Where are the liberal peacenik demonstrators that should be marching the streets of London, Paris, Berlin, DC, NYC regarding the atrocities taking place in Iran and threats posed by the likes of N. Korea?
Asked by
avalmez (
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June 28th, 2009
Are not Iranians demanding to know what happened to their vote as worthy as the detainees at Gitmo wondering about their freedom? Are not all governments as responsible for supporting and promoting the wellbeing of their own citizens as those that promote the same of humankind anywhere in the world?
And when a government blatantly threatens to launch nuclear attacks as N. Korea currrently threatens, should not those same peacenik’s hit the streets in opposition?
This is a question about double-standards.
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23 Answers
Playing Call of Duty 4 and other games.
A matter of scale.
And a matter of involvement of the home government in the affair.
Gitmo was an affair of the western world.
So was Vietnam.
Tibet was partially, in context of the Olympic games.
By comparison, the events in Iran and North Korea lack this level of involvement of western governments.
They are also relatively mild. Iran had some violent protests. Happens in the western world as well. North Korea so far is just pounding its chest like a gorilla.
Maybe people are also content with what their respective governments are doing to solve the matter.
It also has something to do with the respective western governments playing by their own rules.
also if you want to talk about double standards, why not talk about Mark Sanford?
If the Iranians want it bad enough the protests won’t die, I don’t think we need to be involved right now.
I don’t see how this is a liberal/conservative issue.
I don’t know it’s like same as where were the anti-terror protests from the Islamic community after 9/11?
@avalmez In some instances yes, but not in all, not necessarily “mostly.” Anyway, how many non Iranians is enough to count, in your opinion?
enough to make the major news networks as so often do when it comes to protestors against western nations
@avalmez it’s not the fault of the protesters or the people who support democracy in Iran that the major news networks choose wall to wall coverage of things like the death of Michael Jackson rather than things that really matter. Because this http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/132350286 didn’t get any national coverage doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
I haven’t heard the word “Peacenik” since Nixon and Agnew resigned.
SRM
@srmorgan yes, peaceniks, those nattering nabobs of negativism….
well, if everyone would be an obedient little conformist, the world would be a better place.
Same places where so-called feminists hide when women are repressed with mind-boggling brutality in the middle-east: on the Daily Kooks or Huffington post forums, blaming all the world’s problems on George Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.
Plenty of liberals and conservatives protested in Germany. And there’s the very effective protest using the Internet. I’m a protester. And I’m a moderate liberal.
Sorry, Dude, that was around 40 years ago. I cut my hair and I just watch CNN now.
The thing was – it didn’t do any good. Yeah, I carried signs and chanted slogans and wore a peace sign on my jacket, and the stinkin’ politicians just went on with it, and the cops gassed us and beat us with sticks. LBJ quit. Nixon would have arrested all of us. We didn’t pull out of Vietnam until Tricky Dicky’s Silent Majority had had enough.
Being in a political fringe is the best way I can think of to disenfranchise yourself.
What I am referring to, of course, is that there are not the same numbers of people in cities across the globe protesting against what’s happening in Iran today as did, for example, when the US was contemplating marching into Iraq.
I’m not taking sides on either issue (nor am i making claims as to the efficacy of protesting, although i would claim it is not totally useless) because the real point i’m wondering about is, does there seem to be a double standard in application here?
and yes i chose my wording deliberately intending to put some energy into any discussion that might ensure, but i guess my wording acted more as a distraction. Apologies for any such distraction.
in any case, thanks for for your responses and if the above serves as a clarification for any of you, any further responses will of course be welcomed!
@avalmez I don’t see any double standard in place. There have been protests about this event.
The degree of severity is the main difference. Iran’s situation is a bad one.
8 years ago the US had a similar situation and the world didn’t erupt in protest then either though the government didn’t start killing protesters.
The world isn’t going to protest every suspect election.
However the Iraq situation was a protest of an impending invasion by the US.
@The_Compassionate_Heretic the odd thing is that i’m not against the protesting. people need to have the right to express their views and at least try to influence others, like governments. i just happen to think that the world would be a better place it was more consistent. all things are local i guess is the only was to understand how people getting shot on the streets of Tehran is not a big a deal as i think it should be. again, my provocative wording distracted from the essence of my query, thanks for your insight!
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