CAIRO — Iranian authorities filled the streets of Tehran with hundreds of police officers and armed militia members to deter protests on New Year’s Day as Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leader of the opposition, said in a statement that he did not fear giving his life as “a martyr.”
The overwhelming show of force in the capital and Mr. Moussavi’s declaration, which said that even killing him would not end the unrest, were part of a day of charges, counter-charges and warnings from both sides, illustrating the deep divisions that have emerged in Iran since the outbreak of its political crisis six months ago.
The government and its hard-line supporters continued to rely on force, and the threat of force, to quell protests and demand loyalty, while the opposition refused to back down. There was no indication that compromise was on the agenda.
During Friday Prayer services in the capital, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a fundamentalist cleric who heads the powerful Guardian Council, called protesters “flagrant examples of the corrupt on Earth” and effectively called for them to be executed as “in the early days of the revolution.”
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This is a good sign! If those folks want a change it will have to come from within. We should get out of Afghanistan and let them get on with this process in that country.
Iran was half way ‘there’ – to change. Has been for a long time-decades! Afghanistan is not. When last did you hear about girls schools being bombed, in Iran, or even about girls not being allowed in schools. Certainly women’s lives are resticted but no where near what they are in neighbouring Afghanistan.
Iran is a much more cosmopolitan country, with far greater riches and freedoms.
Besides, we leave the region with the Pakistani nukes available to the victor to our great peril. If the Taliban regains Afghanistan, Pakistan will fall, and their weapons will be dispersed as the monsoons are. And there will be no place to hide.
I wish the fools that advocate in favor of surrender would understand this!
CRB, those who advocate surrender don’t believe anyone would use ever nukes. It’s beyond their comprehension since they cannot imagine anything worse than war.
Such advocates are of the ilk described by J. S. Mill in an essay in 1862 and I quote…
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice,—is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” ~”The Contest in America”
I should mention that Mill used the word “patriotic” to describe those who refuse to look outside of their borders rather than in the traditional sense.
Since we do not know one another lets not get in a pointless name calling debate as to how much we should be willing to fight for something we believe in. My position on that can only be tested and proven when something I believe in gets threatened. The same goes for you.
There have been many of us who think that there is no military solution available for the situation in which Afghanistan now finds itself. Recent events seem to bear that out.
We cannot insist that they live in accordance with our western values. Nor can we tell them how to govern themselves. That they must decide for themselves. We can, however, provide aid and help to whomever emerges as the government of that country. That is our option.
What is not optional is that we must ready ourselves to deal with any threats on our own country if and when that occurs.
No one is forcing them to live in accordance with our values, however we can and must not let them inflict us with their values either. We must therefore stop them from attempting to blow-up what they perceive to be against their ‘ideals’. We have and must retain that right.
As far as providing aid, how many times do we have to build and rebuild schools and roads, etc. so that they can just reduce thm to rubble again? That is stupid. Ask the Afghanis if they want education, or water to drink or to provide irrigation! Ask if they want power to run some of the conveniences that we take for granted. No not the DVD players or the A/Cs but rather the lights and maybe some of the hospital equipment.
Yeah, those barbarians reduce hospitals to rubble too.
CRB, I agree with your goals. We may have some moral “right” but the problem is that we Canadians simply do not have the military capability to cleanse Afghanistan of “the bad guys”. Further, NATO does not have the stomach or the will to pay the price in money or manpower to accomplish what we think should happen. Therefore, we must stick to maintaining sovereignty over our own land and shores. That includes rooting out pockets of terrorists right here in our own backyard.
Insofar as providing aid is concerned, I strongly agree that it is ludicrous to be building schools, hospitals, etc., simply to have some idiot knock them down. So why bother trying until they get their shit together? Then our option is to deal with the government of the day in Afghanistan and decide for ourselves how much or how little aid will be offered.
Beautiful Mac. I read that too, but I read it for CONTENT and not for the prose! You should maybe spend a bit of time searching the words of Amadinawhatever and examine his thoughts regarding the return of the 12th Imam. He is prepared to sacrifice himself and the entire region to the glorification of Mohammed by nuking Israel and her supporters everywhere. Both Iran and Afghanistan are in dire need of reformation. But the reforms are arriving from vastly different quarters. Reform in Iran is from within, while in Afghanistan reform must be achieved from the outside. Pakistan. NATO. And I know NATO is creepily sedentary. It may take a few more bomb blasts before they open their eyes, but they will. To quote George Bush “they only have to be right once whereas we have to be right all the time”.
As far as waiting for Afghanistan to change from within, it ain’t gonna happen. Not until the fundaMENTALISTs are eradicated. My God mohammed must be a proud man.
Some say its the same God, CRB.
Sorry Mac, was not quite awake! You are correct in your analysis. But soooo many want the People on the side of the reasoned choose to not address anything past the confines of their own narrow minds.
Apologies???
CRB, you say, “Reform in Iran is from within, while in Afghanistan reform must be achieved from the outside. Pakistan. NATO.” We will have to agree to disagree on that! In the real world that kind of commitment by NATO is not going to happen. If the folks in Afghanistan want change they will have to bring it about by themselves regardless of the cost in blood.
It’s all good, CRB.
Given half a chance, Iran will reform itself (again) but replacing one set of rogues with another set won’t necessarily make the nation or the region safer… and as long as the mad mullahs are preaching hatred against all things western, the chances of peace vary between slim and nil.