Pay no Attention

You remember the Wizard of Oz, right? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I'm feeling like world events are operating on something like that level of prestidigitation for the past couple of days.

Only in this case, North Korea is the man behind the curtain. The curtain, of course, is Iran. I don't want to minimize the election events in Iran, but it's sucking up every available bit of news coverage. Meanwhile, there's a North Korean ship loaded with missiles cruising around and being shadowed by an American warship, all on the heels of threats from North Korea to launch missiles in the direction of Hawaii.

This is the point where we all need to keep our eyes on the ball. While Iran's election outcome will undoubtedly have far-reaching world-wide effects, it is not immediate in the same way the North Korean threat is. I think this is genuinely dangerous to our national security and wish the news agencies would be giving it the same time they're devoting to Iran.

Everyone seems to be caught up in the swirl of events with Iran, and the romance of news being "tweeted" out in secrecy. Everyone also seems to be expecting a quick resolution and regime change. That leads me directly to memories of watching tanks roll into Tiananmen Square and the outrage the world felt. Surely, if twitter had existed, everyone would have masked their avatars in some color for solidarity, but here we are, two decades later, and how much has changed in China? Did your outrage stop you from supporting the communist state? I'm betting there are five products within your easy reach which were manufactured there, so be careful how you answer.

What will happen in Iran? We'll see, but I know it won't be decided by people sitting at computers. Iranians are fighting in the streets with sticks and stones, literally. They don't care about your twitter color.