There is a far-right website/blog that more than often goes for the radical trash-postings that verge on pure bigotry. It has the ironic name of Atlas Shrugs. Ironic considering that I sit next to the mighty Atlas Mountains and look upon them daily.Today there is another item on the horrible happenings in Iran and about how the former Bush Administration's controversial Ambassador to the United Nations - John Bolton said in a newspaper item that the US missed an opportunity for regime change in Iran and should basically take-out the Iranian government.
His statements are ridiculous and is the very attitude that helped bring the radical regime in the first place. The man is a war-monger and we can all thank God (Allah) or your lucky stars depending on what you believe, that he is not a man of influence anymore. I think even Bush found him a bit overboard even for his liking.
I responded with the following comment:
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The situation is terrible, the hunger and demand for change is leading to the certain conflict with the government and their fundamentalist ideals will be hard to crack. As someone who knows much about the country and its people, it is going to be rough.
Mistakes have been made within and without (apart from the mistake of 1979) and many in the commentaries here as well.
John Bolton is the first and greatest. Calling for intervention to eliminate the revolution of '79 is doomed to failure and his arrogance in saying so is part of that old-world attitude that to a certain degree created it. It was the combination of abuse and out of touch Shah and the influences of the United States (including the now confirmed forced ousting of a government by the CIA) that was the catalyst for revolution that the fundamentalists jumped on. Perhaps the youth have forgotten much of this but middle-aged and the older Iranians (who are and will be any future government) do not. Bolton's attitude is from the 1970s and his out-of-touch method of dealing with things will only be a backwards step and turn Iran into Iraq or an Afghanistan.
My concerns is only the violence and how to tell the students and public to stop. Why? Because what was needed (to tell the regime that things have got to change) was done. There is no doubt that government wants to stay in power and are willing to fight for it, so either a full blown revolution will take place (with a probable loss and an even more hard-line government) OR they go home now with some pride and note that the more moderate (but "within the system") politicians (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Co.) will certainly make capital and destabilize from the top down. At worst, let the population suffer another four years and the likelihood is that change will happen.
Though I know most on a site like this will disagree, President Obama did the correct and very smart thing. He wished the people of Iran all good will and sent a message to the Muslim World saying that things will change, that United States will lead the West into admitting that there is a world outside their own and that to get respect, the same must be given.
That, I believe, was one of the catalysts for the actions that happened after the election. The Iranian youth and middle-class just wanted it more quickly than they should have.
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