I don’t understand the point of saying anything or supporting anyone in the Iranian election. And I really don’t understand the “conservative” position of wanting the US to “do something” about this other than for the reason that Obama has been reticent about saying anything.
Let’s face facts: The current president of Iran is a nutjob. On that we can all agree.
So the guy that the kids in Iran are all supporting — is he some breath of fresh air for the west?
Hmmmm... no. Mousavi was Iran’s prime minister during the hard-line era of the 1980’s. OK, so he wants to get the Iranian morality police to lighten up - that’s nice. But it means nothing to people outside Iran. It means that young men might get some tail a tad more often without having to get their girlfriends beaten senseless or killed. And while that’s a nice, positive change, it has nothing to do with us.
Is Mousavi going to quit calling for death to Israel? Don’t think so. Is Mousavi going to be seen on TV saying friendly things about Jews? No, I don’t see that happening either.
Is Mousavi going to stop funding terrorists? Don’t know, but I seriously doubt it.
But let’s dream a big dream and say that this guy Mousavi is a positive change for the west. He’s up against an entrenched mindset that thinks that anyone who is even moderately friendly to the US is a zionist stooge. By giving him strong public support in the west, we just further entrench the hard-liners against Mousavi, not help him.
As a result, I don’t see any big win for the US to be opening up our national piehole on this issue. Are we going to aid the protestors? If there’s a position we don’t want to take, it is one of offering to meddle, even indirectly, in an election in Iran. We should try to convince the Iranian people that we meddled once with the Shah, we learned our lesson, and now their elections are totally theirs.
And as far as being “pro-democracy” in the mideast: Yea, that “democracy” thing has been working so well for us so far, hasn’t it? In Palestine and Egypt, it merely gave legitimacy to the hard-liners. So this “democracy” thing can cut both ways... there’s no guarantee that the people will vote in ways that work to our benefit.
If we want to play a card in the mideast, we should increase our efforts to help the Iraqi’s create a functional, sane state and let the results stand as testimony to what the US stands for.