February 2, 2003
COME HOME; ALL IS FORGIVEN:
Iran's Revolutionary Fervor Is Now All but Spent (ELAINE SCIOLINO, February 2, 2003, NY Times)Twenty-four years ago today, a 78-year-old ayatollah with fierce eyes named Ruhollah Khomeini landed in an Air France plane to make a revolution.As it has done every year since then, the Islamic Republic that was created in his name is celebrating the 10 days between his arrival and the surrender of the shah's army.
Big colored lights were strung on the city squares and public buildings. Iranian flags hung from lampposts. An honor guard on horseback waved bright red banners. Parachutists jumped from helicopters on huge rainbow-hued kites. Paintings and billboards were hung throughout the capital with sayings like, "The revolution was victorious only because of the sacrifices of our martyrs."
But the revolutionary fervor that moved a nation to sacrifice for so long evaporated long ago. Ayatollah Khomeini promised a heaven on earth in which the poor and the oppressed masses would rule and be free. Instead, the country is plagued by political paralysis, corruption, unemployment, social restrictions and uneven and unnerving repression. A fierce guerrilla battle wages between those claiming to speak in the name of Islamic purity and those who call themselves democrats.
Iranians love to rhyme, and street vendors and taxi drivers have taken to calling the 10 days of "fajr," meaning dawn, the 10 days of "zajr" - torture. There is so little zeal left that even the apparatus of the Islamic Republic, with its revolutionary foundations, the police and the Armed Forces, made almost no effort to mobilize the masses today.
Unfortunately the societies in which revolutionary ideas get test-driven have to bear the brunt of their failure. Iran has gone backwards considerably since giving the Westernizing Shah the heave ho, but, thanks largely to the groundwork he laid, it may be uniquely well prepared to duplicate an old revolution, one that works: the democratic capitalist protestant (small "p") revolution of the Anglosphere. America stands ready to welcome them pack to the path of freedom.
MORE:
-Iran Looks at a War With Iraq and Sees Its Own (ELAINE SCIOLINO, February 2, 2003, NY Times)