Political Opinion

What a month June has been !

A bonus month for Political Bloggers as well as News Junkies, both of which categories include me and my Blogs.
In fact, The News cycle, and the events in Iran, have been so dynamic in recent weeks, that combined with my ongoing personal struggles, have just overwhelmed me lately.

Well, the financial problems are in temporary remission, and now comes the time to deal with putting my recent ideas and impressions on display around the Blogosphere.

Now, Where to start ? I guess the Iranian Election farce, and the resultant violence is as good a place to start as any other.
Let me preface this section by saying that I predicted ( nearly, 2 years ago) that the Students and upper middle class Iranians were fed up with Ahmajinadad, and would soon be ” in-the-streets” protesting both his nuclear saber-rattling, as well as his ongoing attacks on Western leaders, plus his support of Hezbollah, and interference in the affairs of Lebanon.

Well, it didn’t happen when I thought it would, and maybe because the opposition believed they could actually unseat him in the legal way, through an election. Hah ! They are more naive than I thought, and now we all see that all the hostility, religious conservatism, and antisemitism were the views of the ruling mullahs, along with their chosen mouthpiece Mahmud. I guess the Ayatollahs had forgotten who was the main force in helping them depose the Shah, and establish their Muslim Utopia.

For those of you too young (or Old), to remember, the principle reasons that the Mullahs used in opposing the Royal Family of the Palavi’s, was that the Shah had made them a “modern society”, and that in his efforts to improve the lives of his subjects, he had forgotten the spiritual life, and the place of Islam in society and government. The real reason was that all these fundamentalists had been in exile for decades. Exiled for plotting assassinations and revolts, they saw the Shah building Universities, infrastructure and industries, of which they, ( Terrorists) weren’t profiting from, and thay didn’t like that ! So, by convincing the youth, and the poor, that the Shah was a despot, and wanted to make them a “Godless” western nation, they succeeded in thier revolution, in part because of their ability to prove that the Shah was working with the CIA and “The Great Satan“, which was US. Another part of their success was the failure of the Carter Administration to respond militarily, and rescue our hostages from the US Embassy.

So, here we are today, and with President Obama trying to show restraint, and more hawkish folks urging a stronger condemnation of the Iranian Government, we are divided again on how to deal with the situation. I tend to agree with the President, that we need to remember that ending Iran’s Nuclear ambitions is our long-term goal, and also, that we don’t want to be used as a foil against the protesters, where the Government can say that we are behind the Opposition, and are trying to overturn an election that we were disappointed in. They, (Iran’s leadership) are already using that propaganda, have blocked much of the internet, and removed the foriegn press. It is only by the miracles of Tweeter, Gmail, and Utube, that we are able to learn anything about events on the ground.