A silent revolustion in Iran?

Paul Greenberg:

I knew about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in the glorious year 1989, when the Iron Curtain crumbled. I can even remember the Singing Revolution in Estonia about the same time. But this is something new: a Silent Revolution. The huge throng that marched through the Iranian capital last Monday spoke nary a word, Theirs was a silent vigil for a liberty not so much lost as never gained, from Shah to Ayatollah.

Whenever someone in the crowd would shout a slogan, others hushed him. The organizers of the march had prepared signs that read only: SILENCE! Only the sound of marching feet could be heard, like the oceanic wave of a people patiently rising, till the inevitable gunshots rang out as a confrontation was sparked.

After the silence of the day, people gathered on rooftops under cover of night to shout Allahu Akhbar! and Death to the Dictator. It was a prayer and call to action at the same time.

The big question about the latest "election" in Iran isn't whether it was rigged. The candidates were screened by the theocracy from the start, and the more active members of the opposition jailed before the first votes were cast. The big question is whether Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his gang stole the election or just inflated his margin of victory into a blowout.

We'll probably never know, as anybody can testify who has studied the history of elections in Cook County, Illinois, or of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, where the Ahmadinejad of his time and place was named Leander Perez. Rigged votes are scarcely confined to the Islamic world.

But the vote-stealing in Iran lacked the discreet charm of political bosses like Mayor Daley I in Chicago, who had enough restraint in 1960 to hold his ballots back till he knew just how many Jack Kennedy would need to overcome the Republican vote downstate. In Iran, the mullahs were less subtle. Any election in which almost 40 million paper ballots are tallied in only a matter of hours, and the winner declared before the votes could possibly have been counted, is bound to raise suspicions.

The electoral fraud was so obvious that even the ayatollah-in-chief had to qualify his earlier announcement that Mahmoud the Rabid had won by saying there would be an investigation and a recount of the more suspect votes. His Holiness may be willing to countenance a few score million stolen votes, but not a landslide.

Meanwhile, as days passed, the White House practiced its own form of silence. Things have changed since a president of the United States could be counted on to at least voice a protest when another people are cowed. Finally, finally, our president voiced some tepid concern, acknowledging that his silence was the kind that gives consent -- to tyranny. Or as he put it, "it would be wrong for me to be silent about what we've seen on television over the last few days." There was no would-be to it, it was wrong. When it comes to Iran, the president of Change and Hope became the president of stasis and resignation. Only slowly, grudgingly does he stir in defense of freedom in Iran even now.

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If ever there was a time to be on the side of the people it is in this rebellion against authority in Iran. We know how bad the current regime is and we should be on the side of any internal opposition to it. Greenberg notes something unique about this rebellion. In daylight it is a silent one which makes it difficult for the government to move on the protesters, but at night they give voice to their anger at the oppressors. But there is certainly no reason for those in the US to be silent in their opposition to this evil regime.