A DUELING AYATOLLAHS CIVIL WAR?

How little we have learned. It seems that every revolution is inspired by noble thoughts but winds up leaving one huge ingredient out that sort of festers until it explodes. With the American Revolution we forgot to abolish slavery right off the bat, and our shining democracy was tainted by nightmarish race relations for almost 200 years, even 100 years after a bloody civil war nearly split the nation apart over this issue. The French Revolution was doomed when the revolutionaries became even more murderous than their former oppressors. The Mexican Revolution merely replaced Spain with home grown tyrants who still grabbed all the wealth and left most of the nation in dire poverty.

Now Iran is poised for a do-over of their revolution of 30 years ago that left them with a tyrannical theocracy that makes the Shah look benevolent by comparison. But here they are following Dueling Ayatollahs, one freshly dead and one probably on this way there. The one crucial thing they are forgetting over there is to put a separation of church and state in place before they allow any new government to form. For decades they have seen first hand that there is no tyrant more cruel and bloodthirsty than one who is cruel and bloodthirsty in the name of God.

Geez, imagine having some of these born-again preachers we have around here anywhere near the reins of power and being in charge of guys with guns? Main Street, USA would be running with rivers of blood. Bad enough we have to listen to their hate-filled and warlike screeds in the name of The Prince of Peace. Imagine if they mattered? Imagine if they had their hands on America's nuclear arsenal? They'd be tripping over one another ushering the world into Armageddon, going all Rapture on our hapless asses.

Now there's anti-government riots in the streets of Iran and you hope that they've thought things through this time and have reconsidered that whole Islamic Republic deal. On the face of it, they don't seem to have done much reflection on the error of their ways of 30 years ago, when the Iranian Revolution introduced the world to one Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as evil and murderous a prick as ever breathed. The first big parade held in Tehran to celebrate their revolution told the world what Iran would be like under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Most prominent among the tortured "criminals" being paraded through the streets while people spat upon and stoned them was a little girl no more than 9 or 10. She was stripped completely naked, crying and blind with pain. She held up poorly bandaged bleeding stumps where her wrists ended and her hands used to be. Both her hands were tied together with a string and draped around her neck like a macabre necklace as she stumbled along, prodded by soldiers' rifles. Not even the most psychotic and cold serial killer could ever do this, or allow this to be done to a little girl. There is no possible or humanly imaginable offense a child could commit to merit this treatment.

No human being who witnessed this televised spectacle will ever forget the sight, or the sickening realization that this unspeakable act was being done in the name of God and religion. Or the equally sickening realization that those responsible for this little girl's grisly and perverted public torment were now in charge of a nation of 70 million souls. It was a hollow, revolting feeling and one can only imagine how Iranians felt at this moment of realization of what they had wrought. Their horror and despair had to be bottomless.

No secular tyrant could ever match the savagery of religious rulers, whether during the Spanish Inquisition of the 1500s or the Iranian Inquisition of 1979. And now the opposition to this government has been inspired by another Ayatollah, the late Hussein-Ali Montazeri, who was said to be a "Moderate." What the Iranians seem to forget is that this was the guy who was once the heir-apparent to Khomeini back in the day, a man who broke from the ruling council of Ayatollahs over the direction Khomeini's government was taking.

If there was something worse than what was done to that little girl, Ayatollah Montazeri took that secret to his grave. Presumably there must have been, since he seemed okay with the Khomeini regime for years, making him hardly the guy to rally around when forming a new government. What would a "Moderate Ayatollah" have done to that little girl, chop only one hand off, let her bleed only half to death? Will the new Iranian revolutionaries find another Ayatollah to lead them or will they show some brains and put an end to the murderous religious tyrants.

Persia has always been an educated and sophisticated nation, and Iran is Persia, and how they wound up with the horrible Jew-expelling, little girl-torturing government they have is a mystery. A civilization as old as any on the planet, Iran had been the most progressive and highly educated nation in the Middle East before Khomeini, and its citizens are nothing like the way they are being portrayed in reactionary Western news media outlets. Once they broke the chains of monarchy by ousting the Shah, they had a chance to become a major positive influence among Islamic nations.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen, they merely fitted themselves for new chains. Khomeini's first major policy decision was to take American Embassy personnel hostage for a year. While Iran had many legitimate gripes with the United States and the CIA, taking hostages, calling America The Great Satan, denouncing Western nations in general at every opportunity and openly funding terrorist groups didn't exactly sit too well with the rest of the word. Then Khomeini got Iran involved in a 10 year war with their neighbor Iraq that ended in a stalemate and all hopes of being once again the jewel of the Middle East were erased.

The gripe with Iraq was that the dictator there was the regular kind of tyrant as opposed to being a religious tyrant. Which shouldn't have bothered Khomeini since Saddam Hussein was every bit as horrible as he was, just not God horrible. Religious tyrants like their hypocrisy to be unanimous. Well, old Khomeini finally dropped dead and was replaced by the like-minded and similarly named Ayatollah Khamenei as Supreme Leader, and he proved to live up (or down?) to Khomeini's standards. That is, trying to turn a modern, sophisticated nation into a Medieval theocracy gripped with fear and hatred.

Only thing is, it's not working and the Iranian people want an end to this bloodthirsty, world-provoking regime. Unfortunately for this troubled nation, the new would-be revolutionaries have hitched their wagon to the late Ayatollah Montazeri, and thus have the makings of another religious dictatorship if they are successful in overthrowing the Islamic Republic. The better bet would be to install the plain old Iranian Republic, with no mention of Islam. It goes without saying that 98% of Iranians are and will remain Muslim, and that's fine and nobody else's business, especially not the government's. Few things matter less when it comes to the morality and worth of a people than what brand of religion they chose.

Once a government and a religion are joined, you have neither a government nor a religion. Governments are supposed to pave the streets, collect the garbage, establish courts of law and protect their citizens. Religions are supposed to be religions, and their importance varies from individual to individual, from being the most important thing in their life to being irrelevant, and no government can make a saint out of someone who doesn't believe. They can sure make them pretend to, of course, since people are nothing if not practical when it comes to keeping their heads attached to their shoulders.

When government and religion are one, who's paving the damned streets? When a religion is deciding what are your civil rights, watch out! The Iranian people need to ask themselves where they are going before they put this car in gear. They have an opportunity to show themselves and the world that they are reasonable people by forming a reasonable government. For 30 years they have tasted religious tyranny, and if it was working out for them there would be no riots in the streets of Tehran. The God Squad simply did not work out so well for them. Never did and never will.

Ask the millions of tortured and burned alive victims of the Inquisition how that worked out for them. Ask the citizens of Northern Ireland if "The Troubles" were worth it, when bombs and bullets flew in churches and schoolyards. Ask the Huguenots of France or the early Christians in Rome how the marriage of State and Religion worked out for them. Ask that little girl with the bloody stumps where her hands used to be. Oh, but we can't ask any of these people anything, can we? They are dead, killed by "God."