A few days ago I implored the president to recognize the Iranian ambition for freedom. It looks as if people on my wavelength got their own message through to the White House:
President Bush on Sunday lent his support to pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran, calling their protests a positive step on the road to freedom."This is the beginning of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran which I think is positive," Bush said in Kennebunkport where he is spending a long weekend.
Now, "positive" may seem like a silly, no-brainer truism - but then you've got to remind yourself what the State Department has been saying for the past thirty years. First, the country was a lost cause if the Shah couldn't return. Then it was assumed better off as a punching bag for Saddam Hussein. Years later, when Tehran's mullahs apparently took a night class on public relations and contrived a grand gesture to republicanism, the State Department was delighted. Time to "engage"! Revolts against the Islamist mullahs meant chaos - stability, was the key, and if it came through freedom, fine; if not, well, "those kinds of people" weren't meant for it anyway. No, instead, the United States was to adopt a policy of "engagement" with the "reformists."
Unfortunately, so-called reformists like Mohammed Khatami are nothing more than smiling faces slapped onto the same terror-supporting executioners.
And in the aftermath of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq, no one's interests are served by fearing how the Near East's resident autocrats might react if the West begins to encourage the region's population to displace those who unjustly rule and confine them - "No, no, really, we're quite envious of a command market, show trials and state-run media. As you were."
President Bush has tacitly acknowledged this tradition, rejected it, and has grabbed Tehran's attention:
Iran's Foreign Ministry accused the United States of "flagrant interference in Iran's internal affairs" and said the significance of the protests was being deliberately overstated by U.S. officials.
Pay no attention to the massive, cross-class riot behind the curtain! The Mullahs were in trouble before Bush spoke. Now that the president has begun to alter the landscape - indeed, perhaps the administration will begin to close in on the second member of the Axis of Evil - the Mullahs know that the end is in sight.
Which means, of course, that free living may begin soon for Iranians.