In betwixt and between all the impassioned outcrys both from within and without Iran regarding their most recent “election,” I find that all the intensity and furor suddenly begs the question:
Why all of a sudden do we see such a fervor from the voting public in Iran?
More importantly, why are we HEARING about it, from within what has traditionally been a country with a very tight hold on not only its media, but its people?
My personal opinion is that this is the result of the very kind of “domino theory” that Iran and the other countries of the Middle East feared would result from a successful Iraq.
There was more at stake than meets the eye for Iran, Syria, Jordan, and yes, even our “ally” Saudi Arabia. There was a reason that a large (disproportionately so) number of the “insurgents’ we were capturing or killing in Iraq were from these countries. They saw very clearly the threat posed in the Middle East by a stable, US-friendly democracy. And it wasn’t because of the oil.
As Pres. Bush and his advisors correctly surmised, in the context of the “Long War” perhaps the best way to defeat the violence of militant Islamic extremists — despite the hardships we might face in the relative short term — was to establish a country where freedom, not fear, ruled the day. To show that the “Great Experiment” could even work within the context of Islam. (more…)
Tattered Bits of Brain 