Great, great post that I've been meaning to get to from Richard Nash's blog at Soft Skull Press, in which he notes that Danny Postel, a senior editor at the online magazine Open Democracy; calls out Western leftists on their disinterest around progressive movements in Iran.
"In hundreds of conversations I’ve had with Iranian intellectuals, journalists, and human rights activists in recent years, I invariably encounter exasperation,” writes Danny Postel in Reading “Legitimation Crisis” in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism.
"Why, they ask, is the American Left so indifferent to the struggle taking place in Iran? Why can’t the Iranian movement get the attention of so-called progressives and solidarity activists here? Why is it mainly neoconservatives who express interest in the Iranian struggle?”
Nash continues, detailing a Soft Skull title on Iran and where initial interest came from.
Um, it wasn't the lefties.
When the history of the "War on Terror" gets written, I wonder if it will be noted that progressives owe Bush a big thanks for messing Iraq up as badly as he has.
If Bush's military misadventure had gone even half right, and women in Afghanistan and the Shia in Iraq got a seat at the table without a great deal of misery first; Western progressives would have a lot to answer for from the very people that military might would have been credited with helping.
Obviously the immediate future is looking brighter for Clinton/Obama whomever, but there weren't a lot of voices on the Left that approached oppression in Afghanistan or the Middle East in the same way as Democrats did thirty yeas ago in Nicaragua for example.
That's why I like guys like Paul Berman.
Posted by Dave
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