Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiDashing Fabricated Hopes: The Meaning of Ahmadinejad's Victory
It's been a little weird, if not embarrassing, to witness the reactions of the American press to the Iranian election in the last 24 hours.
There was the initial rush of expectation--that "change" was as much in the Iranian air as it had been in the American last fall, an equivalence so wrong on so many fronts that it managed to obscure the essential truth of the Iranian election: there never was a significant ideological difference between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir Hossein Mousavi. Only a tonal one. But the Los Angeles Times was content to blare this headline: "Iranians ready to decide presidency -- and maybe much more."
There was the added irony of the LATimes' sub-headline: "The winner will play a key role in possible talks over Iran's nuclear program and support for militant groups," the implication being that if Mousavi were the winner, maybe he'd rein back the militants. But it was Mousavi who, as Iran's prime minister in the 1980s, helped build those militant groups into international terrorist forces, sending money, weapons and manpower to Lebanon to beef up Hezbollah and telegraphing their targets, including that string of American and European hostages Hezbollah held for most of the decade---and Mousavi traded for, haggling over anti-tank missiles and money with Oliver North and Bud McFarlane, in the infamous Iran-contra affairs.
Still, the paper in Los Angeles, not to mention the New York Times and the Washington Post, have blithely referred to Mousavi as a "moderate" throughout the election campaign, accepting at face value his apparent conversion, if only because he kept his antipathy for the United States relatively silent.
But Slate's Samuel Rosner was closer to reality: The Iranian president isn't the one who decides Iran's fate, or foreign policy, or domestic policy, for that matter. It's Ali Khamenei, the "supreme leader," who does. But the big papers kept up the charade ("As Iran Votes, Talk of a Sea Change," went The New York Times), as if willing the fantasy.
The Times' executive editor, Bill Keller an old hand at foreign correspondence (he won a Pulitzer for somewhat blandish reporting from South Africa, if I'm remembering correctly) even sent himself to Tehran for a bit of trench writing (or to escape the fallout of his embarrassing performance in a Daily Show bit).
"[F]or those who dreamed of a gentler Iran," Keller wrote from Tehran, "Saturday was a day of smoldering anger, crushed hopes and punctured illusions, from the streets of Tehran to the policy centers of Western capitals. Iranians who hoped for a bit more freedom, a better managed economy and a less reviled image in the world wavered between protest and despair on Saturday."
All I can say is that they, and the amnesiac Western press, did it to themselves. A quarter of Iran's population is under 15, the median age is 26 (which means half the population is 26 or younger), which means the overwhelming majority of voters in Saturday's election have no memory of the 1980s when Mousavi was in charge of a country that was free neither economically nor in any other way. When others spoke of ending the Iran-Iraq war that had ravaged the country, Mousavi wailed, charging quitters that they were abandoning the ideals of the revolution.
This is the man the Kellers of the world so blindly put their hopes in.
So why was the West so self-deluded, both about Mousavi and the outcome of a foregone conclusion? I wish it was about misplaced hopes. No. It's something less honorable than that. It's about misplaced projections. It's about presuming that the West's agenda for Iran can somehow muscle its way over the agenda Iran reserves for itself. It's about reverting to pre-1979 assumptions that Iran would be as the West would want it to be. Which is to say that 30 years of history have taught the West next to nothing about Iran. That ignorance, those attitudes, those presumptions, are precisely why Iranians are still ready to vote for a man like Ahmadinejad, because for all his anti-Semitism, his belligerence, even his apparent stupidity on more than a few matters of state, he is the embodiment of an Iranian identity that brooks no imports, that needs no one else, certainly nothing western, not even (and above all not) Barack Obama, to define it. Mousavi would likely have been no different ideologically, but why chuck off a known quantity?
Reactionary editorial pages (what pages are left, anyway) will fold all over each other to claim that Iranians have embraced hate, that they've endorsed the destruction of Israel, that they've made their hostility clear. Stupid judgments, as I see them, if excusably America-centric: they're meant well. But they miss the point.
The point never has been for Iran to get a leadership the United States can deal with. That's the American perspective that's led nowhere for 30 years. The point is to get a leadership in the West willing to deal with whatever leadership Iran chooses for itself, on its own terms.
So here's where Obama's Norwuz message will prove its worth (or not). Here's where Obama gets to show the Iranian people that he meant what he said. That he wants a dialogue, not just with the Iranian people, but with the Iranian leadership. Especially one chosen by the Iranian people. (At some point all those allegations of fraud are going to have to make way for the reality: if the United States could survive the fraud of 2000, so can Iran in 2009, though chances are Iran's fraud is less obvious than that of Bush v. Gore).
Obama can, of course, punt. Decide that he now has an excuse not to deal with Iran. But he doesn't. He has even less of an excuse today than he did yesterday. Unless he wants to play the fraudulent-election card and go down that slink to perdition. Somehow I can't imagine him doing that. I can't imagine him thinking that he would be dealing with anyone but Ahmadinejad after the election anyway: he knew that bumping off Ahmadinejad was a long shot. He knew, or should have known, that even if Mousavi would have replaced him, the policy differences would have been nil. At least Ahmadinejad gives Obama, as Ahmadinejad does Khamenei, a foil, if things go wrong. And Ahmadinejad, freed of a elections' burden, could maybe find his inner Nixon and make the leap across ideologies.
Who knows. This could be as big or bigger (because more authentic) a chance for a breakthrough than either side imagined. If both sides are willing to seize it. Here's how Obama could start: send a congratulations message to Ahmadinejad. Then get to work.
65 Comments so far
Show AllI think what has not been discussed is that both the poor and the middle class have populist movements, they are the people clashing in the streets, along with the authorities looking to restore order.
The Ayatollahs of the supreme ruling council determine social and foreign policy, not the president/assembly, and all the voters know that Nobody in their right mind challenges the ruling council as that's a death sentence.
What the president/assembly DO control is the day to day running of the country, and most importantly to the voters - economics.
Ahmadinejad is what would be considered a social justice candidate in the west, providing 22 million Iranians with health care, domestically he promotes spending on programmes that benefit working people. He is staunchly anti-American establishment, preferring to take his chances with Russia, Iran was included in the economic talks over the weekend there, the US was not.
The pro-Mousavi populists are pro-western/American in hopes that will attract foreign corporations,who will employ them so that they too can have 72" Plasma TVs and SUVs just like their American counterparts.
Ideologically Mousavi-ites are similar to America's right wing populist movement, which is also all about freeDUMB...screw those damn poor people, what about *my* family.
1. Why the concern about possible fraud in Iran? The countries in the Gulf that the US considers its allies--a bunch of semi-literate beduoin "kings" who just deport anyone who disagrees with them--are not democracies. Four years ago they started having low level munipal elections. BFD.
2. In Iran, which was a democracy 55 years ago when the CIA installed the Shah, has had to fight its way BACK to democracy despite the best efforts of the US government and its toadies to keep it a monarchy like the other countries in the Gulf (with the exception of Iraq--which is just a colony of the US).
3. How do elections in Iran affect YOU? Maybe instead of posting msm refried rumors you COULD be looking for a CREDIBLE candidate for YOUR next election?
Very interesting, and I think a solid reality check. In many policy issues,the Ayatollah is the guy in control. But that's not to say that the president actually has no influence in the everyday lives of citizens. A lot of the ways in which the policies of the government are enforced does go through that office.
From what I've heard from family in Tehran and in the expat crowd, is that much of the turnout in this election was based around internal issues and not only focused the foreign policy stuff that I think we tend to focus on. Turnout among women and those aborad was specifically high, and yet, if the figures are to be believed, a large number of female voters and voters from abroad suddenly switched sides and voted the exact opposite of what they've tended to do in the past.
For those thinking that suddenly such a huge proportion of women might decide that the Ahmadinijad campaign platform was for them, what Azar Nafisi (author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) had to say on the matter summerized what a few Iranians I know had to say: "There will be always people who will support those like Mr. Ahmadinejad, in the same way that many Americans supported Mr. Bush or support Christian fundamentalists. But that does not mean that the Iranian people prefer a theocracy to a pluralistic country with freedom of religion and expression for everyone."
(Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613181040285185.html)
It's my personal opinion that eventually the facts will emerge. As far as the election counts go, there's some indication that vote tallying may have undergone some behind-the-scenes massaging. The following link goes to a screengrab off of official Iran television network IRIB, which shows (third place candidate) Rezai's votes actually decreasing throughout election day. Note the parenthetical phrase at the end is actually part of the url: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/14/742270/-Iran-TV-screen-capturevoting-irregularities-exposed-(picture-inside)
So what if the Iranian election was rigged or not?
We rigged ours twice for that pond scum bush.
It's utter nonsense to say that America must now "deal with Iran".
There is a country in the Middle East that Obama must "deal with". It is harassing/attacking it's neighbors, threatening other nations, and constructing nuclear weapons. That's Israel, not Iran.
I confess my confusion. Cenk Uygur argues that the elections were "obviously rigged":
"This conversation about whether the Iranian vote was fixed is nonsense. Of course it was! Yes, polls in Iran are unreliable but Mousavi was leading 54-39 in the one poll before the election. Heavy voter turnout favored him. And instead he loses 63% to 34%. That's an absolute joke. They might as well have gone all the way and called it 97-3%.
According to these "official" results Mousavi lost his own home district (which is inconceivable in Iranian politics) and got far less votes than previous reformist candidates. Look, these things are not even close to believable. No one should give these numbers a shred of credibility. What is only a hundred percent more likely is that the Iranian government decided ahead of time who was going to win and that was that.
You have to understand 63-34 is a gigantic blowout that is much larger than some of the biggest landslides in American history. When Reagan crushed Mondale in 1984 and carried 49 out of the 50 states, he only won 58.8% to 40.6%. To say Ahmedinejad won 63-34 is not only saying we fixed this thing, but we're rubbing it in your face."
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/22305
OK, maybe it was rigged, but how about some hard evidence.
Like that's too much to ask for or something.
I think the above comment made some really quite astute points at indicators of vote rigging which I've seen elsewhere, at truthout.org and Juan Cole's website, both places I'd consider reputable, and the analysis has been echoed as well by Iranians on different social network group pages at Facebook and Twitter. Some of that is difficult to work out, sure, unless your fluent in Farsi, which doesn't hep a lot of us get a grip wih what happened or what is going on.
I think today's Independent has some decent coverage, and I know some people here had quoted Robert Fisk yesterday in their assumptions that he had taken the side that the election went trouble free. I'd urge them to read his piece today which makes it far more clear that that wasn't his message at all. Some of what you may be looking for could be there.
Father down on this page I've included a link that shows the third-place candidate's votes actually decreasing as the day goes on. I won't repeat the content here since it's already supplied below.
Meanwhile, a graph of election counts is currently weathering the debate storm.
I am right now kicking myself for not archiving the page that was (as of last night) at http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/13/faulty-election-data. Today I'm getting a "Site Temporarily Unavailable" page there. However, it has been blogged, among other places, here: http://mces.blogspot.com/2009/06/please-help.html.
As you'll see at that site, the voting percentage follows a perfectly straight line. It's too bad that the original page is down (blocked?) as the description accompanying it is much more clear than the blog this copy is on. Essentially, is impossible to maintain such perfect linear trajectory between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting.
I don't believe that the US--which seems to have rigging elections down to a fine arrt--has enough influence in Iran to have rigged the election.
After having just received an email from the IRQR, the gay Iranian human rights group which helps conduct an underground railroad of gay and lesbian Iranians out of their country and into asylum abroad, I read this article and the posts in response to it. For all those posters who think that Iran has had a free and fair election, you are out of your minds. And for the author of this article, you have entirely missed the point.
Iran suffers under a brutal, vicious theocracy that executes people who are gay, it executes teenagers and minors, and subjects all people who are imprisoned to torture. Trying to work out western references to what people suffer in Iran is impossible; trying to make abstract comparative statements about life under the Shah versus life under the Mullahs is ethically immoral in the face of what people suffer now, today, at this minute. I have been on the receiving end of news of someone being executed for being gay after months of campaigning for his release, after having the Ministry of Justice stay his execution, only to have it carried out anyway by a stubborn and indifferent jail staff. Such a country does not have a rule of law by any sense of the word. It is barbarism, plain and simple.
Many people in Iran believed this election would bring about change, and it did not because it was rigged--the winner was announced before everyone had voted! So please stop your apologies for the Mullahs, your trying to find good qualities in the little manipulative, power-mad man who has stolen the election, and your logic that the enemy of my enemy is my friend because he isn't. He is playing all of us like the Machiavellian villain that he is. He is nothing more than a thief.
Remember the cardinal rules of Common Dreams, mfwettlaufer:
1. All "protests" against leaders liked by CDers are set up by the (pick one) CIA, NED, US Military or a combination of all.
2. If the US Government shows even the SLIGHTEST liking for a candidate in a foreign election then he or she MUST be on the CIA payroll.
3. If that person actually gets elected then their goal is to helpfully place X (insert country here) under the bootheel of capitalist oppression.
Jeez, I thought only right-wingers were paranoid conspiracy theorists.
And you can prove it was rigged how?
Thanks mfwettlaufer, for a much needed reality check here.
The US press reported that there were "scuffles" with police on the streets of Tehran. If such demonstrations were attempted against US staged election in Baghdad or Kabul the occupying forces would have shot them dead.
As far as I can tell, the mullah oligarchs who control the Iranian state are in their own way just as normatively myopic, politically anti-democratic, and ruthlessly self-serving as the capitalist pseudo-Christian oligarchs who control the US state.
You could observe that:
Well, at least Iran's government has never tried to overthrow the USA's, like our government [successfully] did to Iranians when it installed 'our' puppet Shah there.
And that observation is outrageously true enough - but probably only-so, because the [subsequent] Islamic Iranian state has to date lacked the resources to serve-up our own medicine to us, likewise.
In my psycho-historical overview, it is exactly this kind of artificialized tribal/cultural/national jousting, propagated between pseudo-religiously inspired and/or otherwise elitist-controlled, spiritually-ill state functionaries, as we now see between the officials of Iran and the US, that is the Venturi Shaft of most of human history's fallen social condition: A popularly-allowed, faux-officially gunned-up, hard-wired-driven vulnerability around which otherwise-healthy human consciousness easily accretes again and again, mindlessly and disasterously.
I am not a Libertarian politically, but I agree with their better thinkers' observation on one crucial point: Humans, no matter their superficial diversities, are in majority instinctually inclined to cooperate with each other against Nature's cruel challenges -- and it is the perversion of the State which more often than not defeats this deepest of instinctive impluses.
Were Karl Rove, Jim Baker, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas et al there?
Now we know that "we will be greeted as liberators."
mistaken post--sorry!
Comments and opinions are wonderful, but I believe that they should be tempered with facts. I suggest reading Professor Juan Cole, an acknowledged expert on Iran,at Informed Comment, http://www.juancole.com/, to get a more realistic perspective on the Iranian election.
Hello jklfairwin, I did read Juan's piece today re election fraud. It seemed a little intent on seeing the election was Stolen By A Landslide....i dunno, like he said, lotta oil wealth got spread around, could of helped him. But he steered the country to a better place than he found it too.
peace, joe.
Juan Cole?!?
The same Juan Cole who was breathlessly awaiting the "Obama effect" (BTW didn't FOX or MSNBC copyright that?) and is now frantically trying to prove fraud along with the entire western media?
Are you serious?
Let me quote the article,
"It's been a little weird, if not embarrassing, to witness the reactions of the American press to the Iranian election in the last 24 hours."
Cole's piece was run up at Alternet, and if true, it would be somewhat disturbing. But in the end, none of it proved fraud. What he did was make the assumption that regional identities should be reflected in the voting count, and while that can often be true, it isn't *always* true. It's like Al Gore losing Tennessee. His piece wasn't even close to conclusive. I would agree with him only to the extent their are questions outstanding to be asked. But no more. No one's made their case yet.
It may help to understand that Cole, like most elitists, doesn't care much for the "country bumpkin" persona of a guy like Ahmedinejad. Maybe he's rooting for Mousawi because he has a nice suit and has a Facebook account. Cole, also like most academics, has a built-in disdain for populism of any kind.
Alternet sux.
"Cole, also like most academics, has a built-in disdain for populism of any kind."
Unless it's Obama-brand faux-populism.
I should have said populism in the leadership. fair point.
I think Iran was concerned about Obama's 'win' in Lebanon and many in Iran percieved Mir Hossein Mousavi as an Israeli sympathizer. That was enough.
Saying that the president of Iran is "powerless" is very US-centric. Just because the president of the US is commander in chief does not mean that presidents in systems where they are not, are "powerless". Why not call it "checks and balances"? There is the implicit assumption the the US' system is superior and all the rest are deviations from perfection.
Judging countries and their social, political, and economic systems solely from the perspective of their similarity or difference to the US' leads to parochial, simplistic, false, and, yes, embarrassing conclusions as Mr. Tristam pointed out in his commentary.
"Somehow I can't imagine him doing that."
Hmm... I can't imagine him taking single-payer off the table... I can't imagine him handing trillions more to the banksters while stiffing the other 99% of the country... I can't imagine him invoking Bush false secrecy arguments to hide evidence of government criminality... I can't imagine him pushing for "preventative detentions"...
Everyday, more and more BO supporters go from "I can't imagine him doing that" to "I can't believe he just did that."
BO will now stand for "body odour". From now onwards more and more Americans going abroad will carry President Barack Obama like a stinking body odour that is hard to get rid of.
One of the problems is the complete lack of understanding on the part of the US about anything or anyone beyond its borders--the further away, the greater the understanding gap.
The application of terms such as "moderate" or "reformist" in regard to Iran's presidential candidates is simply meaningless.
More than anything it reminds me of the afro-American Condoleessa clone in "Syriana"--when she ignorantly busted the Clooney character's balls saying that a business-friendly regime was what the US wanted in Iran--and did not want to hear about anything BUT that.
Of course that's why the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president in 1953 and imposed the shameful Shah.
Of course that's why the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president in 1953 and imposed the shameful Shah.
Exactly
moji: so true
most americans have forgotten the humiliation of the shah being thrown out on his ass
or reagan using the hostages and extending their captivity for his own political fortune
we talk shit about their politicians when ours are giving blow jobs in the men's can at the airport, gay sex texting teenage pages in the congress, hiring hookers to poop in diapers
wow
the reason we dislike iran so much i that they have what we pine for so much: a true democracy and an uncomprimised leadership
by the way: in iran they have free health care as well
literacy is higher than here
ps. usury is against the law there so in addition to everything else they are not - as we are - owned lock stock and barrel by the banks
Iam with you except for the reasons that USites hate Iran.
It's not because it is a democracy.
It's because the people look different, speak a different language and are not hypocritical Christians.
I can agree with some of what you say but without getting into definitions of what a democracy is that last sentence is as every bit lacking in reason as most North Americans lack understanding and respect for different cultures.
If that last sentence of yours were true then Americans would hate all Chinese people.
Right?
Iran is a theocracy and the present governing structure is largely a reaction to events precipitated in 1953 by the Brits mainly but facilitated by the CIA.
Iran is pretty much a closed society now and the average US citizen has been taught to fear the unknown by the US government, such fear facilitated via a compliant media. Strategic regional power and hydrocarbons are the reasons behind the manipulation although the last regime in the US has given Iran greater regional power with every move they made, much to the dismay of countries like Saudi Arabia.
As far as the closed society goes, ask your friends how many non-Iranian Americans there are in Iran today. Ask how many foreigners get visas into Iran.
Also, please stop posting stuff about the US media/administration and Venezuela/Chavez. It is not relevant to this article and just about everybody who reads CD regularly knows that it is propaganda and very shaped propaganda at that.
funny how tristam's note about mousavi & his role in iran-contra and the iran-iraq war just slipped off the radar of everyone in the MSM...
anywho, isn't this hullabaloo about the iranian prez kind of pointless? in that the presidency in iran is a rather powerless, symbolic position?
Why be glum?
The U.S has what it wanted and spread through out the world - American Democracy. The 2000, 2004 variety of stolen elections. Yaaaa!!!
Terran
Yawn.
The zio-US-FCM wants to attack Iran. Their "failure," to elect a "reasonable," president now the basis for renewed talks of Nuclear Terrorism & Sanctions.
It is within this little cauldron of fears and lies whipped up by Roger Ailes on Fox, the amarikan psyche-that Israel will attack Iran. To applause from obese rednecks on couches across the US.
"Grab me annudda Bud Marge, damn Jews might not be all that, but they sure to shit know how to kill rag-heads! Shit, grab me two Marge, they showin the missiles goin off, ye-hah the fourth done come early!"
As I see it, the American media has recently built up a facade of hope surrounding the Iranian election so that when Ahmadinejad won, Iran could be even more demonized. Yes, there are naive reporters, but there are also well-thought-out propaganda maneuvers in mainstream media that can gobble up naive reporters.
I was wondering if anyone would see the CIA connection and justification for yet another war.
There's no evidence to that effect at the moment and there might not ever be. All you can do is be patient as information comes in from a variety of sources.
There's a whole lot that doesn't add up well right now whichever way you look.
Indeed, MOUNTAINEER. Spot on.
Mountaineer, I think you may have a point: that fabricated and well-known forlorm hopes were built up so that when they were "dashed," Iran could be further "demonized." What could be a better outcome for the AIPAC and neo-con agenda of an attack on Iran that would protect the interests of Israel? And the people who have fomented all those multi-colored "revolutions" on the basis of alleged electoral fraud are past masters at knowing what strings to pull to generate internal "protest" against an election's officially announced outcomes. I have no evidence of it yet, but would not be surprised if the swarmy hands of the National Endowment for Democracy and similar outfits were active in promoting the current protests that further demonize Iran by dramatizing the violent suppression of violent protests.
Just a repeat of the bullshit the US press spews in regard to Venezuelan elections.
Cut with the same CIA cookie cutter.
Sioux Rose
Alas, Serena/MRaven and whatever other names has returned to throw rotten tomatoes at members of the forum. If you are such an influential, empowered teacher what are you doing for humanity or the evolution of global peace initiatives these days? Throwing barbs, that's really HIGH of you.
Bring America Back !!!!................Pierre has a rightful inquiry here on speculation how Obama now deals with Iran.
*But, let us not analyze it from our usual Ivory Tower, or our idealogue little town on the hillside. Let's just swallow the fact Iran is a sovereign state capable of handling it's own elections.
*After all, 8 years ago did not our Supreme Court hand King George our Presidency when he had not won the popular vote ?
Did we not just elect a new Prez based on promised Change, Hope, & Inspiration==none of which is on the table ???
*Our Nation proves no high & mighty qualities on doing elections , nor analyzing their results. Tragic, in fact.
*We've got to swallow ours for 4 years and so does Iran !
*Tristan's last lines are his best: Obama & Clinton, get to work...get off little sister Zion's feaux-nuke scare tactics, and bring Iran back into the diplomatic fold. Our best friend was the Shah of Iran during the Cold War, and
those are the seeds to be planted once again.
TK: "Our best friend was the Shah of Iran during the Cold War, and
those are the seeds to be planted once again."
Did I just effing read this on CD? Bring back the Shah? Had no idea you were posting on here Mr. Kissinger. Nice to meet you.
Skip_Townes said: "Did I just effing read this on CD? Bring back the Shah?"
Couldn't be any worse than the theocratic monstrosity that governs Iran. Iran jumped from the fire into the frying pan in 1979. SAVAK was replaced by the Pasdaran. So tell me why the Shah would be worse?
I don't think the current movement among IRanians against these results has anything to do with brinign the Shah back. Attending with my family and friends the protest out front the Iranian embassy in London on Saturday, a couple of KNightsbridge-residing Shaw supporters rolled up in their cars and hauled out their monarchy flags and were then beaten back by the demonstrators already there who were more upset about what looks like an election rip-off. Seeing this as a move by the dwindling Shah crowd would be even a worse misreading of events than what's already been said elswehere on this site.
hell, the shah wouldn't have even had a sham election. nonetheless, i'd like to think posters on cd have somewhat higher political expectations than switching dictators when it suits us. here's a novel idea: let's actually try to aim for better governance and social relations, not only here, but abroad as well. And most importantly, let's show others the respect for their sovereignty the same we'd ask that ours be respected.
of course, at least this theocracy was installed by iranians themselves, for better or worse. the shah wasn't. either you get the importance of that or, apparently, you don't.
mr kissinger - i am not so pleased to meet you here
the docket at the hague is more on my mind
you obviously don't know much about the shah and what a prick he was - torturer, mass murderer and user of wmd's against his own people
mr kissinger you probably think of him as a man ahead of his time as we the united states have now come to these crimes some thirty years later
your characterization of the current regime is baseless and ignorant and as a foreigner to iran it is also none of your business
iranian elections are much more democratic than the pubic relation oriented tv show that we get
the united states is a crumbling empire and is only propped up by an incompetent military - a military increasingly reliant on private contractors - and a web of debt and interest
the end is nigh for us and we ought to be thinking about bringing the imperial storm troopers home
if you have any decency and belief in democracy then you ought to do the morally correct thing which is to congratulate iran on a fair and open election
you know, the kind we never see here
Which is to say that 30 years of history have taught the West next to nothing about Iran.
Or most of the rest of the world either.
Which is to say that 30 years of history have taught the West next to nothing about Iran.
That about sums it up. The entire planet should be trying to emulate Jimmy Joe Bob Redneck! If not, AmeriKKKia will "Liberate" them of anything of value in the name of freeDUMB.
Creative spelling aside as a shortcut to thinking critically, I think this young women's writing answers your question: http://tinyurl.com/l4v7qp
There is nothing in the current uprising to suggest these people want to "be like" Americans. And I don't blame them.
" At least Ahmadinejad gives Obama, as Ahmadinejad does Khamenei, a foil, if things go wrong. And Ahmadinejad, freed of a elections' burden, could maybe find his inner Nixon and make the leap across ideologies."
************
Without a doubt the funniest (and at the same time most thoughtful) part of the entire article. Of course NIxon, for all is boorish public social manner, was actually quite intelligent and capable of thoughtful analysis. Ahmadinejad has yet to show such capacity.
But who knows, maybe he could find his inner Bush and do what Ahmadinejad said he never would do as did Bush when faced with the financial crisis of the last 6 months of his term.
Poet
I don't know how much time you typically spend in the Middle East, Poet, but my experience there, where I have a fistful of Farsi-speaking friends to translate for me, indicates that the president of Iran is considerably more intelligent than 95% of the posters on this site.
Or is it simply your claim that everybody who is not a white English speaker is not intelligent?
You seem to be given to going off the rails into hate speech.
bligh4
Who cares who the President of Iran is? The White House Usher has more power than that office holder- who only does the Mullah's bidding.
...as opposed to AIPAC's bidding?
bligh4
What? Your reply makes no sense...
repeat
Ibid.
His comment made sense
YOURS didn't.
think about it.
No , you think about it.
Mojigato11--
Ahmadinejad is stupid in the same way that Saddam Hussein was stupid.
He underestimates the cruelty of the US administration independent of whatever personality is currently heading the government and he underestimates how earnestly the US desires to overthrow the Islamic Revolution in Iran "by any means necessary" to borrow Malcolm X's famous comment.
Ahmadinejad is also stupid like Bush--a deliberately arrogant and ignorant boor--he is so culturally isolated and ideologically correct (in a fundamentalist-Shiite Muslim radical revolutionary sort of way) that his mind is otherwise incapable of expanding to embrace much of anything beyond the propaganda slogans he has been spewing out for so many years.
Just like Lil' Bush, he has repeated the same list of lies so often and for such a long time that he has come to believe them and is more than willing to subject the Iranian peoples to whatever cruelty is required to sustain the tissue of lies he has woven (with the tacit approval and support of the Revolutionary Council which is the real power in Iran).
Poet
The US is made functionally "stupid" by Israel's dictation of our foreign policy.
Ahmedinejad has played us like a fiddle, and it wasn't that hard to do. He might or might not be stupid, but he's smart enough to make Iran the pivotal player in his area.
Wanderer I agree on your assessment of the functional stupidity of the US/Israeli Axis' policies in the Middle East. However, Ahmadinejad is no more responsible for the US imbecility in the ME than Baby Bush was responsible for the prevention any terrorist attacks on the US since 9/11/01.
Iran's ascendency in the ME is primarily due to the US destruction of Iraq on its western border and Afghanistan to its East. By now Neocondom expected to have subdued Syria and Iran along with Iraq and Afghanistan. They just forgot with whom they were dealing and that siezing an objective is not the same as pacifying the population of the place siezed.
Iran is Afghanistan and Iraq times ten in terms of how it might be conquered and then held once siezed. Syria would rather invade Israel (or at the very least slaughter any or all Israelis in the Golan Heights) before they will roll over and play dead. That's quite a tar baby our present adminstration has inherited from its predecessor and Ahmadinejad and Iran have gained a credibility neither deserves nor would have obtained but for American/Israeli stupidity.
Poet
I would stil like to know your credentials--years spent in the Gulf, years speaking Farsi, Arabic and Urdu, university studies of the area, etc.
Bigotry is not the basis of informed opinions.
I also wonder why gringos always think they can read the minds of folks leading countries they've never been to, whose language they do not speak and whose cultures are impenetrable to them.
That attitude might just have a little bit to do with the reason that the US is soooooooo over.