“This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success”
President Obama, addressing 200,000 cheering Germans last summer.
Another piece on Global Grind on how the situation in Iran speaks to the importance and power of one voice.
Speaking of which, checkout this WAPO piece on exactly that, how Americans are using technology to impact events over there. One of the individuals profiled, Chas Danner, is a good friend. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been blown away by how his actions (on his computer in Brooklyn) could have such a profound effect on so many.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Peggy Noonan has a column critiquing those who are trying to politically posture themselves to be more in line with the reformers in Iran. She states:
“This was Aggressive Political Solipsism at work: Always exploit events to show you love freedom more than the other guy, always make someone else’s delicate drama your excuse for a thumping curtain speech.”
This isn’t a time for politics, this is a time where we allow the very premise that this nation was founded on speak for itself. 
Watching this video from the BBC, the sentiment “nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change” comes to mind.
Indeed, hurrah.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan)
My thoughts and prayers are with this blogger, and everyone else, who protests tomorrow.
“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”
(h/t) Andrew Sullivan
My latest piece on Huffpost.
Translation: "Trust us! We had counted the votes a few days before the election."
I’m going to write more on this tonight– but in the meantime, wanted to share my first post for Global Grind on the Iranian elections.
Global Grind is Russel Simmon’s website, I’ll be contributing posts weekly.
Over the last few days, something was visibly happening in Iran. The images of women and young people flocking to the streets in support of reformist candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi displayed the kind of hopeful unrest that promised a sea change. Many have conceded that Mr. Moussavi was a sort of political blank slate, making it hard to say what his Presidency would have meant to the country and the world. Nonetheless, the last few days reflected the intersection of emotional intensity and politics, reminiscent of what we saw here in the US in 2008. On Saturday, these supporters sat in anguish as current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in an apparent landslide. The results are suspect, and accordingly, blogs and twitter and facebook consist of speculation and reporting of what’s currently going on as Moussavi supporters take their cause to the streets.
Roger Cohen’s column in the Times today notes a women telling him:
“Throw away your pen and paper and come to our aid,” she said, pointing to my notebook. “There is no freedom here.”
Andrew Sullivan, The Tehran Bureau, and Nader Uskowi are all doing an incredible job of uncovering events as they unfold.
Today, my thoughts are with the Iranian people.
Some criticism of The President’s speech today. I have no illusions, today’s speech wasn’t an anecdote to the World’s problems. However, I truly believe that the approach leveraged, that of empathy and emphasizing commonalities, is a winning approach. Nonetheless, it’s imperative to look at what the President didn’t do, in order to identify opportunities for additional dialogue and action.
“At times in his speech, it was almost as if Obama in his elegant oration was pandering to the fundamentalists and the oppressive governments who have defined the Islamic dialogue for decades. He said that he does not want to be a prisoner of the past, but his speech was littered with history which, while accurate, is old news when it stands alone without direction or context.”
“Yes, Obama is targeting the Arab ’street’ and global public opinion - but to the corrupt regimes that dominate that region of the world, his oration means virtually nothing. Repression and suppression will go on uninterrupted. And to those whose abiding hatred of Israel (and thus America) is absolute, Obama’s words will be seen as empty and hypocritical.”
Ira Stoll (h/t Ben Smith)
“The sections about the Palestinian Arabs were even weaker. He said of the Palestinians: “For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.” This buys into the claim that it was 1948, not 1967, that was the original tragedy for the Palestinian Arabs, and feeds the idea that the Palestinian Arabs have a claim to all of Israel, not just the West Bank and Gaza.”
Shmuel Rosner (h/t Andrew Sullivan)
“Obama’s Cairo speech had a misleading quality to it. The president was speaking the rhetoric of Reagan, while intending to execute the policy of George H. W. Bush. Conveying the image of an emotional, forthcoming, and understanding bridge-builder, he is actually a cautious and calculated leader, wanting to scale down America’s foreign policy–back to the days when “interests” were king, not ‘ideologies.’ Obama is a new type of the old ‘realist.; He is a realist with feelings–one that can naturally combine a call for halting Iran’s nuclear weapons because of ‘America’s interests’ (and others’) with his personal story of ‘an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama.’”