Brilliant post by Daniel Luban at Lobelog, demolishing neocon Charles Krauthammer's ideas about the Iranian protesters. Krauthammer says they seek American intervention to bring about "regime change"–"to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy…"
Luban demonstrates that this is a transparently narcissistic projection (on the part of someone who studied psychology):
Constantly inclined to view foreign policy as a Manichean struggle
between light and darkness, the neoconservatives have never really been
able to grasp that anyone might be in the middle, and that the Iranian
or any other people might share some — but not all — of their goals.
Thus the assumption that if Iranians are repelled by the authoritarian
abuses of the their government, they must by the same token be secular,
pro-American, anti-political Islam, anti-Islamic Republic, and
clamoring for the United States to free them from their oppressors.
It
does not seem to occur to them that although many of the protesters may
be secular, many are devout Muslims; that although some may want to
overthrow the Islamic Republic, most respect its basic legitimacy; that
although most want to avoid confrontation and conflict with the West,
few are overflowing with admiration for America or Israel; that
although none want to instigate a regional nuclear holocaust, the vast
majority support nuclear power as a matter of national pride.
If Charles Krauthammer had bothered to ask anyone, he would have
learned that the reform movement is every bit as outraged by the
history of U.S. meddling as the Ahmadinejad supporters are–arguably
moreso, because they are well-educated, sophisticated people who
despise the neocolonialist condescension toward Iran that marked
American presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush.The failure to understand this basic fact–the failure to even care
what Iranians, even the Iranians who hate the regime, actually
think–is at the heart of the lethal carelessness that marked the Bush
Junior's Administration and neoconservative thinking in general.
