Iran and the Seasons of 1989
Twenty years ago I remember watching with horror the Tiananmen Square massacre unfold before my eyes in the newspapers and on CNN. Three months later I watched as one by one the nations of the Warsaw Pact bolted to freedom and the Berlin Wall crumbled. Today I am silent about Iran because I really don’t know how things are going to turn out there.
I stupidly take certain things to heart – and the freedom of oppressed peoples is one of those things. A therapist – heck even any AA sponsor – would warn me of the danger of allowing world events to affect me. As the Serenity Prayer states I must accept the things I cannot change – and there is nothing I can do to alter how the events are unfolding in Iran.
As I did then I curse the cowardice of my own leaders who today cannot distinguish between Hope and Despair in Iran, and those of 1989 who were all too quick to dine with the Butcher of Beijing. Obama today, Bush yesterday – yet they both share a sociopathic attachment to the status quo. For Bush the tanks must have come as a relief because the Tiananmen Square demonstrations complicated his efforts to cultivate a relationship with China to tip the balance of power vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. For Obama a less-radical Iran in possibly the mold of today’s Serbia would sidetrack his effort to cleave the Gordian Knot of the Middle East and succeed where all presidents over the last third of a century have failed. His ego and his followers demand nothing less.
The situation is fluid. No one can predict how events in Iran will play out. So I’ve avoided writing about it and tried to push it out of mind. But then the headlines crash through and I’m left yearning for the Persian people to become free – to experience the liberty that all human beings deserve by birth. I want them to experience the heady days of the Autumn of 1989 – not the horrifying Summer.
How will this end? I haven’t a clue but I know where my heart lies.
With Neda.
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