Conservatives Supporting Iranian Free Elections

I take a little break from this blog, and look what happens. Iran has an election, unsurprisingly it's crooked and Ahmadinejad steals it, and historically huge numbers of people throng the streets in Tehran. American mainstream media have fallen on their faces here; about the only thing they've succeeded at is protecting audiences from seeing the ugly truth of what dictatorial governments will do to squelch democracy.

Conservatives: Iran is a theocratic dictatorship by thugs and for thugs. We should be vocally supporting any expansion of the rights we take for granted - like free elections and speech - if only to undermine Ahmedinejad's nuclear momentum. What's bad for Iranian priest-dictators is good for everyone else, including (especially) the Iranian people.

I started this blog to try to draw conservative foreign policy attention more toward East Asia, which is usually where the real action is happening. The Middle East matters only for these few moments in history, becuase oil matters. Islamic terrorism is the efforts of desperate extremist Neanderthals to turn back the tide of freedom and economic growth. East Asia is still where the long-term momentum is; but Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. That makes this a critical moment in that country's history - and ours.

So what can we do? Get on a Twitter feed or join an online community like a Facebook group and express your support (Ahmedinejad knows that this is a problem for him). Go to a rally, like the one I'm going to the night of Tuesday 16 June in Union Square in San Francisco. Email your representative that it's important to you as a conservative that the U.S. shows its solidarity with the Iranian people, especially because the guy that just stole the election is trying to build a nuclear bomb.

We're watching people fight for their freedom. Let's not let them down.