A
front page article in the Post this morning blasts the illusion that Bush's "tough talk" is somehow helping democratic activists in Iran:
"We are under pressure here both from hard-liners in the judiciary and that stupid George Bush," human rights activist Emad Baghi said as he waited anxiously for his wife and daughter to emerge from interrogation last week. "When he says he wants to promote democracy in Iran, he gives money to these outside groups and we're in here suffering."
The article points out the fallacy of relying upon exiles to initiate change in a country to which they cannot return.
Activists here said the Bush initiative demonstrates the chasm that often separates those working inside Iran for greater freedoms -- carefully calibrating their actions to nudge incremental changes in a hostile system -- and the more strident approach of many Iranian exiles who often have the ear of Washington policymakers.
More below the fold
Not only is the Bush program of holding seminars and working with exiles failing by making activists inside Iran easy targets, it is drawing those in country to make some bold conclusions:
"The people who did this workshop don't realize what kind of world we live in here," Baghi said. "Here, we've got Mortazavi and the system behind him. The other side has got the U.S. and its money. The pressure is on people who are trying to promote human rights inside the country."I feel Ahmadinejad and President Bush are like two blades of a scissor."
So how to affect change in Iran? Certainly not by following the same tactic as was used in Iraq. There, exiles like Ahmed Chalabi, out of touch with those in Iraq and corrupt to the extreme, milk the sympathies and pocketbooks of ignorant politicians while actual regression on human rights (from the period of the initial invasion to the present) takes place within the country. Comments like:
"Our society is very complicated," said Vahid Pourostad, editor of National Trust, a new newspaper aligned with Iran's struggling reform movement. "Generally speaking, it is impossible to impose something from outside. Whatever happens will happen from inside."It seems to me the United States is not studying the history of Iran very carefully," Pourostad said. "Whenever they came and supported an idea publicly, the public has done the opposite."
Perhaps the Bush government is used to the soft spines of the US media and general public in accepting their imposed will. Or perhaps there is a simple blindness to the ineffectuality of these policies. It could be a simple ignorance to actual conditions in Iran as well. My guess is it is all three.