Stop, look, listen, repeat.

I'm as fascinated by the unfolding events in Iran as the next guy, but it bears repeating as often as possible: 1) this isn't about us, and 2) very, very few Americans understand the first thing about Iranian politics, including who is on what side. Larison:

Western policing of other nations' elections, like our annual lectures to other states about the state of their human rights record, is getting very old. We readily assume not only that their elections are in some way our business, but we also usually identify with one side as being somehow more valid, genuine or representative of that country's people. In Lebanon, the right people won, so the structural biases built into the Lebanese system are not only tolerated in the West, while similarly crude biases in the Iranian system are decried as outrageous, but the fruits of the Lebanese system are celebrated as a great triumph for freedom and light. The absurdity of avidly cheering Mousavi's supporters, who voted for a man likely instrumental in the creation of Hizbullah, a few days after avidly cheering the so-called "crushing defeat" of Hizbullah in Lebanese elections earlier in the week should be apparent to everyone, but it is not clear to many people at all. [...]

How would the election controversy look if we viewed it as a contest between Iran's Huey Long and the representatives of an entrenched economic elite? Would Western sympathies shift at all? Would Westerners be less inclined to champion the cause of Mousavi as a result? Either way, we should all reflect on how easily we are biased in favor of one side or another in a foreign election based on partial, tendentious or misleading characterizations of the vying factions.

We pick sides like this all the time, and when we do it is almost always arbitrary, ill-informed and mistaken. For various reasons, one side in a contest is deemed to be more "pro-Western," which occasionally even has the virtue of being true, and this side's victory is then lauded as a great step forward, and anything preventing that victory is deemed inherently suspicious and illegitimate. In many cases, there really is fraud being perpetrated by the other, "anti-Western" side, and I don't doubt that this is true to some extent in Iran, but the truly incomprehensible thing for so many Westerners is the possibility that the authoritarian populist whom Washington loathes actually commands majority support in his own country and could probably win without fraud. Why would such a person commit fraud and use violence to increase the scale of a victory that was already in his hands? Ask Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. They know the answer, and the answer is fairly straightforward. The reason for doing this is to acquire and consolidate power. One way to do this is to provoke the opposition, bait them into resistance and then pose as the defender of social and political order. The Kremlin has been doing this to Russian liberals for the better part of a decade.

Many of the same people who wore the most garish war paint and sported the most veins in their teeth during the run-up to the Iraq War have now suddenly latched onto this as the latest proxy battle between good and evil that they will help move into the win column by dint of turning their blog colors green or some other amorphous but mystical strategy:

[John McCain's] twitterview today with Jake Tapper is full of examples as he talks about Iran not so much as an actual country full of actual people doing actual things in a difficult situation, but instead as a kind of phantasmagoric canvas onto which we should paint a tableau of American hubris and militarism. But nothing sums it up better than this Tweet:

@jaketapper no prediction, but if we are steadfast eventually the Iranian people will prevail. But this regime has tight control.

That's right. Whether or not the Iranian people prevail depends on how steadfast we are. How steadfast we are in what? In wishing them well? In tweeting mean things about the Iranian security services?

Sullivan is even quoting, without comment, Michael Ledeen, who has never been anything but absolutely batshit insane on the issue of Iran. What, Lyndon LaRouche wasn't available for comment? Indeed, there are an entire host of people whose records on Iran make it obvious that they should be ignored with great force, but oh man, are they out with the bullhorns. Greenwald:

Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary's Norman Podhoretz entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran," and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he "hopes and prays" that the U.S. "bombs the Iranians." John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol -- with typical prescience -- hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.

Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way -- just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is. Advocating a so-called "attack on Iran" or "bombing Iran" in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many -- obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives. The same is true every time we start mulling the prospect of attacking and bombing another country as though it's some abstract decision in a video game.

It's a riveting drama, to be sure, but it isn't in any way our drama, no matter what all the furiously masturbating neo-conservative cheerleaders keep yelping.