Authorities in Iran seems to have managed to crush vigorous protests over the disputed presidential election, after a threshold reached over the weekend.
Since then less and less Iranians are taking the streets of Tehran, which yesterday was draping in silence. The tragic death of Neda Sultani of a Basij sniper bullet to her heart, came to resemble the brutality with which the Revolutionary Guard and pro-regime militias are willing to apply.
In addition foreign media has been banned, Internet IPs cracked, websites hacked and, most importantly, the leadership of the opposition has been almost entirely disconnected from its base.
The Iranian government showed resolve in setting up a special court to try detained protesters, carrying out new arrests and launching a campaign to publicly vilify those calling for a new vote.
In the mean time, the best the media found to celebrate in US position is the "dramatically toughened (...) criticism of Iran's crackdown on election protesters", President Barack Obama's "emotional tribute to slain student Neda Soltan" and declaring the U.S. "appalled and outraged" by the violence.
"No iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness", Obama truly said. However, what's enough for the World -being a witness- is hardly enough for the US.
People look at Washington as the beacon of hope, change, and the vast land of "yes we can"...
Back in 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Washington was shamefully the witness on millions of Iraqis who perished when there rise in the face of Saddam Hussein was met with massive and indiscriminate force by the Iraqi regime.
America's role in igniting the revolts in southern and northern Iraq was crystal clear.
People were standing up in the face of a humiliatingly defeated dictator. Prior to the war President of the United States George H. W. Bush announced on the Voice of America radio saying:
However, when the Iraqis revolted all what Washington had to offer was a non-intervention approach.
There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations
Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney referred to the events in Iraq as "internal Iraqi politics" Similarly, then U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said "we don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
President Bush, later, spelled the following out:
I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Obama's supporters attribute part of what is taking place in Iran to his Cairo speech. Obama is a man who believes in the power of words. And it is the words of the prominent Persian poet Omar Khayyam that I hope he reads.
Khayyam says:
Hence, Obama who yesterday said, "we don't know yet how this thing is going to play out", might really get a perspective by looking back.
When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.
It is true that journalists are on a "24-hour news cycle," while the president of the United States is "not" as Obama himself noted yesterday. Hence, this is a historic moment and requires a historic approach and Obama, better than anyone else, acknowledges that on the right side of history there are just very few places for "witnesses".
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