"...demonstrators who are risking their lives. That would be deeply cynical, and vile beyond belief."

There's some room there for pundits who don't really consider Iranians to possess human lives.

It has nothing to do with the history of Iran, Hilzoy, and everything to do with the conservative belief that deep down, all people are the same.

Each Country Is What It Is, And Not Another Country

And this is why the Allahpundit et al fingerpointing is not about Iran at all. It is as American as Apple Pie. Right v Left, dem-repub, with an added component of some lefties signing up for different reasons. IE underdog support.

Both without knowledge of what they are protesting for, or against and what it means as Americans to the peoples of Iran. And apparently not caring to find out. It's the contest that counts. a decidedly American contest.

I've been glued to Twitter for days. Right wingers pop up here and there with "Obama is weak," or "Obama is betraying protesters," usually with a #tcot (top conservative on twitter) hashtag. I've asked several what it is they think Obama should do.

One guy said -- not kidding -- send in the CIA. When I told him that this isn't our revolution, he told me to read the Declaration of Independence and I'd see that it is our revolution, because the there ideals are universal.

A #tcot woman told me that we had to agree that Iran's path to freedom means no more Mullahs and no more of their decrees. While I agree in the abstract, in practice I believe very strongly that if these protesters topple their government and institute a new order in Iran, it's up to them to make those decisions. Not us.

There's a very American idea that we can shape all these things, and more importantly that we should. We have to learn to let that idea go. There are good, decent, brave people who are right now, at 8am in Tehran, trading their safety for a chance at a freedom they may not fully understand in practice. This is their moment and their movement and there's something profoundly immoral in wanting to steal that from them and make it all about us.

Riiiight: Hungary, 1956. Historically, the lesson was that US rhetoric leading up to the uprising could not match the relatively constrained possibilities the US faced during it.

Leaving aside the fact that Britain, France and Israel managed to kill any forward US motion in Hungary by unwisely choosing to invade Egypt at the same time, Eisenhower had no options to support Hungarian revolutionaries; as he later wrote, "Sending United States troops alone into Hungary through hostile or neutral territory would have involved [America] in general war" -- possibly leading to a full-scale nuclear conflict.

Although Iran is no Soviet Union, the constraints are the same: strong rhetoric from America cannot be backed by equally strong action, a problem that the Lebanese now know all too well. Those politicians demanding stronger talk are asking the Iranians to bet their lives on our words. That's a bad bargain.

In the meantime, the Russians managed to disband UNOMIG. Another example where fine words were matched by impotent action.

It seems to me the White House is doing exactly what it should: listening to the actual reformists and what they want.

Too often this country has acted how it believed it should regardless of our potential benefactors' desires. Sort of like Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane.

The same Neocons who scream we should be 'supporting' the protestors in Iran were the ones who 'supported' the Shiite insurgents in Iraq in 1991...
... right up until Saudi Arabia told us if we kept this up the price of oil would go to $100 a barrel because of the unrest it would invoke in SA's own Shiite population in their north.

With a record like that, it takes a lot of gall to say America should support the Iranian Protestors. How much does support mean? Going to war for them or in the end leaving them to die in the tens of thousands because we don't want to disrupt oil shipments in the Gulf?

McCain et al should just SHUT THE F**K UP!

So which is it?

Well, they're Republicans, so I am going with "...deeply cynical, and vile beyond belief."

As a second-generation Hungarian emigrant with first-hand knowledge of Imre Nagy, I must say the comparison between him and Mr Mousavi in no way holds.

Much as I disagree with Mr Ahmedinejad, and with admittedly little knowledge of the technicalities of elections in Iran, it seems to me that the gap between him and his closest opponents (11m votes or thereabouts) is wide enough to lend credibility to Mr Ahmedinejad's election.

I also would have preferred the other candidate, but let's respect the vote of the Iranian people.

a lot of the iranian people seem to be saying that their votes were *not* respected.

and for peacefully protesting they are being harrassed, injured, and in a few cases, murdered by their own government. which is desperately trying to shut down any witness by the outside world.

why would a government do all this over protests to an election that was actually legitimate?

I love Obama, but his reserve about this is baffling to me.

I love Obama, but his reserve about this is baffling to me.

It would do more harm than good. The hard liners are already screaming that the United States is meddling because Twitter rescheduled a maintenance update. President Obama is walking a tightrope here and so far he hasn't faltered. He is playing this one exactly right.

@ Frank: Do you really believe that the Iranian government finished counting 30 million paper ballots by hand within two hours of the polls closing? That is when the results were announced.

If so, we need to send our election people over there to learn how to do it.

Can no one else see the strong resemblance between the style and substance of Ahmadinejad and the rightwing Republicans? Doesn't it suggest that they feel a sort of camaraderie with him? Why else would they be pushing policies that would result in supporting him?