Quote:
Originally Posted by Mojo_PeiPei
Alienating the good people of Iran might be the only option if some real threat should surface. The reality is good intentions and good people are all fine and dandy, but they have zero power and zero control. Bush has played it pretty solid thus far, trying to encourage change through the people, hopefully he is motivated to continue this because it is the best means for change plus there seems to be some response from the people; but at the sametime he would be a fool to take all options off the table.
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Sherman, set the wayback machine for 1982. The place: Argentina. The regime: a cruel and corrupt dictatorship led by a guy named Galtieri which had oppressed, tortured, and "disappeared" many, and run the economy into the ground; unrest was beginning to swell despite the fact that all the guns and weapons were in the wrong hands.
Junta is is trouble, tries to came things down by: invading the Falkland Islands! The Falklands were a British colony in the south Atlantic which Argentina had a dubious claim to. The idea: pull the country together around a nationalist cause and against a foreign power: the United Kingdom.
Which very quickly came down from the North Atlantic and whipped Argentine ass off the Falklands. Sank some principal ships. And it turns out the Argentines defending the island were poorly trained conscripts who didn't really want to be there. Argentina capitulates. Everybody hates the junta again, only twice as much. Galtieri resigns, democracy begins to stir.
http://www.yendor.com/vanished/falklands-war.html
The point is that the people do have power, a lot of power. But they won't exercise it until the collective zeitgeist says, "It's time to get rid of these turkeys." When everybody, or most everybody, feels strongly the same way, it's safe to push for change. In Argentina, the tipping point was international humiliation and an unutterably stupid war that was obviously waged for all the wrong reasons.
Will this happen in Iran, if the U.S. bombs?
I truly doubt it. The mullahs are a pain in the ass, but they're much less brutal that the Argentinian junta, and the economy's in adequate shape. All the young people may hate them, but they don't hate them enough to stand up and try to throw them out, because 1) the mullahs still have a lot of support which would fight back, and 2) life's not really that bad. In time, things will change, I believe, as the generations change. Or, if the West got off oil and stopped funding the mullahs by filling their gas tanks, the mullahs would be out of there pretty quickly.
What may well happen is sort of what Galtieri hoped for in the Falklands: an external threat to Iran will silence dissent and cause everybody to pull together in defense of the country and stop criticizing the regime. Just as people who don't like GWB still support the president in war because he's the president, so will a lot of the young people support the mullah's government in a conflict against the external enemey -- the United States ! -- because the mullahs lead the defense of the country.
It's a great way for the mullahs to gain support, but they aren't doing it: we, apparently, are going to do it for them. Forget any lack of knowledge about the middle east: our administration apparently doesn't understand basic psychology.