U.S. Invents Diabolical Weapon Called “Twitter” to Bring Down Iranian Regime

President Obama said last week that he doesn’t want the U.S. to be
seen as “meddling” in the recent Iranian presidential election.  In his
view, vocally supporting the protesters is comparable to the CIA’s coup
against Mossadeq in 1953.

That old bald eagle Zbigniew Brzezinski believes Obama has struck
the “perfect tone”: Zbig thinks we should refrain from antagonizing the
Iranian leadership and avoid a showdown.

Joe Klein’s thoughtful message for John McCain, who has been
requesting that Obama take a tougher stance on Iran: “Be quiet.” 
According to Klein, supporting the protesters is mere “self-indulgence.”

Joe Scarborough thinks it’s ridiculous that we know what’s best for
women’s rights in Iran.  Peggy Noonan writes, “America so often gets
Iran wrong…  So modesty and humility seem appropriate stances from
which to observe and comment.”

What planet are these people from?  The would-be appeasers’ argument
seems to be thus: We should not offer clear, unwavering, forceful
encouragement to the Iranian protesters.  If we do, Iran’s leaders will
accuse the U.S. of being behind the demonstrations—you know, the ones
that no one in the West predicted, the ones that happened after the
election results no one foresaw, the ones that few Western journalists
are close enough to eyeball, let alone instigate.

My question for the ersatz pacifiers: “So what?”  Who believes the
mullahs?  Nations of the free world don’t.  The protesters who
spontaneously organized don’t.  The mullahs don’t—in fact, they were
already making their misstatements long before our Equivocator-in-Chief
decided to change his mind this week and raise an eyebrow over the
carnage.

Memories of the 1979 Revolution, including citizens’ taking to the
streets and rooftops to chant, are having a greater impact on
present-day protesters than anything any American has said.  Iran’s
leaders are paying more attention to circumstances in the U.S. than
protesters—as in their specious comparison of Iran’s election to the
2004 Bush-Kerry contest.  (It was Ahmadinejad who co-opted Obama’s
“Yes, We Can” slogan for his reelection campaign.)

So if the mullahs blame us no matter what we do, why is it mandatory
that we shut up?  Are we afraid that if we support the protesters, the
mullahs might despise us even more viciously and biliously than they do
now?

The “Let’s stay out of this” argument also seems to be based on the
premise that a first-world country’s expression of support for the
protesters is condescending and makes the Iranians look backwards and
childlike.

I’ll tell you what’s condescending: believing that Iranians aren’t
smart enough to figure out that (1) 39 million votes cannot be counted
in two hours, (2) Ahmadinejad did not crush Mousavi by the exact same
percentage in every demographic group in all 30 provinces, (3)
Mousavi-leaning urban centers did not have enough ballots sent to them
on purpose, and (4) Iranian elections have been rigged to within an
inch of their lives for the past 30 years.  All of that I
think the Iranian citizenry is capable of figuring out on its own. 
Thousands of Iranians were savvy enough to bring pens to the voting
booth out of fear that the ones supplied by the government would be
filled with disappearing ink.

The Iranian protest movement has been brewing underground for
decades, mostly among college students and graduates, and women’s
groups.  I don’t recall any accusations of our having meddled in
Iranian universities’ gender studies curricula recently.

The “Mind your own business” line of reasoning is reminiscent of the
old charge that we shouldn’t go to war against Iraq (in 2003) or
Afghanistan (in 2001), because we’ll only stir up anti-American
sentiment; or the notion that we shouldn’t help Israel, because
jihadists’ real hatred of America stems from our support for that
country.

In fact, we should vocally support the protesters in Iran,
because that stance gives us credibility when we fight our own
battles.  When fools like Ahmadinejad (and Obama) declare that we have
no right to decide which countries get nukes and which don’t, we must
be able to respond confidently, “Yes, actually, we do—it should be free
nations that support individual rights and aren’t run by lunatic
dictators, which includes the U.S., Britain, Israel, and our allies;
and not Iran, North Korea, Syria, or any other place of our choosing.” 
If we support movements for freedom where they occur, rather than
ignoring them, then our stance gains consistency and credibility to
reformists in hostile regimes who are potentially open to our ideas. 
Those are the only people we should even dream of catering to.

Critics of supporting the protesters are right about one thing: one
does not “impose” democracy on a nation.  Consequently, I think if
protesters in Iran actually objected to American ideals more than
theocratic values, we would have heard more people chanting “Death to
America” than “Death to the Dictator” these past two weeks.  Protesters
would presumably not have embraced Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube with
the same gusto if they had felt we were hampering them with “cultural
imperialism” or some other made-up crime.  (Undoubtedly there is a
minority crackpot fringe arguing that YouTube’s relaxing of its
restrictions on videos with graphic content is “inciting” the Basij to
commit more acts of violence.)

Certainly it is helpful that this is a homegrown revolution, and
yes, statements against the Iranian government carry more weight when
they come from Iranian citizens who could be jailed or killed than from
Americans safely speaking half a world away.

Here’s how we actually did encourage the protesters in
Iran—by turning their next-door neighbor, Iraq, into a democracy.  Our
transformation of Iraq gives Iranians hope that a government that
protects liberty can work in an Islamic country in the Middle East.  So
yes, we did influence the protesters—in a phenomenally helpful,
productive, and material way, at great cost to ourselves.  Why
shouldn’t we underline our message by supporting the protesters?