From "Death to Amercia" to "Death to Goverment"?

Iranians protest their goverment stealing an election. Rojer L. Simon notes:

As far as I know, our reactionary president still wants to negotiate with the mullahs, despite an obviously stolen election in an already phony democracy. The people of Iran are obviously feeling differently. Here they chant “Death to the government that cons the people!” in the streets of Iran. Pass this video around. Our president doesn’t support democracy. We can.

Shameful but unsurprising. Our president has a nasty habit of insulting our allies, sucking up to our enemies, and ignoring the plight of the opressed in favor of the "plight" of his cronies.

Michael Totten has a continuous roundup. And has the footage of Iranians chanting "Death to Goverment."


Richard Fernandez has some thoughts as well.

Events in Iran will inevitably put the spotlight on the administration’s police of engagement. As I wrote in the previous post, ‘engagement’ with a dictatorial regime is an all purpose word which is meaningless without the the modifiers ‘for regime change’ or ‘for behavior change’. Despite the fact that current unrest is centered around the vote stealing; it is not about whether Mousavi is better than Ahmadinejad. The vote is bizarrely enough, a referendum on the legitimacy of the regime. Michael Ledeen notes that Ahmadinejad’s opponent, Mir Houssein Mousavi, is no democrat. His qualification for popularity is tsimply hat he is not Ahmadinajad. Some of the emotion we are witnessing now can only be understood as a protest against the status quo. Whether Ahmadinajad or Mousavi won isn’t the central fact. The central fact is that the Ayatollahs remain in power by fraud and coercion.

Steve Schippert at Threatswatch argues that the silver lining in Ahmadinejad’s election is that the current administration can no longer pretend it is negotiating with a ‘moderate’ — something it might have done if Mousavi won. But the question is why Washington should want to pretend. It is important to consider the extent to which tacitly accepting the current regime in Teheran legitimizes it; and thereby makes it harder for the Iranian people to topple. The US may not be able to materially aid in the regime’s overthrow, but like a doctor, it shouldn’t hurt where it cannot help.