This is true enough:
The Iranian regime faces the most serious popular challenge to its tyranny in 40 years. Sparked by a 50 percent hike in fuel prices last month, the uprising has spread to the whole country. Security forces have killed hundreds of protesters, and at one point they were even forced to shut down the Internet — a sign that the ayatollahs feared for the survival of their regime.
So it’s worth asking: Did our experts see this coming?
Nope: Most were too busy blasting President Trump.
The article goes on about how so many experts said sanctions and American hostility would lead to a "rally around the flag" effect in Iran. But I wouldn't blame this on Trump Hysteria Condition because this attidude pre-dates Trump.
Our aid to or support for dissidents "taint" the dissidents, according to those people who have been blaming Trump for driving Iran dissidents to support the people who have been arresting, oppressing, impoverishing, and killing them. Really, the critics of our support think that our verbal support for dissidents will turn victims of a horrible regime into apologists for and supporters of the regime.(and note that the post is about dissidents in Syria 6 years before protests became widespread there, turning into a bloody civil war then multi-war). If not Trump, it's something else that leads them to the same conclusion that America is to blame.
I swear that people abroad don't think about Trump as much as the Make America Guilty Again professional Resistance does.
The funny thing about this thinking is that when enemies verbally or physically attack America, the rally around the flag effect is rarely evident here. Even after 9/11, experts still wanted to know "why they (the jihadis) hate us?" as if we did something to deserve the hatred. Polls certainly showed a rally around the flag effect--for a while. But so many experts on the left treated 9/11 as a speed bump on their journey to demonizing America.
Really, if jihadis pull off another big attack in America, who thinks the Resistance will rally around Trump to go after the terrorist murderers? Anyone?
America is a force for good and we shouldn't be shy about proclaiming that. Especially to people being trod on by despots' boots. And we have actual evidence for that assertion as Natan Sharansky wrote:
Roger Cohen’s article in the New York Times (March 22, 2009) analyzing President Obama’s televised greeting to the people and leaders of Iran on the occasion of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, evoked a poignant feeling of déjà vu for me.
Cohen believes and hopes that in his message, President Obama is basically abandoning the idea of regime change and of a military confrontation and is also rejecting the idea of linkage between the internal policies of Iran and international relations.
Reading it, I recalled how we, the democratic dissidents of the Soviet Union, looked in desperation and anger (and sometimes with deep disdain) at the messengers of the “free world“, who were willing to accept the Soviet Union as it was, who denied the policy of linkage between human rights and international pressure, and who did everything to downplay the military threat of the Soviet dictatorship. Immediately I thought what Iran’s democratic dissidents must be thinking while reading such an article?
That doesn't mean we need to militarily intervene to fight their battle. But we shouldn't refrain from recognizing the validity of their struggle, the evil of their oppressors, and where appropriate providing assistance that we think could help them win.
Meanwhile, because Orange Man Bad, Europe prefers to try appeasement again.
UPDATE: Related in the battle to unfairly tag America as a guilty nation:
In fact, the 1619 Project gets the truth exactly backward. America is exceptional, not because it once allowed slavery — a universal, unquestioned practice throughout most of human history — but because its founders launched a great and unprecedented experiment in democratic self-governance. Our history, with fits and starts, has been one long progress toward freedom, lighting a beacon to which people of all races have flocked.
Damn straight.
Who needs Russian political Facebook ads when the New York Times does Putin's work for free?
