IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Regime Change We Can Believe In

IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Regime Change We Can Believe In


Iran: Last week's postelection protests had the makings of an uprising that might have overthrown mullah rule. The missing ingredient: well-prepared, preplanned leadership from the United States.



During the 1991 coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev by Soviet hard-liners — three days that felt like an eternity — many supposed experts said the Cold War was back to stay. But President George H.W. Bush struck what sounded at the time like a naive chord. He said before the television cameras that maybe the coup would fail. And he soon turned out to be right.

The elder Bush's words may not have made the crucial difference; information flowing from foreign media, fax machines, radios and computers all helped organize popular resistance to the coup.

But his remark was still an illustration of the powers of the bully pulpit of the American presidency; the crowds of Muscovites addressed by Boris Yeltsin standing atop a tank knew that the leader of the free world was with them.

The younger President George Bush may have had his father's comments in mind nearly a decade and a half later during his second inaugural when he said that "fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in freedom's cause." He promised those in tyranny that "when you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

The second President Bush may also have been inspired by Ronald Reagan, who stood before the "permanent" division within Berlin and told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." It was soon gone.

Last week, the Iranian people stood for liberty. June 2009 in Iran is something the U.S. could have and should have spent years planning for. The Bush administration itself did not, in fact, plan for a potential counter-revolution like that of the last few days.

America didn't assist the real opposition in Iran — student groups, religious leaders against the regime — with material support such as communications technology, or funds whereby mass protests like those we've seen could be turned into large-scale strikes.

Nor did we provide moral support by explicitly declaring long ago that we support the Iranians' right to choose their own form of government and their own leaders.

And so now when we witness events that few, if any, expected — tens of thousands filling the streets after the obvious stealing of a presidential election — the U.S. government finds itself flat-footed, and the American people lament, "Gee, isn't it too bad the Iranians can't overthrow that old ayatollah."

Tehran's goons have now killed at least 20 protesters. The daughter and other relatives of a former president have been jailed in a backstage struggle amongst ruling clerics. And as veteran leftist journalist Robert Fisk noted in the London Independent, supporters of Iranian President Ahmadinejad were distributing leaflets that attempted to discredit democratic revolutions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, saying they were instigated by the Western media.

It all indicates near-panic at the highest levels of power in Iran. Yet the U.S. was not ready to exploit it, perhaps help topple the regime, and thus prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed terrorist state.

The silence from the White House was at first deafening. The establishment TV media dutifully trotted out talking heads to explain that noninterference was exactly the right strategy for the U.S. to be taking, lest Iranian demonstrators and their organizers be tainted as pro-American stooges. But there was one big problem with that viewpoint: the Tehran regime was calling them that anyway.

It soon became embarrassing for Obama, known for his silver tongue, to be silent. So he finally threw a Martin Luther King quotation at the mullahs, warning them that "the world is watching."

It was mild compared with the calls for recounts and condemnations of the Islamofascist regime from leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Why must Americans look timid in comparison to the Europeans?

We refuse to halt Iran's nuclear program with military force. We won't try to stop it with serious economic warfare that goes beyond slap-on-the-wrist sanctions. And now it also seems clear that we won't stand with Iranian freedom fighters in their hour of need.

Apparently, the secret weapon the U.S. is intent on using (but only when the time is right) against Iranian nuclear jihad is: Our president's irresistible personality.