Tuesday February 9th 2010

Iran Thread Cont.

*Your Guide to Following the Iranian Protests Online, at Popular Science.

*Members of the Revolutionary Guard Corp have been arrested. 

*The President finally speaks:

“I am deeply troubled by the violence I have been seeing on television. I think the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they are troubled.”

“There appears to be a sense of people who were so hopeful and so engaged and so committed to democracy, who now feel betrayed, and I think it’s important that moving forward, whatever investigations that take place are done in a way that does not result in bloodshed, and does not result in people being stifled, in expressing their views.” (6:45 p.m.)

TO THE IRANIAN PEOPLE: “I would say to them that the world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate outcome of the election was. And they should know that the world is watching.” (6:47 p.m.)

*So How’s It Going in Iran?  By Michael Ledeen.

“It’s always better to assert American values, both because he’s our president and he should be speaking for all of us, and because catering to the tender sensibilities of the murders in Iran won’t gain anything.  It will only increase their contempt.”

*The Seven Point Manifesto of the Iranian Resistance:

1. Stripping Ayatollah Khamenei of his supreme leadership position because of his unfairness. Fairness is a requirement of a supreme leader.

2. Stripping Ahmadinejad of the presidency, due to his unlawful act of maintaining the position illegally.

3. Transferring temporary supreme leadership position to Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazery until the formation of a committee to reevaluate and adjust Iran’s constitution.

4. Recognizing Mir Hossein Mousavi as the rightfully elected president of the people.

5. Formation of a new government by President Mousavi and preparation for the implementation of new constitutional amendments.

6. Unconditional release of all political prisoners regardless of ideology or party platform.

7. Dissolution of all organizations — both secret and public — designed for the oppression of the Iranian people, such as the Gasht Ershad (Iranian morality police).

*Obama and the Media Get it Wrong on Middle East Elections, by Nicholas Gauriglia.

*America Sleeps While Iranians Confront Evil, by Clarendon.

“If they are willing to subject their own citizens to the truncheon and the trigger, what are they willing to do to the nations they have declared their enemies?”

Indeed.

*Voting Present on Iran, by Victor Davis Hanson.

“We are seeing in Washington that the multiculturalism impulse — one does not use Western paradigms to judge others — is far stronger than the supposedly classical liberal idea that human freedom is a universal concept that trumps culture.”

RELATED: It’s beginning to be a little embarrassing…Also by Hanson.

“…it’s starting to get a little shameful for the professed humanitarian Obama to be seen so nakedly uninterested in the hundreds of thousands in the streets of Tehran both voicing values similar to our own, and ridiculing a government that for 30 years has serially killed Americans, promoted worldwide terror, and violated international agreements. 

We are now well below the Ford administration’s 1975 snubbing of Solzhenitsyn.”

*The Emergence of an Obama Doctrine, by J.G. Thayer.

“Thus far, it seems that the guiding principle of this administration is summed up in a single, concise phrase: “Treat your enemies like friends, and your friends like enemies.”

*Regime Preservation, by Stephen Hayes.

RELATED: Obama Siding With the Regime, by Robert Kagan.

*Obama’s Iran Abdication, at the WSJ.  Shorter article: The French have taken the moral high ground vis-a-vis Iran.