bttt for later
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
bttt
Bump
I suggest that the power of this sort of ideology is such that in the quarter-century of its existence it has managed to mutate Islam itself. Certainly it has forced its Sunni rivals in Saudi Arabia to respond with an equally ruthless campaign of hate propaganda and arming of violent radicals.
I think that Iran is much more potentially a successful republic than Iraq ever was, and that it is also a test case of how an ideological revolutionary movement masquerading as a religion can maintain power in the face of a refractory population and international condemnation. Rather well at the moment, it seems. But not forever, probably not for long. That's why they want the bomb so badly.
"Why "People Power" Will Fail in Iran(by James F. Dunnigan)
March 15, 2006: Since last year, the United States has been more energetically trying to build a trained democracy movement to overthrow the Iranian religious dictatorship. Using democracy as a weapon has gained a lot of believers since the late 1980s. Back then, the East European governments, all run by communist dictators (and backed up by the Soviet Union), collapsed when most of the people just stood up and said, "enough, we want change." By 1989, Eastern Europe was democratic, after over four decades of communist police states. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself collapsed the same way. This was scary stuff. Since then, there have been similar, and more deliberate, instances of this change in Serbia and Ukraine. And before that, you had a similar overthrow in the Philippines, where the term "People Power" was invented..
The moves necessary to make "People Power" work have now been turned into techniques that have been set down on check lists and presented in seminars. There's a drill that can make this happen if two conditions apply. First, most of the population must want democracy. Second, the security forces must be willing to stand down in the face of mass demonstrations. The first condition applies in Iran, the second doesn't. While the Islamic conservatives in Iran have the support of, at most, a third of the population, they do have over a hundred thousand armed men who are willing to kill to keep their religious leaders in power.
"People Power" is not a 1980s invention. Back in the 1930s, Indian democracy activists mobilized millions of people against the British colonial government. But it was admitted that, while such a movement worked against the British, it would not have worked if the colonial occupiers had been, say, German. Not today's Politically Correct Germans, but the rather more savage, pre-World War II variety. Old school Germans, who massacred Africans protesting colonial rule, and killed millions of civilians during World War II, would not have been as accommodating to peaceful demonstrators as were the British (with a few bloody exceptions.) The old school defenders of the Islamic tyrants in Iran appear ready to carry out some sustained killings to keep their masters in power."
This is an interesting article, but it would have been a lot more interesting if there were some concrete suggestions as to what the US needs to do in Iraq. The only thing I take out of it in terms of policy is for the US to keep doing what it is doing regarding sanctions, which doesn't seem outstandingly successful to me.
In the years before the Shah finally fell, you could tell his regime was crumbling by the number of US attaches and Iranian military officers who were being assassinated in the streets of Teheran. That was the only kind of meaningful rebellion, an armed rebellion. When the Iranian demonstrators move from "peaceful" demonstrations, to armed struggle, then maybe we can speak of "credible opposition". Until that happens, we can not afford to wait on a new Iranian revolution before we deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions, even if that means "uniting" the presumably divided Iranian "hardliners" and the so-called "opposition".
Early morning CBS news: we're going to hold talks with Iran, one on one. Why does this feel like the same old, same old...unless we're moving assets. It's like the Holloway case. The Arubans are going to search near the lighthouse again. They had a tip, and hotel reservations are down.
Shell game, that's it.
22 Iran officials killed in Baluchistan clashes
Fri. 17 Mar 2006
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Mar. 17 – Twenty-two Iranian government and provincial officials were killed in an ambush in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan in the early hours of Friday morning, the government-owned news agency Fars reported.
The incident occurred at 1:20 am as a convoy packed with officials was returning from a gathering in Zabol to the city of Zahedan.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the convoy close to Shileh Bridge killing 22 and injuring seven officials, the report said.
Among those injured in the attack was believed to be the governor of Zahedan, Hossein-Ali Nouri. The report said that he was shot five times and is in critical condition. The head of security of the Zahedan governorate also died in the attack.
The report quoted an “informed source” in a hospital in Zabol as saying that 50 individuals were killed or injured in the attack.
Sistan-va-Baluchistan Province is home to Baluchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority. Iran has witnessed escalating unrest in recent months in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain of discriminatory and repressive policies by the Shiite clerics who rule the country