This stunningly beautiful photograph appears alongside a report in today's Los Angeles Times. An excerpt:
The loyalists' gathering was heavily advertised on state-controlled TV and radio, urging Ahmadinejad supporters to show up in force as a display of popular support for the president and against "looters and arsonists."
Those assembled chanted: "Death to America!" "Death to Israel!" "Khamenei is our leader," referring to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It was an impressive crowd, numbering in the tens of thousands, but not nearly as dramatic as the massive unauthorized opposition demonstration that took place a day earlier in Azadi Square.
Mousavi supporters, who had been told by the candidate to stay away from the square, instead assembled in a quiet march in northern Tehran along Vali Asr Street. The crowd, holding green banners and flags, marched in near silence. They held up posters of Mousavi and placards calling Ahmadinejad a "liar." Anti-riot poice stood along the roadways but did not interact with the demonstrators.
The dispute over election results have riven Iran, leading to massive protests, demands for a recount and clashes that state radio said today had taken the lives of at least seven people.
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5 comments:
People power! Yeah, baby! BTW, under the radar, Obama I believe has been making some progress in some foreign policy areas. This Iranian situation, though quite early, he is pretty doing the perfect thing, which is to kind of stay out of it, but still sort of suggest that the election should be fair, but that we (America) can't decide who wins. Also, although I kind of believe there will never be peace in the Mideast (or Midwest), he (with others I'm sure) has successfully pressured Netanyahu to acknowledging that a Palestinian state should exist. Now, whether that acknowledgement will lead to any change in policy is another matter, but surely it is a good thing. Of course, many other foreign policy challenges remain, specifically how well the Afghanistan "Surge" (for lack of another name) will work. But, so far so good.
"Now, whether that acknowledgement will lead to any change in policy is another matter, but surely it is a good thing. Of course, many other foreign policy challenges remain, specifically how well the Afghanistan "Surge" (for lack of another name) will work. But, so far so good."
I agree with you that he's doing a great job; he is displaying the singularly Obamian combination of indefatigable patience and expertly timed assertiveness, often remarkable in its certitude. His handling of the Gaza/Israel issue is a case in point: a masterpiece of stagecraft that is at once Realpolitik and (sober) idealism. It's interesting to consider that it's remarkably difficult to imagine Obama going out on a limb and not getting what he asks for.
I also agree that Afghanistan/Pakistan is disconcerting to say the least. As an old-fashioned peacenik, I'm really not very knowledgeable when it comes to military things, tending to think they all should be brought to an end and the world-military-industrial complex dismantled forthwith (see, I told you.....heh, heh...).
The idea of whether or not the 'surge' will work is (like its parallel was in Iraq) a highly artificial way of framing an extremely complicated constellation of issues. It sounds simple enough to appeal to our common sense, and yet it sounds technical enough that inquiring into its meaning is fatiguing to contemplate.
And yeah, he's perfect on Iran. Stay out, particularly because there's no good that could come from intervening and a lot of bad. The Republican/neoconservative caricature of the Iranians is one that casts the masses of people as backward and reactionary, which is of course ludicrous because not only are the young generations extremely well-educated, but there is a huge sector of highly educated and secularist men and women, both in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora, whose rights on Iranian soil were scaled back significantly with the 1979 revolution.
Yeah, I was using the "S" word to describe what happens when when we send more troops to A-Stan; clearly it is more complex than just the word or just sending in more troops. It was used for brevity's sake, but surely in this context it can be used a name for the policy.
But, peacenik or not, more troops ARE going to be sent to Afghanistan and there IS going to be more violence. There WILL be more American service people coming home in boxes, as well as more civiallian damage.
It will be a tremendous challenge, and one can only hope that this will somehow stabalize things there a bit. Probably a fat chance, though, and if things don't get better, at some point we have to get the hell out.
The real point is about my earlier point about Obama's foreign policy successes. So far so good, but this A-stan/P-stan stuff could become a disaster, and it will challenge every sound FP nerve and sensibility in Obama's body. We can only hope for the best.
My comments about the Surge weren't intended as a rebuke to you (I see now that it may have looked that way), as I agree with what you said.
I was just attempting, in my clumsy way, to flesh out some of the assumptions/associations that are built into the Surge concept itself, and how this conceptual apparatus can be used for various political and even military ends.
One way of looking at it is that the idea of this concrete, identifiable monosyllabic THING is as central to Surge's success or failure as is the physical deployment of vast numbers of troops. Just as the widespread perception -- among people in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere in the world -- of the sheer quantities of economic and human capital that America is pouring into this mobilization is perhaps no lesser consequence than the direct, 'on-the-ground' effect of the troops' physical deployment.
So, 'Surge' is the precise word for what it is, the thing that the overwhelming majority of people on the planet know it to be. The Surge, like lots of things, is a mediated phenomenon; the complexity and even tenuousness of this concept's relation actual troop deployments is part and parcel of its function militarily.
Hmm. That might be confusing. Oh well.
Anyway, I totally agree with what you're saying.
It's all good, baby.
back to this Iran situation (pronoucing the "I" like the word "eye" to try and annoy the blogger), holy shit, what the hell's going to happen. I saw in the paper today the Supreme Allah-Prophet Douchebag Over-Religious Cocksucking Bearded Motherfucking Shi'ite Jizz-Guzzling Leader said something threatening a crackdown on the protests. It could get ugly over there (it already is). But the shear number of protestors and their overwhelming and unwavering passion for the cause may be too much for even the security forces there and make things too ugly for the regime to ignore their wishes. One can only hope that is the case.
DMA, OUT!
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