Is it not painful when you hear people inside of Iran desperately asking for some help to be free?
I was talking to a friend of mine who is just willing to do almost every thing possible to get rid of the mullahs but can't do much and we, people living outside of Iran, can't do much to help them either.
This friend of mine was telling me that they need a leader and yes, my friend was completely right. I have also come to this conclusion, for months, that Iranian people inside of Iran won't do a damn thing until they are being led. I mean, it is just in our culture to do things while being led. I know it may sound foolish of talking about leadership in 21st century but that's how it is in Iran. People need a leader to get rid of the regime...
Can you be a leader?
17 comments:
HIH Prince Reza is the obvious choice,
I know it may sound foolish of talking about leadership in 21st century but that's how it is in Iran.
Winston, that doesn't sound foolish at all. It's the same everywhere. That's the way people are. But it's one of the unfortunate truths that one of the first things any autocratic government does, is to try and eliminate or subvert any potential opposition leader. They do this because they know very well that's where the real danger is. It doesn't matter how angry or dis-satisfied people are, without good leadership they won't get very far. I hope for all our sakes that there are still some opposition leaders in Iran. It could be that somebody will emerge from within the regime apparatus who has slipped through the cracks, or has a change of heart. That isn't an unknown occurance.
Roy, prince Pahlavi doesn't want to lead.
If I could speak Persian (Farsi), I would be willing to lead the Iranian people. I would first assassinate everyone in the government, including Ayatolah Khomeini. We don't need suicide bombers, we could just use machine guns and tanks. Destroy the building where they meet.
Nothing is impossible. So they have guards? So what! I am getting so frustrated. Talk, talk, talk. That's all the outsiders want to do. Then they wonder why the USA has to clean up the messes they leave behind.
If they would, for once, come down on Iran in a smart way, none of this would have to be done. Get the UN out of the US, and get the US out of the UN! The heck with all of them. They are nothing but thugs trying to tell us what to do. I'm very tired of it, and I'm very angry.
Do people understand what Human Rights are? NO! They do not. If they did, they would never allow Iran, Cuba or Zimbabwe on the panel.
Oh, I don't really mean I would do that to the Iranian government, but I can dream, can't I?
I think Pahlavi is leading, whether he consciously and deliberately wants to or not. Leaders often emerge just that way. It's not always a role consciously chosen or driven by a zealous desire to act politically.
It looks like both khomeini and khameni and many other viruses occupying Iran are graduates of KGB school of propaganda. As a matter of fact, the IRI's security apparatus is modeled after the SS and Stalin's organizational protocol. There is an essay written by a Marxist Arab on Islamization of Lenin's organizational system. For any leader to be effective in tackling the IRI, he or she needs to first identify and understand the innerworking of their security and secret financial set ups in order to target them. It's a tall order and requires a lot of studying and knowledge on how to even begin planning and strategizing to lead. Goals and objectives needs to be identified and quantified first systematically and for that you need to be well versed in how the mafia/mullah system is organized in everyway.
I can remember get into a 'discussion' about leadership for Iranians, with another Iranian blogger a few months back.
Yes, they need a leader or a group of leaders. I thought that's what Pahlavi was trying to do with his group.
Rosemary, Khomeini died in 1989
We have a leader. His name is Sayyed Ali Khamenei.
RP is not a leader if by leader is meant someone who thinks for people or commandeers them around.
If you look at the "leaderships" of all the countries that made the journey from dictatorship to democracy, you'll see that their leaders were of a different kind. Take Walesa in Poland, or the Student Movement that brought Serbia down... These leaders were just "speakers" of what the people themselves were saying. In Iran we are still not speaking with one voice. There are some who want change, but by all appearances these are either in the minority, or too scared to even show their own faces... And they want a leader!!! Cowards! The leadership they want is of the dictatorship kind, not the democratic kind. If people were to speak with their own voices, under their own name, a leader would automatically emerge.
As it is RP is doing his best to be a "voice." His failure is chiefly because of the cowardice of those who claim to be his followers by hide in the shadows waiting for a savior, America, Israel, Shah, Leader, Fuehrer...
It's sad.
Amir, Khamenei may be the leader you would like to consider as a leader, but I don't. None of us don't consider that idiot a leader.
You have a very wrong impression of leader among the Iranians and I believe it is becuz you have been away from Iran way too long.
Nice response.
It reminds me of Niki's responses.
Yes, I've been away too long.
I don't participate in hero-worship and leadership acquisition or armchair generalling of armies into countries I haven't seen.
Go on then, find someone to hold your chain and push you around... Shah or Ayatollah...
For un-free people, they are the same... By the way, again, are you a real person or a brand of cigarette?
I agree with Programmer Craig that there is absolutely nothing wrong in the Iranians' wish and need for a leader. It's not about people being immature or not using their own heads. Every institution, every group of people doing something together needs a leader. Even if they are three workmen painting a wall.
If a strong protest movement begins spontaneously without a leader, it will soon be directed either by random leaders or (the usual case) by somebody actually appointed by the regime. Such a movement will of course be much less likely to succeed than one with an appropriate leader, like Valesa in Poland.
I am thinking about a potential leader - a professor and disabled war veteran who spoke for separation between "church" and state and rights for everybody (not just the Mullahs) to comment on the Koran. He was threatened by a death sentence and this sparked students' protests years ago. I wonder what happened to this man; I cannot check because I don't remember his name, but Iranians surely know whom I mean.
Amir, I am a cigarette brand but that doesn't disqualify me from having an opinion!
In reality, Winston, Cigarette brands ARE in fact disqualified from having an opinion. But the fact is that you are not one, since you write. You just would like to be one, and that is the problem. If you were in fact a cigarette brand I would have very little to disagree with you.
Maya,
The guy you are thinking about is Aghajari, and if he's not on Winston's black list, then he will be soon, because he was never for a change of system, he was just saying, quite paradoxically, that human-beings can think for themselves and so don't need a leader!!! Go and ask him to be a leader... go on then!!!
Amir, you better stop making a moron out of your own character.
Like it or not, you also sound like one of those morons who live in his dreamland. Have Fun!
Amir,
he was just saying, quite paradoxically, that human-beings can think for themselves
Yes they can! Well, some of us, anyway :)
and so don't need a leader!!!
Well, that's just silly. Have you ever seen a group of people try to get anything accomplished, when nobody is in charge? Everybody off doing their own thing, often working at cross purposes to each other, arguing non-stop, everyone trying to get their way, and resisting anyone else's ideas (because they are of course, thinking for themselves) and so on, and so forth...
This guy sounds like an anarchist to me. Not that being an anarchist is a bad thing, but throwing down all elements of the social fabric and living as an isolated individual rather than a member of a community is not a recipe for success in this world. It's a recipe for what's happening in Iraq, right now.
Go and ask him to be a leader... go on then!!!
Well, I can't speak for Maya but if this guy believes what you say he does, Iran is better off without him!
name one revolution, uprising and freedom movement that had no LEADER! I dare you...
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