What’s happening in Iran in response to the fraudulent election is nothing short of awe-inspiring. This may be the revolution, and if so, it indeed will not be televised (though the early phases were), but it will be tweeted. The Anchoress comments,
You can feel the pulse. It is a human force for freedom that is pressing, pressing against restraints; fully aware of the danger, it yearns, pressing forward, still. It is a terrible beauty.
Read her post; she has some great comments and, as usual, a terrific roundup of key links on the state of things in Iran. We can be proud of Twitter, and of the people who came up with it and maintain it; we can be grateful that they were willing to reschedule their maintenance to inconvenience Americans instead of the Iranians who are tweeting for their lives, their freedom, and their sacred honor. And we can pray (hard!) for those Iranians, that God would protect them and honor their prayers, that he would work a miracle through them and give them freedom.
Unfortunately, our president hasn’t covered himself with glory in this instance; he seems to think that to “stand strongly with [a] universal principle” is enough, that if he just does that, he doesn’t have to stand with the Iranian people. Don Surber put it well, I think, when he wrote,
As an American, I am embarrassed that a couple of computer geeks who came up with a social network have more brass than my holier-than-thou president. Words, deeds. Odd that Twitter does deeds while the commander-in-chief does words.
Just an observation.
Fortunately, as the Anchoress notes, a 27-year-old Condoleezza Rice appointee at the State Department, Jared Cohen, took up some of the president’s slack when he asked Twitter to postpone their scheduled maintenance. Cohen’s an interesting chap, having spent a fair bit of time wandering around the Islamic world before going to work at Foggy Bottom; in 2007 he told the New Yorker,
“They make alcohol in their bathtubs and their sinks,” Cohen said. “And the drug use—it’s really no different from a frat party. You have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that you’re in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian young people are one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They just don’t know who to gravitate around, so young people gravitate around each other.”
Watch out for this guy—he has a very bright future—and be grateful that God put someone in his job at State who knows and cares about the people of Iran, especially since his new boss doesn’t know them and doesn’t seem to care very much. Never mind that, because Barack Obama’s not at the wheel here—he’s on the sidelines, a spectator, pretty much irrelevant; history’s happening somewhere else today. Pray for the people of Iran; pray that God brings the walls down. And pray that when that happens, and the reactions of our government start to matter again, that then they do the right thing.