The ‘Green Wave’ Revolution is Not Ours
17 June 2009 2:58 pm by Taylor Marsh
Non-violent and calm represents the “green wave” revolution so far in Iran, the video pictured here circulating everywhere.
How will the neocons reconcile that picture with the crazy Ahmadinejad caricature he’s imprinted as Iran’s image in the world since his rein began? See Robert Kagan.
Segue to Matt Duss who dismantles Robert Kagan’s nakedly obtuse op-ed today:
… But I have to say, Mr. Kagan, your op-ed this morning is really beneath you. You can’t actually believe that President Obama is “siding with the Iranian regime” against the Iranian people, or that Obama’s outreach to Iran depends upon keeping hardliners in power, can you? You’re far too intelligent to buy the brutishly simplistic “realism” that you attempt to hang upon President Obama’s approach. These sorts of claims are better left to your friend and occasional co-author Bill Kristol, who uses his series of valuable journalistic perches (with which he inexplicably continues to be gifted) to launch an endless stream of comically transparent bad faith arguments. You’re better than that. You’re the smart neocon.
Aren’t you? While it’s nice that you recognize that “it’s not that Obama preferred a victory by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” — though that was the stated preference of a number of your fellow neoconservatives — your claim that President Obama’s “strategy toward Iran places him objectively on the side of” Ahmadinejad is the kind of thing I thought we had left back in 2003, when opponents of the Iraq invasion (that is, the people who turned out to be right) were tarred as being “objectively pro-Saddam.” It doesn’t smell any better six years later.
To add, read this post at NSN to get what the neocons have offered during this historic time.
But Americans and others rooting for the Iranian people should not misconstrue our picture of what Iran should be for what they will actually manifest. It is. after all, the Islamic Republic of Iran, with a very long history of religion and politics intermixed in modern times. Mousavi would be a different face internationally, that is if he prevails, something that remains a long shot, but he will remain beholden to the Supreme Leader, whether Khamenei survives or not. Yes, Iranians want to be able to vote for their SL, but the religious overlord will remain.
Whatever the Iranian people are doing right now, however heartening it is, it is not a revolution in the sense of a democratic republic.
The distinction of what we’d prefer for them, well, that is irrelevant and not for us to decide.
