The Corner - National Review Online
Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]
On the demonstrations in Iran on the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution:
In terms of demonstrations, the regime had a good day. Sometimes repression works. It certainly worked today.
You can repress a revolution. Tiananmen Square worked. The Chinese communists got 20 years out of it and more.
Sometimes it doesn't [and] you have a crack in the regime. This happened with the Shah, with the Soviet Union, with Ceausescu.
What was impressive in terms of the regime today was how disciplined were the forces of repression. The Revolutionary Guards were in the street, the paramilitary Basiji were out there. They cracked heads, they used tear gas, and they successfully prevented any mass demonstration.
And among the demonstrators, there has to be something of a loss of confidence. The repression is working. Their leadership is rather weak. The two presidential candidates who called for the mass demonstrations are rather moderate. They are not in tune with the ones in the street who want to change the regime.
And they never outlined a program, any kind of manifesto or direction. [They] said go out in the streets and essentially get beaten up. And that's a tall proposition if you are a demonstrator out there on your own. . . .
When President [Obama] spoke earlier in the week about [uranium] enrichment, he made a point of calling the regime "the Islamic Republic of Iran." There were demonstrators in the streets today shouting "Republic of Iran," leaving out "Islamic" as a way of saying: We don't want clerical rule.
Why the president insists on this gratuitous giving of legitimacy by using the preferred term of the mullahs is beyond me.
On Joe Biden’s statement that Iraq “can be one of the great achievements of this administration”:
One point: If this administration will not admit it was a Bush success, at least it ought to have the decency to say it was an American success and not an [Obama] administration success.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGNmYzYxNTgzZjI4Y2E2YmRiMDQwZmMwODc4Mzc4MTc=
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