President Bush's Middle East Policies are now having an impact in Iran

Anyone who has been watching the news lately can see that President Bush's stated belief that Middle Eastern Muslims both Arab and Non-Arab, deserve to be free and his policy of promoting democracy where possible, most notably in next-door Iraq, had a great deal to do with Iranians' conviction that they, too, can hope to be free. We are now seeing unbelievably large protests in the streets of Tehran against an election result that many, many Iranians believe to be fraudulent.

Instead of giving these dissidents hope our current President is mostly silent and when he does speak it is slowly and mostly meaningless gobbledy goop due to the fact that he is afraid of possibly offending the current Islamic fundamentalist regime. He talks about torture being wrong and Gitmo being a recruiting tool for Al Queda yet he sits silently while protestors get shot by the Iranian military. What a gutless President we have.

Let us contrast him with what President Reagan had to say in 1981 when the Polish government tried to crush the Solidarity movement. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/122381e.htm

"As I speak to you tonight, the fate of a proud and ancient nation hangs in the balance. For a thousand years, Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government."

"The men who rule them and their totalitarian allies fear the very freedom that the Polish people cherish. They have answered the stirrings of liberty with brute force, killings, mass arrests, and the setting up of concentration camps. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders are imprisoned, their fate unknown. Factories, mines, universities, and homes have been assaulted."

"The target of this depression [repression] is the Solidarity Movement, but in attacking Solidarity its enemies attack an entire people. Ten million of Poland's 36 million citizens are members of Solidarity. Taken together with their families, they account for the overwhelming majority of the Polish nation. By persecuting Solidarity the Polish Government wages war against its own people."

"I urge the Polish Government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics."

"I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct "business as usual'' with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection."

Contrast this clarity and resolve to the ambivalent response from our current cajoneless President. He can always apologize for being a man and acting like the leader of the greatest nation in the world later since he is so good at apologizing overseas for so many other things that this great nation of ours is guilty of in his warped eyes.

Leaders lead and the rest follow and if our President is incapable of being a leader than it is time for him to step aside before it is too late. Iran will have nuclear warheads atop missles before Barry Hussein wakes up and smells the fact that he is being played by our enemies.