I have high hopes for the long term prospects of this protest movement. The regime won’t fall tomorrow, or even next week. But 2010, or even some time this year? Perhaps. Its days are numbered.

If the goal of any protest is to build greater awareness of and support for a particular cause or grievance, calling for death to whomever is hardly the best way to do it.

Your point that whatever message is used by protestors may live on in the spirit of any regime successors is a good one, too. Regime topplers need to anchor themselves to basic democratic principles from the start and build democratic institutions quickly after they take power if they want to avoid lapsing into the thuggish habits of those they replaced (with Iran’s own revolution ironically a case study). Calling for death hardly seems like the starting point for any sort of good government.

I’d bet that the ones focusing on “death” are very much in the minority, but even a small number of people can taint a larger movement enough for that movement’s message to be lost or deliberately dismissed. And, as another person who stands in solidarity with Iranian citizens and all those on the side of human rights and democratic freedoms, I think that such a thing happening here would be a tragedy in itself.