Wednesday, 25 June 2003

Born on the Ninth of July. Two weeks from today in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there's going to be a revolution. It's the anniversary of an uprising against the clerics, a 1999 student protest that was Iran's version of Tiananmen Square—and since that year the people of Iran have marked every July 9 ("18 Tir," by the Muslim calendar) with rallies and protests. This year the protesters are signaling that July 9, 2003 will be more than just a call for reform: It will be an all-out push to remove from power the conservative clerics who dominate Iran's government.

Jeff Jarvis has been the English-speaking blogosphere's point man on Iran (and is doing an outstanding job), so I'll refer you to him for more information—suffice to say that recent events to Iran's west and east, in Iraq and Afghanistan, have made conditions ripe for democracy. (In fact, Iran's government already has free elections and a representative parliament; the obstacle is an unelected council of clerics with absolute veto power, who are vetoing all attempts to reduce their authority.)

In 1775 Pierre de Beaumarchais, a French spy in London, was asked to report whether the British would suffer a colonial revolt in America, and if so how that could be turned to France's advantage in the Great Game. He wrote to his superiors: "The Americans will triumph, but they must be assisted in their struggle; for if they succumb, they would join the English, turn round against us, and put our colonies in jeopardy. We are not yet in a fit state to make war. We must prepare ourselves, keep up the struggle, and with that view send secret assistance in a prudent manner to the Americans." The advice eventually proved fatal for King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, but nonetheless France entered the Revolutionary War on the American side, and the French provided arms, training and support to George Washington's troops.

Today our role in Iran's struggle for freedom must be similar to France's role in our own fight for independence: We must support the Iranian people, and in the worst case provide them with arms and training—but the triumph and victory must be theirs. If French troops had fought in our place at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, the American Revolution would have accomplished far less; our history books would record 1776 as the start of the Second French and Indian War, not of an American Revolution that we proudly fought ourselves.

By America's founding principles, the Iranian people have the right and the duty to change their form of government. We can't assume that duty on their behalf, as we did in Iraq: There the government's grip on power was so choking and complete that the people couldn't throw it off, no matter how badly they wanted to. (And, rightly or wrongly, in Iraq we perceived that the danger to ourselves was too great—and too imminent—to allow Saddam to continue.) What we can do for the Iranian people is to lend them our support: Not to fight on their behalf, but to stand by their side. To cheer their struggle and clearly signal that we have no intention of propping up the clerics—no matter what, in their growing desperation, they may offer us in exchange. To voice our hope that Iran will soon enjoy the freedoms and liberties that Americans take for granted, the rights that we believe are granted as a birthright to us all.

America once cherished her reputation abroad as a defender of freedom, as a beacon of hope and liberty to the poor and downtrodden and oppressed; lately, sometimes, it seems we don't value that reputation as much as we once did, and that now we'd rather just be feared, thank you very much, if that's what keeps the terrorists at bay. But fear isn't what America is about. Fear isn't what drove us to declare the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable human right. Fear wasn't what led America to greatness, isn't what moves friends and allies to support us, and is not what we need to play our part in the struggle for democratic change in Iran. We need to revive the image of America as the "shining city on a hill," the image that Ronald Reagan borrowed from a 1630 Pilgrim's sermon; we need to inspire the Iranian people, not terrify or frustrate them. It's an hour for hope, and a time for all those who care about liberty and freedom to lend their voices in support: We hope the Iranians succeed, and that July 9th will someday mean to them what July 4th means to us.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 11:11 am. comments.