OUR DISGRACE – AT 9:02 A.M. ET:  It's a sad anniversary in Iran.  A year ago the democracy protest movement ignited in Tehran.  A year later, it is moribund.  But why?  The Washington Post, in an incomplete piece, examines:

TEHRAN -- When office clerks, housewives, students and other urban Iranians took to the streets a year ago to protest what they said was massive election fraud by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they hailed the birth of a leaderless popular movement that embodied their aspirations for a more open society...

...Using word of mouth, social media and cellphone text messages, Iranians challenged the government in a way long unimaginable in the 30-year-old Islamic republic -- or, for that matter, during the centuries of monarchy that preceded it.

And then this:

Foreign governments, including the United States, lauded the advent of a major grass-roots movement, unprecedented in the Middle East.

Not quite.  It took the president of the United States, Mr. Hope and Change, four days to get to a microphone to say a few pleasant things about the Iranian democracy movement.  With no American leadership, foreign support for the Iranian freedom fighters was limited, to put it mildly.

Now, a year later, the masses that made up the movement have disappeared from the streets of Tehran. Dozens of protesters have been killed in clashes with determined government forces; hundreds have been arrested and put on trial. Faced with overwhelming force, without guidance or organization, the dissidents these days cannot agree on their goals, much less mount a significant challenge to the country's leadership.

Okay, that may be true.  But revolutionary movements have debates all the time.  The real issue here is that the absence of foreign support for democracy, led by an indifferent Barack Obama, was critical to crushing the movement.  Indeed, Obama isn't even mentioned in the story, a serious omission, given the role he refused to play.

We had a chance at regime change.  We blew that chance.

When President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire," it appalled the "sophisticates" in the American foreign-policy establishment.  But in the prisons of Siberia, we later learned, the president's message was tapped out on pipes, and inspired resistance movements.  Barack Obama has proved himself to be a cynical Chicago politician who, at a critical moment, faltered in promoting the best of the American ideal.

June 11, 2010