Diane Alden
Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2002

Preceded by the bloody Hungarian Revolution in the mid-1950s, a tiny spark of human freedom burst into a flame in Czechoslovakia in the latter '60s – a nearly bloodless reform movement in Czechoslovakia led by an unlikely reformer, a Communist Party hack by the name of Dubcek.

The Czechs believed the time was right to demand a few economic and political reforms. Dubcek was not much of a leader but he knew what Czechs wanted. University students, ordinary people, intellectuals, soldiers and others were able to achieve modest reforms such as press censorship.

The newly independent press proceeded to criticize the bosses in Moscow. The Kremlin, however, was not having any of it. Since the United States was bogged down in Vietnam, the Soviets understood they had nothing to fear from the U.S. in Europe.

Meanwhile, Europe was no help. It was embroiled in its own leftist protests. The operative word here is important and that operative word is leftist. Worldwide, the Hegelian and collectivist left was on the move. Actually, democratic-socialists or leftists owned the '60s and they still adversely impact U.S. foreign policy and American interests to an alarming degree.

Europe in the '60s was a mishmash of out-of-control anarchists, communists and bored elites, who took to the streets in an attempt to overturn Western civilization. Specifically, they hated any form of capitalism, political or economic freedom for the individual. Most of all they hated the United States.

Soviet leader Brezhnev and the entire Presidium went to Czechoslovakia and proceeded to rip into Dubcek and the reform effort. Dubcek was arrested and taken to Russia or Poland. The day after his arrest Russia invaded Czechoslovakia with 200,000 troops. Dubcek agreed to dump the Reforms, and that was the end of the taste of freedom in the Czech Spring of 1968.

That same year the left, with the help of their friends in the press, were taking over most of the institutions of the United States.

Czechoslovakia did not taste freedom or reform until 20 years later, when the Soviet Union crumbled. The Soviet Union crumbled, in large part, because of a conservative U.S. "cowboy" president who challenged the evil nature of the oppressive and freedom-killing regime.

Iran's Czech Spring

Who cares about Iran? With war with Iraq in the offing, why should we care? Why should Americans give a hoot about a country that held dozens of Americans hostage for long months in 1979? Weren't the streets of Tehran full of young people protesting the Great Satan that was America? Weren't they joyously burning American flags and shooting at Marines at the American Embassy in Tehran?

Weren't the new leaders turning women into second-class citizens, denying them basic freedoms and giving them a status below that of animals in the U.S.? Weren't Jimmy Carter and the denizens of Foggy Bottom (the State Department) very hopeful that the downfall of Shah Reza Pahlavi meant that Washington could do deals with the "religious" ayatollahs?

Shows you how very little they knew or understood. As far as our leadership and the State Department are concerned, nothing has changed in our own day and age.

Until recently, I had no concern for Iran and its fate. I was as in the dark as anyone else about what was happening in that nation. All the mainstream media coverage is about the ayatollahs who run the "axis of evil." Very little coverage is given to the vast majority of the people of Iran and their increasing hatred of the present regime and its oppressive and murderous actions.

This of course is due in part to the usual failure of the American mainstream media. In an odd way, even the left in the U.S. seems to prefer the ayatollahs to any regime that might be sympathetic to the United States.

The revolution of the ayatollahs in the late '70s was a radical militaristic version of Islam, and the world's leftists supported it. A moderate progressive secular state headed by Shah Reza Pahlavi was overturned over perceived abuses by the shah's secret policy. Those abuses pale in comparison with what followed when the ayatollahs took power.

The downfall of the shah was aided and abetted by the leftists of the world and given moral support from the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia and opportunistic professional terrorists like Yasser Arafat.

The shah's Iran was a beacon of hope compared to the miserable conditions in regard to human rights in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in 1979. Wahhabism and Islamic radical fundamentalism have failed to improve the lot of the Muslim people in any Muslim country, then and now.

In the last few years, Iranian expatriates living in the U.S. have been trying to get the message out that the attitude of a huge proportion of the Iranian people toward their theocratic leaders and toward America has done a 180.

Recently, an Iranian dissident wrote to me stating, "Why any American should be in the least concerned about our plight, after what the Iranian Taliban has done in our nation's name, brings tears to my eyes."

Many dissidents and experts on the Middle East insist that the current sea change in Iran is not about reforming Islam but about separating Islam from the state. Oddly, according to numerous Iranian expatriates, it is the international LEFT along with the Islamist extremists who want to keep the ayatollahs and the theocratic state in power.

That is the case not because the ayatollahs or the theocratic state are good for the people of Iran but because they are anti-Western and anti-American. In turn, that makes them more acceptable to the international left than a pro-Western revolution led by Iranian students, soldiers, workers and women. Of all groups of political activists, the international left should be supporting demonstrations and change in Iran.

Dissidents say that for more than half a century Iran's leftist organizations (not only the Tudeh Party but also Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, Islamic-Marxist groups, etc.) either directly or indirectly worked nonstop to paralyze Iran's struggle for reconstruction and democratization. They used every possible means, even religion, to stop Iran's transformation to the modern world.

The week of Dec. 3, 2002, the Iranian people demonstrated in the hundreds of thousands. This was not the first such demonstration. Coverage of these demonstrations was sparse, however, and part of the reason for that is the American press.

Reuters reports this week that the crowd on the streets was made up of a cross-section of ordinary Teheranis. One of the several middle-age, middle-class women taking part said: "We don't have free speech and we don't have freedom. I have come here to support the students for my children's future."

Thus, demonstrators are not just male students, soldiers or workers; more often than not, half to two-thirds of them are women.

If real revolution comes to Iran, it is the end of the ayatollahs. It is not, however, the end of Islam as a religion. It will simply be the end of Islamist religious oppression as the rule of law.

America's Leftist Reactionary Press

Nonetheless, the elite American press, such as the New York Times, continues to prefer the fiction that the ayatollahs have reformers among them, reformers who will allow a few changes in Iran but still be anti-Western as well as against a war with Iraq.

In addition, Iran under the ayatollahs will still be hostile to Israel and supportive of terrorism against the United States and Israel.

It is beyond belief, but Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and the so-called Hollywood 100 have fallen in with the international leftist belief that anything is better for the world than policy promoted by the United States.

In a recent column, Middle Eastern and terrorist expert Michael Ledeen quotes Friedman: "The struggle in Iran is symbolized by one man, whose name you should know: Hashem Aghajari ...," [Friedman] wrote on Dec. 4, in a column entitled 'An Islamic Reformation.' That's the way to talk to your readers: Tell them what they should know, and explain why."

In a previous column, Ledeen again quotes the left-leaning Times, which continues to cling to the fabrication that Iran's ayatollahs have "reformers" among them. The Times piece says, "Iran's pro-reform majority ... is bravely pushing back" and then pretends that the massive demonstrations were simply aimed at a "redress [of] the balance between the popularly elected government and the self-appointed religious establishment."

Not according to numerous non-leftist Iranians inside and outside Iran. But then what do they know when the New York Times is speaking ex cathedra on the Middle East, and specifically on Iran.

Meanwhile, death in large doses is standard operating procedure. As Ledeen reports, in November a 21-year-old-man was hung from a crane "in the holy city of Qom, the stronghold of the country's religious authorities, and the body was left in full view for a full ten hours. ... [It] was clearly intended as a warning to the religious leaders of Qom, many of whom have been openly critical of the regime."

Winter of Their Discontent

Intellectual dissident journalist Siamak Pourzand was abducted a year ago by the ayatollahs' death squads and has not been heard from since. His son lives in the U.S. and does not know what happened to his father. But he did tell me that "the Iranian people want to be friends and desperately wish to get out from under the yoke of these theocratic psycho-fascists."

Iranian Nader Naderpour (1929-2000) was the first Iranian thinker who deduced that the "reformist" movement in Iran was baloney. Nothing more or less than the attempt by many of the world's and Iran's leftists to give life to the anti-Western theocratic regime of the mullahs.

Naderpour called the Iranian reform movement led by Iranian President Khatami one more killing lie spread by the fundamentalists and their leftist sympathizers in Iran and in the West.

Previously, other political activists such as Iranian Daryoush and Parvaneh Forouhar were murdered for having the audacity to cry out against the abuses of the murderous regime in Iran. So-called "reformer" President Mohammad Khatami continuously approved and justified these criminal activities against innocent Iranians.

Iranian writer and intellectual Farhad Mufdie contends that "Iran's leftover leftists are showing their comradeship and their solidarity with the current dark ruling forces of Iran. They, too, are attempting to paralyze any potential chance for starting the democratization process in Iran and in the Middle East. That's why IRI supporters are collecting signatures and giving the red-carpet treatment to officials who would say 'No' to a potential U.S. attack on Iraq. ... For more than half a century Iran's leftist organizations (not only the Tudeh Party but also Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, Islamic-Marxist groups, etc.) either directly or indirectly worked nonstop to paralyze Iran's struggle for reconstruction and democratization. They used every possible means, even religion, to stop Iran's transformation to the modern world."

The regime of the ayatollahs is prepared to kill anyone who wants change.

Nonetheless, Colin Powell and the denizens of the State Department want to ignore the crisis and maintain a great big comfortable fiction with an accompanying silence. Apparently, they are comfortable with the hogwash that "reformers" among the ayatollahs are leading Iran toward a more progressive and democratic future. At the very least, our State Department can pretend this is the case while the "reformer" ayatollahs continue stoning people to death and oppressing a majority of the Iranian people.

We are missing a golden opportunity to make real and lasting changes for peace in the Middle East and Iran, more opportunity than we have had in decades. Peace that no number of Camp David pacts or Oslo accords or trips by Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton will ever give us. We are missing Iran's Czech Spring.

To comment, write alden@newsmax.com or visit my Web site at www.aldenchronicles.com.

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