When I heard the events in Iran were the “Green Revolution,” I was very skeptical. Green is the color of political Islam. It’s the dominant color on the flag of Saudi Arabia and the headbands of Hezzbollah. It’s bad enough these color revolutions are supposed to capture our imagination without occasioning much in the way of inquiry. But a green one in Iran?!?
I’m glad I’m not alone. Abbas Barzegar notes that Ajad probably won the election, and mass demonstrations have been had by both sides. In other words, don’t believe the hype.
Diana West shares my view that Mousavi’s tenure as Iran’ prime minister in the 1980s were not exactly the country’s salad days, particularly from the perspective of the US. I know, I know. It’s democracy! It’s people power! What’s 241 Marines killed in Lebanon when we’re talking about people with faux hawks using Twitter!!! West reports to great effect that in the recent presidential debate in Iran–a first–the supposedly great guy Mousavi faulted Ajad for not executing the British sailors that supposedly drifted into Iranian waters. Be careful what you wish for.
Richard Spencer over at Takimag.com notes that the neoconservatives’ romantic passion for democratic revolution is totally immune to facts and recent events in Iraq among others. It’s a very adolescent and distinctly unconservative impulse that gets carried away by street demonstrations and does not consider what in fact is being sought. Burke’s central and important insight was that change can make things even worse in what is presently a bad regime. Consider the demonic French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, the pointless street violence in France every generation or so. This situation is particularly galling because no matter who wins, this is a stolen election because the Islamic authorities must preapprove parties and candidates to even run in Iran.
The whole event, particularly the credulous western response, is surreal. It’s a sign of the way Bush has corrupted conservatism that so many self-described conservatives now think that democracy in the Third World is the be all end all without regard to the content of the leadership or the nature of their claims to legitimacy. It’s as if we’re getting excited by some election in the Soviet Union as a watersheld, where minor issues of emphasis and personality were the only real objects of debate, and such elections (even if hotly disputed) were effectively meaningless.
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I think you are correct about not getting too caught up in this before we know what it is. I was going over the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and was surprised to learn what helped to ignite them. It wasn’t all democracy and such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_anti-African_protests
I wonder if part of this neocon fantasy is an unconscious nostalgia for those wonderful counterculture ’60s (when today’s older neocons were New Leftists). “Shut it down!” “Right on!”
Or maybe it goes farther back than that. The Left has always dined out on street “demos.” Some, in days of yore, were for reasonable causes — civil rights (as they were once properly understood, unlike today), better working conditions, the vote for women. By the 1930s, though, many demonstrations took on a Communist tinge.
Scratch a neocon, or what Lawrence Auster calls a “right liberal,” and not far under the surface you find an egalitarian romanticist. Protest, regardless of who is protesting or to what end, is imagined to be the highest form of politics.
Yes, ‘Jad and the Mullahs are a bad lot, an existential threat to Israel and indirectly a threat to the U.S. Yes, it’s good that their cage be rattled. And of course the regime’s clampdown on the protesters has been vicious. But only simpletons believe the enemy of our enemy is always our friend.
I agree that if all of this led to nothing more than the other side being declared the winner, that would be a sad, sad thing for the West to have supported.
What do you think of the potential outcome of these demonstrations of a major crack down that included the likely executions of the moderate opposition? If the Mullahs’ reaction were sufficient to make the revolution “eat its own” and turn leadership of the opposition over to the “radicals,” here, the Iranians that want done with religious rule, root and branch, would they be something you would want to support?
What is the Roach position on a full on revolution against the Mullahcracy?
I’m inclined to support it because the current system is so bad, but sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
A lot of Iranian liberals supported the Islamic revolution b/c of disatisfaction with the Shah, who was in fact pretty tough on any threats to his regime. I’m not sure this would be something to applaud; I also prefer peaceful change when it’s at all possible, as violent revolutions tend to have a lot of negative, collateral consequences. I just don’t think backing Mousavi or the Mullah-approved opposition is worth it for us to get the ring.