David

Karki

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June 24, 2009

Her Name Was Neda

In the past few days, Iran has brought a whole new meaning to the term “B & B”. Not bed and breakfast, but butchery and barbecuing – of its own people.

What began as protests and demonstrations against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs for having stolen an election have now grown into full-blown violence and possibly the start of an Iranian revolutionary war.

Information is still difficult to get, what with the regime cutting off all communications and a pliant media not about to report anything that would make the teleprompter reader they propelled to the White House look any worse than he's already made himself look through his cowardly inaction and wimpy words.

But it would appear, from what is being posted to sites like Twitter and YouTube, that the regime has reached a new despicable low. They have not only opened fire on protesters, killing dozens, but have attacked the hospitals treating the wounded. Foreign embassies in Tehran have now opened their doors to protect and care for these courageous people, as much as they are able.

There are also reports that helicopters are dropping acid and flammable liquids on crowds, which is resulting in serious skin burns. If true, than Ahmadinejad and the mullahs have, in effect, used chemical weapons on their own people, just as Saddam Hussein once did to the Kurds.

And then there is the sickening footage that should make the regime a pariah around the world. In it, a conservatively dressed young woman who had been watching – not participating in – the protests is lying on the street, having been shot through the neck and in the chest by Ahmadinejad's snipers. Several men scream in horror and rage, her father among them in unimaginable and uncontrollable agony, as they vainly attempt to stop the blood pouring out of her mouth, nose, neck and chest, soaking her as she quickly dies from the mortal wound. Her eyes go blank, her precious soul having left this world for one far better. Her name was Neda.

What does it say about any regime that would consider such a person a threat to the point where such savage butchery is, in their eyes, justifiable? And what does it say about us, if we stay quiet and do not swiftly bring such monsters to justice? This sort of thing simply cannot go unanswered, at minimum by the harshest words that can possibly be used to condemn the perpetrators and uplift the victims.

And at maximum, by whatever aid can be given – without giving the mullahs any opening to spin things – to ensure that the Iranian people's courage and sacrifice are not in vain. As I write, there are eyewitness reports of tanks on the streets of Tehran. The Iranian people likely aren't sufficiently armed to repel this kind of force.

It evokes memories of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Soviet tanks rolled and the West failed to act. That mistake wasn't corrected until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, some 20-30 years of oppression later.

If this turns out to be the moment when the mullahs crush a nascent revolution under the heel of their jack-boots, alá Tiananmen Square in 1989 when China forcibly put down a similar protest for democracy from its young people, and we had the chance to do something about it but failed, we will forever regret it. And not just when the mushroom cloud appears over Tel Aviv or when Israel is forced to preemptively act, when all that could have been prevented right here and now.

Unfortunately, that sort of thing is lost on President Obama, who absurdly seems to think that because something went wrong in 1956 or 1979 in Iran, that we've forever lost any moral authority to address anything there ever again. He has issued only a couple of milquetoast statements, which are a week late and a C-note short (a day and a dollar don't cover it), and are as notable for everything they don't say and their Orwellian contortions of language to avoid clear moral truth as the little bit they do.

And forget about action. Sanctions, freezing assets – there are numerous things short of direct involvement that could be done to further isolate the regime and help the Iranian people push it off the precipice into the abyss once and for all. But Obama the coward hasn't lifted a finger to do anything to help these gutsy people, who are bleeding and dying in order to be free. Nor to punish the same regime who has interfered in Iraq and attacked our troops there. He is effectively giving an enemy of America every chance to get back up off the mat.

One more thought: Could it be that the Iranian people saw the democracy the Iraqi people now have, an example of what could be for them as well, decided that they had been lied to by the mullahs for long enough and courageously took the final step to their own freedom? Think about it – the only reason one steals an election is because one is going to lose. That means this uprising had been building for a long time. The election theft was the flashpoint, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, which finally set it off.

Or, to put it more simply: Bush was right.

I pray that God is with and protects those brave people of Iran in these difficult times, that they can put the rule of the mullahs and Ahmadinejad in the history books, and that the judgment of posterity doesn't find America's response lacking. If anyone ought to be fully with the Iranians, it's the inheritors of a nation founded by another band of citizen patriots who defeated a seemingly overpowering foe.

Neda deserves that much. Her name means “voice,” and as a martyr for her people, that voice will never be silenced.

(Editors’ note: Newspaper editors concerned about space might consider posting the URL to the letter below rather than publishing the whole thing. The URL is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

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Epilogue – The below was posted from Neda’s sister (from HuffingtonPost): 

Yesterday I wrote a note, with the subject line “tomorrow is a great day perhaps tomorrow I’ll be killed.” I’m here to let you know I’m alive but my sister was killed...

I’m here to tell you my sister died while in her father’s hands...
I’m here to tell you my sister had big dreams...
I’m here to tell you my sister who died was a decent person... and like me yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind... and like me read “Forough” [Forough Farrokhzad]... and longed to live free and equal... and she longed to hold her head up and announce, “I’m Iranian”... and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair... and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib...

my sister died from not having life... my sister died as injustice has no end... my sister died since she loved life too much... and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people...

my loving sister, I wish you had closed your eyes when your time had come... the very end of your last glance burns my soul....

sister have a short sleep. your last dream be sweet. 

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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