by Perry McCarney

Created on: June 30, 2009   Last Updated: December 28, 2009

Is Violent Revolution the Only Answer?

While it goes against the ethical principles of every decent person on the planet, the only effective way of helping the Iranian people depose their tyrannical government is assassination. A peaceful civilian protestation, no matter how numerous, stands no chance of removing a totalitarian regime intent on maintaining dominance by any means. Controlled and organized forces equipped with military grade weapons will prevail over vastly more numerous unorganized and unarmed civilians.

The only hope for a "relatively" peaceful revolution is to remove the leadership of the minority dominating forces to create confusion and remove the charisma chaining the actions of many of the lower level authoritarian forces that probably already question the legitimacy of their actions. The fragmentation of the dominating forces may possibly offer the chances for a valid democratic election to occur, hopefully under United Nations oversight.

Otherwise Iranian protest will be crushed by the forces commanded by the Iranian government and it is highly unlikely that the World Community will do or be able to do anything about it. While decent people the world over would like to believe that peaceful protest can force change to the structure of tyrannical regimes, history disputes this idealism.

The only successful occurrence resulted in India's independence from British rule in 1947. But these circumstances were relatively unique. India was dominated by a foreign nation that predominantly used military forces consisting of local troops commanded by British officers. Local forces that could no longer be considered loyal or trustworthy following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 to 1859. The British Empire had just fought World War II and was also in the process of conceding more independence and self-rule to many of its colony nations. The mass peaceful demonstrations led by Gandhi were successful in wrenching self-determination for India because the prevailing factors and circumstances favored that result.

Those circumstances do NOT apply in today's world. The civilian populations of many of the nations in today's world live under the suppression of totalitarian governments that maintain their dominance and control through the use of force, and have done so for decades in some cases. No matter how numerous civilian protesters may be, they are unable to stand against even much smaller organized forces armed with military grade modern weapons.

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