Tweeting Iranian protestors

By Richard Edmondson

Our government seems to be obsessed with Iran currently. The greatest complaint, once you peel through the onion-skin layers of rhetoric, is that Iran has an independent government that doesn't take orders from Washington. Unlike the dictator we propped up for 30 years in Egypt, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn't do what he's told. How dare he? So what is our solution to this dilemma? Well it seems to be the overthrow of the Iranian government. Why else would U.S. officials be sending tweets to Iranian protestors--and according to this guest on RT, that's exactly what they've been doing. My question is, if we know they're sending out tweets, what other shenanigans, praytell, might they be up to that we haven't yet found out about?

In my last post I gave a brief history of the U.S. involvement in overthrowing the government of Iran in 1953. This included the hiring of street thugs to take part in demonstrations against the democratically elected leadership of the country. Is the CIA now trying to repeat history? Obama says he isn't officially calling for a change in the Iranian government, but he does seem to be cheering the protests on--as does the Washington Post.

In the final days of Egypt's unrest, Obama aligned himself with the demonstrators' demand for a new government. With Iran he has not been so bold. His call Tuesday for Iran's Islamic to allow peaceful protest echoed the one he made after the opposition Green Movement emerged on Tehran's streets in June 2009 following a disputed presidential election, a response many conservatives criticized as tepid.

"We were clear then and we are clear now that what has been true in Egypt should be true in Iran—that people should be allowed to voice their opinions and their grievances and seek a more responsive government," Obama said. "What's been different is the Iranian government's response, which is to shoot people and beat people and arrest people."

So the Egyptian government didn't shoot anyone or beat up or arrest people? Tell that to the families of the more than 300 people who died in the recent protests. Tell it to the family of Khalid Said, the Egyptian blogger who was beaten to death last summer by Egyptian police—the same police whose salaries were being paid by our tax dollars.

Here we have a second video from RT which also bears consideration as it touches on the same subject. The video features an interview with Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) who says supporting Hosni Mubarak was a "30-year mistake" and that the U.S. should quit intervening in the affairs of other countries. Propping up dictators only creates rebellion and resentment among the populations of the countries in which we do this (not to mention the fact that the U.S. can't financially afford it any more). Paul also utters the unspeakable—or at least what is unspeakable for those inside the Washington beltway: that "the threat of terrorism is related to our foreign policy." It's a simple statement of truth, a truth abundantly evident to just about any thinking person, but one that few American politicians have dared to speak.

Paul has been one of the few voices in the Congress calling into question America's unqualified backing for seemingly everything Israel does. In 2009, he opposed a congressional resolution expressing support for Israel's attack against Gaza.

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