and it is a revolution – is due to his perception that Iran might possibly use strong statements supporting those who resist oppression in that country, mostly Western oriented young people and intellectuals, to effect its own purposes: He does not wish, by imprudent statements, to allow the United States to become “a foil” used by oppressors to snuff out the resistance.

There is a serious objection to this diplomatic nonsense: The oppressors in Iran – and they are oppressors – will seize on any pretext to accomplish their purposes. Even Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon’s mild retorts, paralleling those of Obama, have been used by the oppressor regime to suppress the revolution. To the oppressors in Iran, all words are fighting words. All words are foils.

Obama’s excessive caution is a double-edged sword. It is also used by the oppressor regime as a permission to commit violence on the resistance.

When a victorious Janos Kadar said, following the suppression of the Hungarian revolt in 1957, that there could be no counterrevolution in Hungary, Albert Camus, the apostle of liberty in France at the time, replied that Kadar was right – because his was the counterrevolution, a betrayal of the liberty of Hungarians.

We need clear voices like this in the White House. The revolution in Iran, were it to succeed, would secure the promise of the more democratic Iran that was betrayed by Amidinajad and his overlords in Iran. That was the counterrevolution. This is the revolution.

Comments

Don Pesci said…
Mousavi is almost unimportant, a vehicle for change, no more.

Popular posts from this blog

Casey Chadwick’s Uneasy Life after Death

Casey and her mother Wendy "I just started grief counseling. I'm always sad. I'm sad and in pain and I miss her." Wendy Hartling   Hartling is the mother of Casey Chadwick, murdered in 2015 by Jean Jacques , an illegal Haitian immigrant. Jacques was convicted of the murder of Chadwick in a New London Superior Court jury trial and sentenced by Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed to a 60 year term in prison. Since Jacques is 44 years of age, the sentence was, in effect, a life sentence. Connecticut Commentary coverage of the Chadwick murder may be found here , and here   and here . Jacques could not have been sentenced to death because Connecticut’s Democrat dominated General Assembly, under pressure from the state Supreme Court, had abolished Connecticut’s death penalty law in 2012 . The slaughter of Chadwick was particularly brutal. Her body had been found by a friend who, opening a door to a closet, discovered Chadwick stuffed in a dark corner drenched in blo...

Understanding North Korea Through Dramaturgy

The U.S. military is sending the Vinson Strike Group, including the carrier and two guided-missile destroyers, to operate in the Western Pacific Ocean in response to Pyongyang’s recent missile tests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, asked about the strike force, issued a terse statement: “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” Is this a post-Syrian bombing mission? Will the US take out North Korea’s missile launching sites, possibly with the unspoken concurrence of China? Never let a bombing go to waste. There are some in the United States who think any such incident should be used to rid North Korea of that runty little totalitarian cock-of-the-walk who keeps his countrymen starved, in fear and at his knees. Since we only have one chance, they say, go for the clean sweep -- no more Kims. Connecticut Commentary is reprinting an earlier piece about the Kims here. Best read with a glass of port.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."