Thursday, June 25, 2009

Game Over

Well, as much as I was unsurprised by how things turned out I am still sorry they did. I am talking about Iran and the crushing of the protests. I am in no way surprised by this, I have held that the Iranian Clerics and the Revolutionary Guard was way to brutal and ruthless to be over turned by demonstrations for as long as I can remember. Unless the RG refused to do something, or the regular armed forces joined the protestors what happened in Iran was ineviable.

A couple of observations.

First, anyone who ever thought that peaceful protest and peaceful revolutions are the way to go always should have gotten a brutal wakeup call. When you are up against something like the RG and the Clerics, they don't care about bad press or world opinion or moral high ground. They care about POWER period. And they will use it whenever they can to maintain it or expand their own.

Second, the UN has again proven pretty weak. Not even so much as a nasty letter.

Third, I don't envy the POTUS on this one. For him, this was a lose-lose situation. He can't invade and put some bullets in some well deserving heads due to public opinion and the liberal establishment in his party base (ironic though, the guys who yell the loudest about freedom sure don't seem to be really worked up about this one). He can't really come out and give strong verbal support for partially the same reason, but also when he has to either put up or shut up he would loose a lot of face and pull when he has to shut up due to issue one. He has to say something, and since he was trying to balance he looked weak and/or waffling or like he didn't really care about the cause (liberty folks, Iranian version, but its liberty none the less). Really, no where he could really go on this one with out catching flak. I don't envy him for that. I would have done it differently, but I am not the president so it doesn't matter.

Fourth, this means trouble for our boys in Iraq and to a lesser extent Afghanistan. The Iranians will either use this as an excuse to try and divert attention by some overseas adventurism or will think that the POTUS is weak and they can start trying to cause trouble with the JAM again (Iranian backed militia that we have crushed before).

Its a shame we can't do some old fashioned gun-running to the other side here and foment some nice rebellions. Of course that didn't work to well for us the last time, but I can't think of a better group of people to cause trouble for.

4 comments:

  1. Mostly amen. I think it plays well for us for the Iranians to lose what little moral high-ground they had. Sucks to be in Tehran though.

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  2. Yeah, that is true enough. I would have liked to have seen some more cracks develop in the RG and the thugs they use.

    The big thing I see that really scares me is that even with the technology and the internet, the thugs were able to beat it. That is BAD. If this gets seen as a great example of how to beat the technology, it is going to encourage more governments to try this.

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  3. As I understand it, apparently the Iranian govt. left the internet open so they could monitor who was protesting and organizing the riots. Then they knew exactly who to go after.
    I can't post the link here, but I found the story on Slashdot and Slate.

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  4. I'd believe it. I think this will go down as an example of how the "Old School" works. If you are going to overthrow a serious nasty guy, you need to be serious and nasty and have guys with guns on your side.

    Otherwise, when you give piece a chance its gonna get cut up into pieces...

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