Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 6:34:03 PM
Every now and then, you get to stand witness to history. Not the little things that cause the cable news channels to flash the "ALERT" chryon, but something that you know you will be talking about years from now.
Well, Iran was holding a Presidential election. Everybody outside the country knew it was going to be a sham, so it was anticipated with the ho-hum of the most recent "re-election" of Putin in Russia.
Then a funny thing hapened: they televised a series of debates between the candidates, and Iran was paying attention. The turnout was massive. That is to say, it was nearly twice what the polling people expected.
And the government did the predictable thing- they announced a landslide victory for the incumbent within four hours. That announced to the voters without any ambiguity that it was all bulls**t.
And they reacted. They are still reacting. They are getting killed by the dozen, sprayed with tear gas from the ground and acid from the air, and they keep coming. They have placards in Farsi and English (in case you thought our support wasn't important to them), and they are using every hacker trick they know of to get the pictures out on the net.
It is an amazing thing to watch. It isn't a panacea, because somebody else will pick up the 'America is Satan' ball if the Iranian mullahs get dumped overboard, just as they picked it up from Iraq when we lowered the boom there. Hell, 30% of the Iranian voters DO think we are Satan.
It would not be the end of our problems in the Middle East. But it would be one brick closer. I will be watching, and trying to find out ANY way I can help.