Posted on 09/09/2006 7:24:45 PM PDT by nuconvert
Manouchehr Ganji: Help set Iran free
Democracy movement requires West's support
September 7, 2006
What many Americans don't realize is that – 28 years after taking power – the ruling mullahs and their henchmen are hated in Iran and their power is shaky. Why? The Iranian people, including the vast majority of those under the age of 30, know them for who they are.
So while the government is busy with its foreign adventures – including an outrageous Washington visit this week by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami – the younger people and women are in the forefront of an underground freedom movement there, risking their lives to protest the clerical regime.
Today, more than 55 percent of the Iranian population is under the age of 20, which is bad news for the mullah regime because the principle threat to its authority comes from the youth. And this is a group that, along with the poor, is becoming ever more restless.
So the government responds by spending more than $24 billion yearly – all from its oil revenues – on subsidies on bread, rice and other staple food items, low-cost housing and gasoline and oil products. In addition, the government makes narcotics easily and cheaply available to the youth. No wonder that Iran today has more than 4 million addicts, or 6 percent of the population.
What the democracy movement in Iran needs is for the European Union and the United States to speak with one voice and adopt a common policy of support for its operation in Iran. There are many things that Iranians struggling inside the country can do that those outside cannot. Likewise, Iranians living elsewhere can play a significant role. Today, at least 70 percent of Iranians would help the democracy movement succeed
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Get all the good guys out and lay the place to waste. Warn any other pissant twobit Izlamofascist countries around that they will be next if they don't butt out.
This is a load of excrement, there are no moderate muslims
there is only one way to end the conflict between Islam and the west Islam and its adherents die.
pong
I remember '79. With all due respect, if even a good-sized minority of the population truly wanted the mullahs gone, those pighumpers would be gone. One way or the other.
I'm not sure what remembering 1979 has to do with now, but I rememeber it too.
How does an unarmed civilian population oust a government that is willing to use helicopter gunships and more, on its population?
Every educated Conservative like Dr. Michael Ledeen, Dr. Michael Rubin both of AEI, Newt Gingrich on down the line says this is true. Come on buddy education helps.
This article is a joke. Those not enthralled with the Mullahs are either wacked out on drugs, cowards or attempting, like the Lebanese, to hide their heads in the sand from the ongoing danger in business. Revolution in Iran? We're more likely to see Bubba become faithful to his "wife."
With friends like who rooting for the Ayatollahs who the hell needs enemies of freedom and America?
Dr. Ganji wasn't joking
If the people would get up and reject Islam out of hand, the Mullocracy would have no power.
Come on folks. Move forward 1300 years in one fell swoop.
The Iranian people certainly aren't rooting for freedom. The zealots, the timid, the chemically dependant and the foolish usually don't.
So I assume you objected to the war in Iraq as it only deleted the leadership? Similarly for Afghanistan.
The Iranian people aren't rooting for freedom? Do you realize how many Iranians have died in pro-Democracy demonstrations in the past year alone? Try living in a dictatorship as brutal as the Iranian government.
Keep rooting for the Ayatollahs. Your ideology is absurd and is vastly anti-President Bush and the Republican party.
Buchanan's Paleo-Cons are out in full-force tonight.
Why was post #18 pulled? How was it in violation of FR's posting guidelines?
I don't think the EU elite want the ayatollahs out. The ayatollahs are their kind of people: wealthy, parasitic, autocratic, and strictly interested in the workings of political power. The EU will not make common cause either with the United States or with the Iranian people. It isn't in their interest.
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