Thursday, April 24, 2003
A couple of interesting items in today's Best of the Web:
General Strike Set in Iran In Bid To Topple Mullahs
This is a NY Sun story about a large Iranian student protest scheduled for July 9th. The questions are, how big will this one be, and how much should the USA be overtly involved? These types of events are a big opportunity for us. It's difficult to know from this distance how meaningful an event this really is, although the article certainly makes it sound promising. If it's worth it, we should be giving all the moral support we can.
WASHINGTON — Mark the date: July 9. That’s when opponents of the Iranian regime have called a general strike that they hope will expand to topple the government there and bring freedom and democracy to the Iranian people.
The strike is being organized by profreedom student groups to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the last student uprising in Iran that saw thousands of students take to the streets against the Islamic Republic’s ruling mullahs.
The planned event — indeed, the Iranian freedom movement as a whole — could take on a new dimension now that Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq, is free from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.
Policy experts have speculated that a liberated Iraq could embolden Iranian freedom fighters to rise up and mount a serious challenge to the ruling mullahs.
The July 9 strike is also putting Washington on the spot, as policymakers scramble to decide how the American government should respond. [...]
The strike is being organized by profreedom student groups to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the last student uprising in Iran that saw thousands of students take to the streets against the Islamic Republic’s ruling mullahs.
The planned event — indeed, the Iranian freedom movement as a whole — could take on a new dimension now that Iran’s western neighbor, Iraq, is free from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.
Policy experts have speculated that a liberated Iraq could embolden Iranian freedom fighters to rise up and mount a serious challenge to the ruling mullahs.
The July 9 strike is also putting Washington on the spot, as policymakers scramble to decide how the American government should respond. [...]
Also, Taranto has several links to what amount to admissions by AFP and BBC that maybe the massive anti-American protests and the supply disaster in the Baghdad hospitals weren't all they were cracked up to be. Go to the Best of the Web feature here and scroll down to the heading "Repent. The End Isn't Nigh."
[...]Remember all the hysteria about looting of hospitals? Now Agence France-Presse reports (you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the dispatch to read it) that according to Médecins Sans Frontières there is "no large-scale health crisis" in Iraq. "MSF has not found any reason to justify a major humanitarian medical program in Iraq," MSF international president Morten Rostrup tells the wire service.
And what about those revolting Shiites who've been all over the news the past couple of days? "Shias Stage Anti-US Protest" reads a BBC.com headline from yesterday. You have to read to the 10th paragraph to learn that "the anti-US demonstrations were small-scale, involving only a few hundred people."[...]
And what about those revolting Shiites who've been all over the news the past couple of days? "Shias Stage Anti-US Protest" reads a BBC.com headline from yesterday. You have to read to the 10th paragraph to learn that "the anti-US demonstrations were small-scale, involving only a few hundred people."[...]
