So a little bird (You know who you are!) told me to go check out the following post at Jeff Jarvis' blog.

In the post, a member of the Iranian diaspora takes on the anti-American stance of some of his fellow Iranians.

I read the post with mounting excitement.

Here's an excerpt:

People like you don't want to address what is wrong with us Iranians as a nation. You want to say it's all America's fault or it's all the Arabs fault. . .I have news for you: Iranians have been screwing other Iranians longer than any other nation has screwed Iran. Five Hundred years after there were no more Arabs ruling Iran, Iranians were screwing their fellow countrymen over.

Another excerpt actually tackles the 1953 Mossadegh controversy, an event which, for many Iranians, prove, without a shadow of a doubt, the evil-ness of America's intentions towards their country. I always accepted, myself, that we were primarily responsible for the Mossadegh debacle, this is part of Iranian mythology (I have a ton of Persian friends, and there is a chorus of "1953 1953 1953 1953" whenever we get on the topic of Iranian-US relations) - but listen to what this post has to say about Mossadegh:

I know. . .I know. . .your going to say that the Mossadegh Coup was all America's fault. . .well let me tell you, America sent a single American (Kermit Roosevelt. . .grandson of the former president) to Iran with a bag filled with 1 million dollars to start that Coup, but the people who accepted the money, and ran in the streets and beat Mossadegh's people were Iranian not Americans. If you came to downtown New York with a truck full of money (a billion), and asked people to betray America, you would get your ass beat by the first poor Puerto Rican from the Bronx, but a million dollars was enough for Iranians to sell their own country down the drain.

The hair rose up on my arms when I read that. Wow! Mossadegh is a mythical figure, what happened in 1953 has taken on mythic implications ... To touch that issue - to put a crack in the facade of that issue - is extraordinary, indeed.

In yesterday's rant about Saudi Arabia, I closed with:

[You want to] watch the giant US crumple in a defeated ball of self-revelatory shame.

Wouldn't that make life so easy for you? Then you wouldn't have to look at yourself, you wouldn't have to examine your own society, you wouldn't have to actually LISTEN.

And then along comes this Iranian person's post, exemplifying exactly what is missing in most of the Muslim world: a healthy sense of self-criticism. (There is a difference between a "healthy sense of self-criticism", by the way, and wearing a hair-shirt, and beating yourself up on a daily basis for the sins of the past. One attitude is productive, one is not.)

What the post shows is a willingness to take responsibility. This is very very hopeful.