Joe Klein, a political columnist at Time, wrote a column today which in part says what I feel about this tendency. As others have put it, "it's not about us," what Iranians are doing comes from their own needs and perceptions, although it is important to us and the rest of the world and we will be affected. We should remember that simple phrase while we wait to see what emerges from Iran.
Joe Klein:
Again, the crucial fact about the protesters is this: they may hate the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime--who wouldn't?--but that doesn't make them particular fans of the United States. I have yet to meet an Iranian who does not believe that the United States gave poison gas to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, gas which injured thousands upon thousands of Iranian men, who still live, incapacitated, in the shadows of that society. (Indeed, the attention Ahmadinejad has paid to the Iran-Iraq war veterans and their families is a major source of his extensive support among the Iranian working class.)
The protesters admire our freedom, but they are appalled--and insulted--by our neocolonialist condescension over the past 50 years. The reformers, and even some conservatives, consider Ahmadinejad the George W. Bush of Iran--a crude, unsophisticated demagogue, who puts a strong Potemkin face to the world without very much knowledge of what the rest of the world is about. This was an anology that came up in interview after interview, with reformers and conservatives alike.
Certainly, Bush the Younger, McCain and the rest of that crowd have absolutely no idea who the Iranian people are. The are not Hungarians in 1956. They do not believe they live in an Evil Empire. They still support their revolution. They shout "Allahu Akbar" in the streets, which was the rallying cry of 1979. They are proud of their nuclear program, even if many have doubts about the efficacy of weaponizing the enriched uraniam that is being produced. They want greater freedom, to be sure. And they believe that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad forces--and the militarized regime they have empowered, the millions of basiji and revolutionary guards--is a profound perversion of that revolution. They are right. They deserve our prayers and support. But they don't need grandstanding from an American President, and they certainly don't need histrionics from blustery old John McCain.
2 comments:
I would argue that the ubiquity of protest signs in English, YouTube videos captioned in English, and English-language Twitter feeds suggests that the Iranians DO want are involvement somewhere beyond the realm of hopes and prayers.
It does make me laugh, though, to read Joe Klein referring to someone else, without irony, as "a crude, unsophisticated demagogue."
Likely the use of English indicates that the protesters want to make their case before an international audience, and feel that they are part of an international community whose standards include honest elections. Persian participants in the Constitutional Revolution of 100 years ago felt exactly the same. (Kurzman, Democracy Denied.) What kind of foreign involvement the protesters might want varies, I am sure, from person to person, but many Iranians sympathetic to the protest are very cautious, for reasons that are obvious for anyone who has read 20th century Iranian history. The issues here are not pro-West/anti-West. The "West" means many things in Iran, some good, some bad, some even irrelevant.
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