Saturday, June 20, 2009

What is the cost of democracy?


Reading Andrew Sullivan's ongoing blog about what is happening in Iran and have to say it is very moving to read about the lengths Iranians will go to get a broader democracy.

We have tended, in the west to paint Iranians with one brush. They were included in the axis of evil and as such were fanatical terrorists intent on destroying the west. Well, this week shows that Iranians want a more moderate government with a more moderate political leader in Mir-Hossein Mousavi .

The theocracy will undoubtedly stand, but progressive Iranians and the free world hope that Iran can step back from the irrational dogma espoused by Mahmoud Ahmadineja and the hate that it had encouraged.

This is an excerpt of what Obama has said today:

"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights...Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness."

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.
- Melville.



From today's statement from Mir-Hossein Mousavi:

"...I had come to show that it was possible to live spiritually while living in a modern world. I had come to repeat Imam’s warnings about fundamentalism. I had come to say that evading the law leads to dictatorship; and to remind that paying attention to people’s dignity does not diminish the foundations of the regime, but strengthens it."



This is not from today. But it shows the raw brutality of the Basij:





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