Jack Duvall posted this comment:

Mr. Weissman has taken out of context a phrase in an article co-authored by my colleague Peter Ackerman, which he quotes above. Dr. Ackerman was not suggesting that "a clear strategic vision and steady leadership" in a nonviolent movement should or could come from Washington or from outside a country in which such a movement would attempt to gain traction. The actual context of the article makes clear that Dr. Ackerman and his co-author explained that successful movements, such as those in Poland, South Africa and Chile, in which indigenous, self-organized civil resistance led to national political change, is supplied by the people themselves. The central thesis of Mr. Weissman's article is that Washington-supported "new media" and U.S.-funded broadcasting fueled Mir Hossein Mousvai's movement. That would require us to believe that not only are revolutions televised, television can start revolutions. There's no historical evidence of that ever happening. As for his claim that American intervention was required to prompt Iranians to use the internet, Twitter and other digital communications, anyone who knows anything about the vast, feisty, uncontrollable Iranian blogosphere knows that's ridiculous. The story of the protests in Iran is not one of "blatant intervention" by "bureaucracies" abroad. It was one of authentic, home-grown rage about a government that had not only falsified election returns but had also harassed young women in the streets, jailed student dissidents, tortured bloggers, suppressed labor strikes with violence, and bungled its handling of the economy for far too many years to be treated anymore as credible or legitimate by its own people. That Mr. Weissman cannot credit the ability of Iranians to express and organize themselves, but must attribute their actions to bureaucrats 6,340 miles away, is a comment on his apparent refusal to listen to the content of Iranians' minds and hearts, which was on full display in the streets for days on end and which the rest of the world heard loud and clear.