You say you want a revolution? Really?

DH Riley, on the latest burblings from the DPL himself (of which we've spoken earlier):

Really, if eight years of disaster is not enough of an answer to the perpetual campaign for hollow insincerity, then someone kindly remind this fuck just how much it accomplished when his side was in control. Weren't we all Georgians just last August? Weren't we Orange Revolutionaries and Cedar Revolutionaries before that? Is is at all peculiar that We weren't all Kurds as well, back when that would have been inconvenient for a Republican administration? Isn't it bad enough that a large chunk of American foreign policy is dedicated to the proposition that we can control the rest of the planet with our high-powered brain emanations? Does it have to be Jonah's brain?

Watching the news from Iran play out, I find myself unsurprised that the same self-absorbed fucks who led the chearleading for invading Iraq now want President Obama to be more "forceful" in renouncing the 12th century religious regime in control of the government and in announcing our BFF status with the students risking their lives to demand a fair election. With the same blissful ignorance with which they supported unleashing six years of hell on Iraqis, the neo-onanists now demand that we throw the full obese weight of American support behind a political campaign we'd paid no, none, nada, attention to one month ago, since all our attention then was on bombing those selfsame Iranians.

Now, I am no "Iran hand." I do not speak Persian, Farsi, or, truth be told, English. But I will venture that, as I look at the pictures and listen to the voices that manage to escape out of that country, our support -- or the UK's -- is the last thing the protesters want or need. Nevermind the obvious fact that in inserting our own goutish nose into their affairs will only give ammunition to the fundamentalists' charges that the students are, at best, dupes of the West and, at worst, provacateurs employed by the West (consider the response on the Right if the USSR had proclaimed its solidarity with the protesters in Chicago in 1968). The truth is they are protesting for a politician who is perhaps a moderate when it comes to the laws and values of the Islamic Republic. These protests are not an attempt to undo the revolution against the Shah or to overthrow the mullahs. They are protests to demand that their votes are counted fairly (something we ought to consider trying sometime). I don't know if the many women seen in the photos want to throw off the veil or simply to throw out a politician who seems to hate their sex, supporting legislation to permit a man to unilaterally announce his divorce and to outlaw alimony. I don't know if the students are marching for Whisky Sexy Democracy or simply to support a politician who might use a slightly less heavy hand and might have a slightly better clue about improving the Iranian economy.

I don't know. What I do know is, this ain't about us.