Protest in Iran

Current Tunes: Cave In – Stained Silver

While the recent attempted plane bombing has most people’s attentions right now, I can’t help but keep my eyes focused on Iran instead. It feels so strange for all this to be happening all in the last week of the year. Maybe my memory is bad, but I don’t particularly recall having many terrorist attacks on our soil in the past year, at least none that we were told about. It’s like we went so long without any of this business and it has to come along at the tail-end of the year and ruin everything.

In contrast to that, this madness in Iran has been bubbling for quite a while, and these recent protests and killings is only further testament, in my mind, that the situation in Iran has to change and soon. I can’t really act like I have my finger right on the pulse of the average American’s thoughts and perceptions, but it seems to me most of us here in the USA don’t really get what’s going on over there. If I’m right, we might have the press and media to thank for that.

From a purely political perspective, what does that say about U.S. involvement overseas if the average citizens of Iran actually do force out these theocrats and establish a free nation? On one hand you’d have Iran, who fixed its own problems (probably not without internal bloodshed) and stood its ground on its own. On the other hand, you’d have Iraq, which had to have its dictator forcibly removed and years later is still in total disarray (though things are steadily improving from what we hear). I suppose I’m extrapolating much too far into the future. I don’t know how we in the U.S can help, given how stretched we are already between our two wars and the struggling economy, but I’d like to know how we could.

I sincerely hope we can see dramatic, sweeping change in Iran in the near future, if not in the next year. Again, I’m not exactly a foreign policy expert or anything, but from my vantage point it looks to me like a non-theocratic, possibly democratic, Iran would have more impact for the U.S. in the Middle East than an end to the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Back in June, I was excited to see the protests going on, it gave me hope that the country might be seeing change. But when the protests died down after all the violence, I feel discouraged. Clearly the people of Iran aren’t so easily dissuaded. It’s inspiring to see people who are so sick and fed up with their country being driven into the ground and they finally decide to do something about it. I sincerely wish the people of Iran the best of luck. They’re overdue for a miracle over there, and perhaps in 2010 they’ll finally get it.