Talk about a revolution

Obviously we are all transfixed onto the happenings in Iran and viewing the video of the woman dying on camera yesterday was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever witnessed on the internet but I feel that her death will not be in vain. See unlike what Noel Gallagher claim, a revolution cannot be started from your bed and sadly blood will be shed when there is regime change. Blood-shed doesn’t make it ‘right’ but when you think of any instance where the people had an uprising against autocracy and there weren’t lives lost? With all the new technologies (blogs, twitter, flickr etc.) it’s obviously bringing the voices of the protesters to the western-media but this any uprising will need blood to keep people’s attention. The irony is that the last revolution in Iran only brought the Ayatollah into power in the first place, but I guess the only way to replace a revolution is with another one.

I know there is a lot of pressure for the US to step into this but we know that the meddling in other people’s revolutions usually only leads to an eventual uprising against the US forces. I commend Obama for not having taken any drastic steps, as a revolution can only be won from the inside and it will never be legitimized if it’s lead from a Western Nation. With that said I’m also not going to advocate standing on the sidelines as the Revolutionary Guard slaughters thousands of people and I can never tell you that there is a breaking point in terms of lives lost where it forces the US to step in but we have to avoid the reactionary cold-war mentality of Vietnam/Iraq by jumping head first into a country, culture and a people we don’t understand..

In the meantime what we can do is pressure Iran’s trading partners to sanction imports into Iran which may help break a regime from the outside while letting the people break it from the inside but then again this type of sanction will harm the citizens as much as the government but I do believe you have to cut the life-line to a regime if you hope to overthrow it. Then again this will involve China from stepping up to the plate in the name of human-rights and democracy which is probably as likely as asking David Ortiz to voluntarily come up to bat with a candle-stick in hand with 2 on in game 7 against the Yankees.