Posted on 06/27/2009 8:49:24 AM PDT by nuconvert
The West should listen to the dissidents in Iran craving freedom -- they can feel the future.
Once again, the world is amazed. As with the seemingly sudden appearance of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, or the gaudy, grand-scale collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of that decade, the massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators. Who would have known? Who could have predicted this eruption of protest in a system so highly repressed, where a generally quiescent populace lives under such a deeply entrenched revolutionary regime?
And yet, just as in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there were those in Iran who did know all along, who foresaw and even foretold today's events. These were Iran's democratic dissidents, some at home, some in exile, some having served long sentences in Iranian prisons or on their way to those prisons right now.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
“With all their sympathy for peoples striving for freedom, Western governments are fearful of imperiling actual or hoped-for relations with the world’s ayatollahs, generals, general secretaries and other types of dictators — partners, so it is thought, in maintaining political stability. But this is a fallacy. Democracy’s allies in the struggle for peace and security are the demonstrators in the streets of Tehran who, with consummate bravery, have crossed the line between the world of double-think and the world of free men and women.”
I wonder how pro-freedom fighter the LA Times will be when the American people finally stand up and remove the criminals who are now ruling in Washington? Something tells me we’ll get a very different view of those who are fighting tyranny!
pong
The author of this piece is Natan Sharansky. He doesn't represent the views of the LA Times. I was in Berlin when Sharansky was released over Glienicker Bridge by the Soviets in exchange for captured spies. I had the opportunity to shake his hand. His book, The Case for Democracy, is well worth the read.
Great post from someone who knows what he is talking about. We must not abandon those people.
As with the seemingly sudden appearance of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s, or the gaudy, grand-scale collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of that decade, the massive revolt of Iranian citizens has elicited the unmitigated surprise of the free world's army of experts, pundits and commentators. Who would have known? Who could have predicted this eruption of protest in a system so highly repressed, where a generally quiescent populace lives under such a deeply entrenched revolutionary regime?The regime isn't revolutionary, it's a dictatorship based on the medieval fascism originated by the author of a medieval Mein Kampf.
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