Monday, June 15, 2009
Enemy of the World
Michael Totten has an article in Commentary Magazine that's so good, I'm having difficulty excerpting it because there's nothing I'm willing to cut out.
Here's the opener:
The Islamic Republic regime in Iran is vividly revealing itself as an enemy of the entire world.
“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s police and the Basij militia are using violence and terror to suppress the Iranian people at home. His terrorist proxies fire missiles at Israel while torturing, maiming, and murdering Palestinians. He sponsored a violent coup d’etat against the elected government in Beirut last year with his Hezbollah militia. He sponsors a terrorist insurgency against the elected government of Iraq, while his fanatical proxies shoot and kill American soldiers. A car bomb cell belonging to the regime’s Lebanese franchise was recently arrested in Azerbaijan, and more cells were rolled up in Egypt. Terrorists sponsored and encouraged by him and his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, have murdered civilians from Argentina to Japan.
The regime’s only allies in the world are terrorist armies and Bashar Assad’s Baath Party state in Syria. Assad himself, like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, is a pariah among the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Azeris, and Israelis who make up the region.Iranian civilians risk violent beatings and worse by the thousands for standing up to the regime in the streets and treating it as the enemy it clearly is. There is no better time for the rest of us to do so, as well, especially since such gestures carry far less risk for us. The Pasdaran have no divisions in Washington, Paris, or London.
Please do read the whole thing.
UPDATE: My buddy the Sandmonkey theorizes that the elections in Iran -- which show strong signs of being rigged (surprise!), and the resulting (almost unprecedented) mass anti-government protests, could be the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic of Iran. (I don't think we're that lucky. I hope I'm wrong.) He also says that, if Iran implodes over this, "then Obama is officially the luckiest bastard alive." (I've always liked his approach to political correctness.)
Will President Obama be let off the hook, not having to deal with a nuclear Iran because the Iranians take care of it themselves? Probably not; as I understand it, Mousavi, the other major candidate, was also very much in favor of a nuclear Iran. Nonetheless, if the Iranian nuclear threat can be defused without war, I'm in favor of it. And if that makes Mr. Obama lucky, well, the United States needs lucky presidents, right?
