Hanging The Democracy Movement In The Wind

Fire of Liberty

Tonight in Tehran the mullahs are falling all over themselves in laughter because the United States has declared that they're willing to have direct talks with Iran. It looks like Secretary Rice is returning to her realist foreign policy training and pushed the march towards freedom foreign policy to the wayside to get in the good graces of Europe and the Republican Wets in the Senate. The only thing that this hat in hand approach towards Iran is providing some legitimacy for the mullahs. All the regime has to do is point out that their saber rattling has brought the 'Great Satan' to its knees much like it did in 1979. This show of weakness before the mullahs will push the radicalism in the Islamic world even further thus creating the strong horse versus weak horse scenario that the great Middle East historian Bernard Lewis has pointed out since September 11th, 2001. (He originally pointed this out in an article in Foreign Affairs upon reading Bin Laden's 1998 fatwa against the US).

The folks in the NSC, CIA, and State Department might think that this is a move in the right direction but they're leaving the democratic movement of Iran(Egypt, Lebanon, Syria) out on the lurch even when the regime is feeling the pressure of the democracy movement, see here. As you know, I've stood shoulder to shoulder with the folks of Iran who take on the Islamo-fascists each and every day and thus we should be focused more on following the Jeffersonian/Lincolnian/Reaganesque policy of promoting the principles of liberty and freedom and thus embracing the democracy movement throughout the world that President Bush stated in his 2nd Inaugural Address rather than giving a vast upper-hand to the mullahs by offering direct talks. It seems as of late that we're standing by the chicken coop door with the door opened and telling the fox to get his full. Where is the sanity to this move after standing by the forces of freedom for the last five years.