Why Anti-Jihadists should support the Iranian people

I’ve been taking some heat from a few of my fellow anti-jihaders on twitter for showing solidarity to the Iranian people and their mountainous climb for change.  Their argument is basically:

“After this is all over, they will simply return to the Death to America and Death to Israel chants” only this time it’ll be led by Mousavi instead of Ahmadinejad.

or

“by supporting Iranian democracy, we’re supporting Islamic totalitarian democracy”

There’s definitely truth to that…but…

Regardless of who is in power, the consequences of Iranian policy will not change…so why oppose the people’s right to choose?

Just because the opposition candidate isn’t much better, does that mean we SHOULDN”T support the process? I don’t think we should just sit back quietly and not say anything about supporting HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people who are demanding free and fair elections.  Free elections go to the core of our value system, so why not support that?

The consequences of Iranian policy, rhetoric and action will be unchanged.  I supported the desire of the Palestinians to vote Hamas into power, but that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for voting terrorists into power. There will always be consequences.

I say we deal with whoever’s in power after the fact.  Let the Iranian people choose.  Support their rights to free and fair elections, even if the candidates are both one in the same.  Remind the Iranian people what they could and should have.  Freedom.

Also, isn’t the purpose of “setting their nuke program back” to give the Iranian people time, to support the growing opposition, to take back their country from Islamic hardliners? Is it a stretch to think that Iran could one day get back to the days of the Shah? I don’t think it’s a stretch.  So that’s why I’m supporting the Iranian people.

Yea I know it all started in choosing the lesser of two Islamic totalitarians, but what I and many others who are supporting this movement, is that this could be the start of something bigger, something that happened in 1979, only this time it’s going in the other direction.

*Update*

Charles Krauthammer wrote a great piece in the Washington Post today.  I thought this goes along with our discussion about whether or not to support this Iranian uprising.

This started out about election fraud. But like all revolutions, it has far outgrown its origins.What’s at stake now is the very legitimacy of this regime — and the future of the entire Middle East.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism — leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 — the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, the first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt — was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception — Iraq and Lebanon — becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this “vigorous debate” (press secretary Robert Gibbs’s disgraceful euphemism) over election “irregularities” not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration’s geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, President Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear “file is shut, forever.” The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That’s our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of “meddling.” Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror — and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America’s moral standing in the world.

Related posts:

1. Setback for Iranian President
2. Berkeley Daily: Why I don’t support the troops
3. Bush calls Iran “single biggest threat” to Mideast peace
4. Western human rights lobby ignoring Iranian suffering
5. Cheney: “Iran faces serious consequences”
6. Officials: Discovery of Weapons Cache Suggests Iranian Meddling in Afghan War
7. Ahmadinejad’s latest anti-Israel Tirade
8. Iranian protester: “We don’t deny the Holocaust. We do accept Israel’s rights”
9. John Bolton Breaks Down Possible Iranian Response to Israeli Airstrike
10. Iran: Millions of young people in search of ‘virtual sex’ says official report