I have been following the demonstrations in Iran this past week with great interest.
I was a young boy in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah and led to a decades-long cold and hard war with the West. It is my firm belief that the events in Iran in 1979 were the beginning of the War on America that resulted in the attacks of 9/11/2001.
I have stated on several occasions that the deaths on 9/11 were the result of actions & inactions of every President from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush as the dealt with the ripple effects of the Iranian Islamic Revolution.
So that all being said, what the hell is my headline all about? Well, I posted this thought on Twitter earlier today:
Raise your hand if you think the Iranians would be marching now if Saddam had not been taken out in 2003 and successful elections in Iraq?
Can anyone honestly think that the Iranian people could have NOT been inspired by the overthrow of the brutal Saddam Hussein and the subsequent free and FAIR elections in Iraq? If you think not, you are delusional and living in a dream world.
No matter what the final outcome in Iran is, I am confident that the marches in the streets will represent another battlefield win by the United States against Islamic terrorism. The actions of President George W. Bush and the heroic deeds of our US military has had a significance influence on the future of Iran — whether it ends this week or in 10 years.
UPDATE: I’m not the only one that feels this way. Blogger Kirk Petersen remarks: It is a vindication of the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and liberate Iraq.
Petersen also put me onto a column by Daniel Finkelstein of The London Times who today even more forcefully connects the dots between American ideals and actions and the protests for election fairness in Iran. Read the whole thing!
For years we have been told, we neocons, that other cultures don’t want our liberty, our American freedom. Yankee go home! But it isn’t true. Because millions of Iranians do want it. Yes, they want their sovereignty, and demand respect for their nation and its great history. No, they don’t want foreign interference and manipulation. But they still insist upon their rights and their freedom. They know that liberty isn’t American or British. It is Iranian, it is human.
It is not part of their [Iran's] precious heritage that someone be charged with a capital offence for circulating a petition on women’s rights. Nor that nine-year-old girls should be eligible for the death penalty, and children hanged for their crimes. There is no special Iranian will, even given their religious conservatism, that students should be flogged in public for being flirtatious, and homosexuals hanged in the streets.
The protests for Mr Mousavi do not just expose the lie of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory. They expose the lie that there is something Western in wanting democracy and human rights.
Precisely. There is no question that the modern-day quest for liberty and freedom throughout the world that continues today had its origins on July 4, 1776 with those visionary words and yet simple theory of self-government:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
-Bruce (GayPatriot)