Posted on 08/01/2009 5:00:10 AM PDT by FrontPageMag.com
Budapest, 1956.
Prague, 1968.
Gdansk, 1981.
Tianenmen Square, 1989.
Tehran, 2009.
Each of these surprise flashpoints in history’s long march against totalitarianism proved as dazzling at its outset as it did hopeless at its extermination. Each of them left a trail of broken bodies, but the last was different than all its historical forebears in one way: the president of the United States kept silent while it was unfolding. Barack Obama, and the world, saw police beat and gas protesters and kill 27-year-old music students and nine-year-old children; and Iranian reports indicate that those arrested were viciously tortured in a secret prison. All the while, the president maintained a reticence that helped enable the secret police. The young protesters who continue filling Iran’s streets this weekend to renew their revolt against corruption offer Barack Obama a unique opportunity: a chance to redeem his previous, disastrous inaction. Will he act this time to prevent hundreds more of their fellow citizens from meeting a similar fate?
His predecessors, who faced the actual threat of nuclear annihilation, greeted oppression with resistance. President Johnson called the Soviet invasion “patently contrived” and threatened United Nations action. Reagan, unable to garner NATO support for an effective response, imposed the economic sanctions at his disposal. George H.W. Bush, who was overly cozy with Beijing, verbally denounced the massacre and temporarily suspended diplomatic relations.
President Obama met crisis with equivocation, choosing to “withhold comment” about the transparently rigged election and standing idly by as Iranian secret police brutalized and arrested 2,500 democratic protesters, so as not be seen as “meddling.” Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham condemned his actions as “timid,” and even both houses of the Democrat-controlled Congress passed measures condemning the abuse more stridently than Obama. Finally, on June 20, Obama released a statement a week later calling on “the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”
Like his invitation for Iran to “unclench its fist” on nuclear weapons, his plea was ignored, as the mullahs’ enforcers murdered Neda Agha Soltan and rounded up hundreds more to a then-unknown location.
We now know their fate: torture and death in Iranian secret prisons. One person detailed the vicious beatings in a Kihrizak prison, where “at least 200 people in one room, and everyone was getting beatings with sticks…The walls were all bloody.” The police allegedly turned off the lights to thrash the protesters for half-an-hour in pitch black. Among those killed was Mohsen Rouhalamini, a nine-year-old boy and coincidentally the son of an adviser to one of Ahmadinejiad’s opponents. Tehran released 140 political prisoners from their cells Tuesday, citing poor prison conditions, in an attempt to tamp down outrage before Thursday’s protests. Former President Mohammad Khatami described the substandard environs: “Murders have been committed, lives have been lost, blood has been spilt. Our youth, men and women have been treated in such a way that had it been committed in prisons controlled by foreigners everyone here would be shouting and denouncing it.”
Despite the presence of a child martyr, it is Neda’s memory that draws crowds this weekend. Thursday was the 40th day since her death, a sacred day of remembrance in both Islam and Christianity. Thousands – including “defeated” presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi – gathered at her grave Thursday, some chanting, “Neda is alive, Ahmadinejad is dead!”
Already, Iranian police have responded with tear gas and batons. In a grisly spectacle, The Washington Post reports several people “fell into recently dug graves and were injured.” As the demonstrations promise to intensify this weekend, at least 20 protesters from June’s uprising are to be tried on such charges as “sending pictures to enemy media” (primarily the cell phone broadcasts of their initial, public beatings).
This mix of legal and physical oppression gives Obama what so few get: a second act – and thus far, he is blowing it. Responding to the brutality at Neda’s grave, the State Department called Iran’s actions “disturbing.” Ho-hum.
Obama has the chance to speak forthrightly or repeat his week of weakness. He has consistently offered Mahmoud Ahmadinejiad an unclenched fist, and the mullahs turned their fists against their own citizens, possibly the most potent force to topple the regime. Iran’s budding revolutionaries are again in the streets. Can Obama bring himself to warn the mullahs as clearly against unprovoked police brutality as he did the anti-totalitarian leaders of Honduras against setting foot in the United States? Can he deem show trials as offensive as he has the building of Jewish settlements in Israel?
The good news is, the people once crushed by Islamic oppression, are now emboldened to fight it. David Horowitz recounted how Tom Hayden told him, “If people’s heads got cracked by police… it `radicalized them.’” Iran’s populace has become radicalized – and media reports show they are beginning to fight back. The Washington Post notes, “three members of the much feared voluntary militia known as the Basij were beaten with their own batons after a group of people pulled them off their motorcycles near a park. The motorcycles were set on fire.” Another crowd smashed the windows of a secret police van and rescued two prisoners inside. And for once, stone-throwing Muslims are casting their stones at other Muslims.
National figures have equated this regime with the Shah, toppled by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Protesters met at Behesht-e Zahra, the cemetery that contains the bodies of the Revolution’s “martyrs.” The Iranian people are reappropriating their history with a new enemy.
If they can do that within an Islamic gulag, can President Obama at least retract his offer to meet with Iran’s fraudulent president without preconditions? If timidity prevails, this weekend Obama may kill Iran’s democrats with kindness.
Obama does not denounce it because the kind of behavior he sees there is not out of his realm of ideas to hold on to power.
Obama is a thug dictator and has a fondness for them.
I really have a problem with people who act surprised when Obama’s actions and inactions are not those of an American president.
By now, they should know that he has stomped the Constitution and setting himself up for elections just like the protested one in Iran.
Obama sighed. Iranians died.
What does anyone expect from “Voted Present”?
Iraq: US investigating report of missing Americans
[detained by Iran]
AP | July 31, 2009 | YAHYA BARZANJI
Posted on 07/31/2009 1:49:35 PM PDT by Cheap_Hessian
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2305546/posts
The good news is that President Obama’s foreign policy of engagement will soon be totally discredited in the eyes of the American people.
It will also result in discrediting President Obama himself.
This guy is so over his head that all he can do it attend Town Halls.
By now, the Iranian “situation” has “quieted down”, but only because “news” from there is not on the front burners
of our MSM. THere is still, and probably MORE, important news that COULD be coming from there, that we’re not hearing, and WON’T be hearing UNLESS AND UNTIL a new dramatic flare-up takes place that will bring “Our President” into the fray with more half-assed and tepid response. IT SHOULD NOT EVER BE FORGOTTEN just how pathetic and limp his instinctive response to what SHOULD HAVE BEEN one of the most important acts of resistance of the last few decades by the Iranian masses: these people COULD HAVE been helped and inspired by a strong American President, but had to settle for a Congressional vote, which they really didn’t need anyway, to continue doing what they need to do to wrest their country back from 15th Century oblivion. Let’s NEVER forget what an absolute WEASEL this punk President turned out to be when a REAL earth-shaking historic event was presented to him, and begged to be taken sides on. He shows you just who he is every single day.
I don’t know what Obama scratches in the morning, but is sure isn’t like the rest of the men in the world.
And the silence from the left while soldiers are dying fighting for us speaks loudly.
Since their deaths could make Omuslim glitter less, the left are mute.
George Bush's legacy and fight endures in the Mid East, despite, and in spite of Obama, and THAT is Obama's real dilema.
It was George Bush's policy of direct engagement and support of liberty that has led to the people of Iran seeing the measure of freedom now established on both sides of them in Iraq and Afghjanistan...and desiring it for themselves.
Obama cannot possibly go too far in recognizing that, or he absolutely repudiates himself and his entire foreign policy.
...but Obama doesn't want to "meddle".
The fight in Iran goes on.
Iran Police beat moruners of Neda - July 30, 2009
Police again disperse Demonstrators in Tehran - July 25, 2009
It's not over. Friday protests in Tehran July 17, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4zfZuZuxxU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPq19FY7YKA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6xh6SX5nX8
6/24/2009 - Not all fights on June 24th were losses - Iranian people take back streets from Basif
Others were not.
Eyewitness Account to Slaughter in Iran 6/24/2009
While brave Iranians are slaughtered in the street by their own government as they seek liberty, Obama disinvited Iranian officials to American 4th of July celebration.
Meanwhile, they are axing students to death.
Young Woman (Neda) shot to death in Terhran. 6/20/2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVyGo7rZUI
Crowd Hunting Basij, Man shot. 6/20/2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYaL4mA-bSY
You can follow me on twitter if you want.http://www.twitter.com/Jeff_Head
"There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
"Democratic reformers facing repression, prison or exile can know: America sees you for who you are -- the future leaders of your free country.
"The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it."
George W. Bush Jan 2005
No response from Obama as he knows this is what he plans for dissenters in America.
His plan is not different from the leaders of Iran who put their people down for good.
America needs to take back its freedom before we lose it like the Iranians.
What was his quote? We don’t want to meddle because “...we don’t know how it is all going to turn out...”?
I would normally say: “What a steaming pantload of an excuse for a President”, except that this is what he WANTS to do.
That would be Townhalls where the only honesty is outside the venue where the protesters are.
The protesters that O has the OSS aim the guns at from the confines of the O-pimpmobile.
I think anyone can beat this guy in a presidential runoff.
I don’t see how Hillary will sit back and not take issue with this guy, probably some time next year.
THe placing of Czars is kind of what Hitler did is it not? I mean you surround yourself with these little fiefdoms...to suppress your critics.
And look who these people are. Cronies...
Yes, you can always believe Twitter. It's the real deal.
What are you doing?
140 Latest: they police are pelting us with live rabbits
half a minute ago they police are pelting us with live rabbits half a minute ago from web
God save the brave Iranians from being pelted with live rabbits.
Let these countries overthrow their own gov’t’s. If they don’t have enough b**ls to do it then let them live in oppression.
Sorry but our country is $$$ broke. My Give a Da** meter is broken in terms of helping these other countries escape their despote rulers. We need to get out own country squared away before galloping across the globe.
Good news is that Obama as each day comes and goes gets more discreditted in both his domestic and foreign policies.
You can very much stick a fork in him, Obama is pretty much done or is toast.
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