News from Iran

A good update on election events in Iran is here on Open Left.  Good presentation and facts, other than the conclusions, which are a standard progressive mantra that the US should basically apologize and blame Bush.

However, Bush now seems even more morally correct in his unstinting opposition to the Teheran regime, ineffective as it was.  And President Obama's speech in Cairo, which was a highly praised start on the "let's be friends" approach, does not appear to have worked to soften the Teheran regime.  Now, maybe it did inspire the people to support Mousavi - time will tell.

Frankly, if apologizing and blaming Bush would work, I'd say go for it, use this triumph of style over substance to achieve a good goal.  And I don't have many good ideas for US actions either.  We need to subtly support the liberals, and perhaps, under Obama, this can be done more successfully, with less anti-American backlash, than under Bush.

Addendum: after some discussion on OpenLeft, I came up with this US strategy.  The idea is to help the liberals there without just hurting them by drawing an anti-US reaction.

Obama says something like "we apologize for 1953, and, as part of our penance, it is our duty to see that democracy succeeds this time, therefor we will help the liberals as part of our apology".  (I'm sure he would be a lot more elegant!)  In this way, instead of some Iranians having a knee-jerk anti-US reaction against the liberals we are trying to help, they see it as part of our apology and support it.

Could that work?