Letter to the People of Iran, by Michael Totten
It's a wonderfully-written document with a couple of very good points, points I have yet to hear elsewhere. Here's one of them:
When the regime is toppled you will have to face the age-old question that always confronts revolutionaries. What do you do with the king? Or in this case, the mullahs and their supporters?This will be a critical moment. How moral, how mature, and how liberal Iran will become depends in large part on the very first things you do when the mullahs are gone.
During the Russian Revolution Tsar Nicholas and his wife were riddled with bullets in front of their children. Nicholas’ oldest son, himself still a child, became Russia’s last and youngest Tsar before he too was killed in cold blood by the Communists. The deed was committed at night without any witnesses. The dead were left alone to rot. And so the stage was set for what the new Russia would become as soon as the new regime was implanted.
Here is the key to making a stable democracy: the losers have to know that they will be safe. Those on the losing side of a liberal revolution or on the losing side of a democratic election have to understand in advance that they will not be killed. They must know their views will be respected. They must believe in their bones that their rights will be protected by the victorious majority.
Otherwise, you’re looking at civil war.