Seeing the way that so many people in the West’s Establishment are willing to vouch for the Iranian election returns, it becomes painfully clear how much our Establishment relies on bogeymen to sustain their agenda (primarily of large defense budgets, foreign intervention, and letting Israel expand into the West Bank). They want Ahmadinejad in power. They need him in power. They’d prefer Ahmadinejad as a dictator to Ahmadinejad as an elected president because it makes it easier to demonize him. Yet, they’re willing to make up scenarios where Ahmadinejad really won the election to help him avoid being ousted for his theft. So, my question is this. If Saddam Hussein had died of an aneurysm and been replaced by a dedicated democratic reformer, do you have any doubt that the democratic reformer would have been treated as the next Hugo Chavez by our elite press and foreign policy Establishment?
Emmanuel Goldstein writ Persian…
Seriously. Ten years ago, I’d have thought this was pure paranoia. Now? It’s painfully obvious.
How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?
no doubt at all.
I have no doubt in my mind that the US would try to invade fuckin’ iceland if it meant we could have another enemy to hate on.
i was gonna say “canada”, but apparently we already tried that and it didn’t work out so well.
this is a trick question, right.
the answer’s obvious. it was, is, and always shall be, about hegemony and resource control…aka… OIL…and, of course, obscene profits for the m/i complexes. whatever it takes.
But under this argument couldn’t Ahmadinejad’s successor simply have been painted as an enemy with the same broad brush?
yeah, they made that argument before the election. It’s called hedging.
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(Haaretz) – Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview with Army Radio: “Whatever happens, this is an Ayatollah regime. We should not be confused about Mousavi – these people are fundamentalist Muslims.”
Barak called the mass protests by Mousavi supporters “fascinating,” explaining that “we must keep in mind that this is an Ayatollah’s dictatorship …
The defense minister also called on the world to respond quickly in order to prevent the Iranian government from advancing the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
“Iran is in the midst of a very dangerous process. Short-term plans must be made. We don’t have too much time; we decided to leave all courses of action open and we expect others to do the same,” Barak told the radio station.
STATEMENT MOSSAD CHIEF MEIR DAGAN
Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “what matters is the position of the [supreme] leader and this has not changed. The riots are taking place only in Teheran and one additional region. They won’t last for long.” Dagan said he didn’t believe the riots would become a full-fledged revolution.
Dagan also warned the Islamic republic could have an operational nuclear bomb ready for use by 2014, and dismissed claims that a second revolution was brewing in the streets of Teheran.
“In terms of the nuclear project, it’s no longer a technical issue, because the Iranians have solved their technical problems,” said Dagan. “If there aren’t any technical errors, Iran will have a bomb ready for deployment by the end of 2014. This is a significant threat to the existence of the State of Israel and we need to distance this threat from us.” Israel would actually have an easier time explaining the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons to the world if the country continued to be led by a hard-line, fanatical president [Ahmadinejad] than if Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is seen as a moderate, had won the election, Dagan said. However, “we mustn’t forget Mousavi is the one who started the nuclear program.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Some are STILL making that argument. Yesterday afternoon one of the hosts (who is a dedicated Zionist, which is not an irrelevant reality) from a very respected talk station was going on and on that Musavi was every bit as scary-dangerous as AhmadiNejad because it is really the “mad mullahs” who make decisions about nuclear weapons development, etc. I had to turn the radio off because I was too busy to call in, and I couldn’t just sit and listen to that drivel.
He is right, of course, about who makes the decisions, but the rest is bull**. Iran is not dangerous no matter who is president.
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to shout at it.
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2009/06/17/left-polemicist/
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Belfast Racist Attacks
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."in all fairness, it’s hardly certain that the election was stolen. ahmedinejad could have won and there’s plenty of reasons to be suspicious. but none of us can really be 100% certain.
I’m a 100% certain that they announced the returns before they had time to count them. These were paper ballots. They abandoned all previous procedures, including letting the candidate’s observers certify the counts.
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See Iranian election results, by province
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I agree with you.
The counterargument to Booman’s thesis is that the western elite wants Ahmadinejad discredited and demonized regardless of whether he won the election or not.
And from many accounts, Mousavi when he was president
was every bit the hardcore conservative as Ahmadinejad.
While my sympathies unequivocally lie with the protesters, it should be noted that 1) Ahmadinejad’s vote percentage is approximately the same as in 2005 and 2) a poll released by the Washington Post, taken pre-election, was in line with the results.
As I’ve read elsewhere though, the crazed reaction of the government to the protesters may ultimately do more harm to the government than the allegations of vote fraud. I hope so.
“Ahmadinejad’s vote percentage is approximately the same as in 2005…”
I’ll take our word for that, but I want to point out one little detail. This is not 2005.
Of course, it’s a different time than 2005. BTW–the percentage and totals from that election are available online. I’m, honestly, just too lazy to provide a link, though the sources I’ve read seem reputable.
Anyway, just saying 2009 is not 2005 doesn’t prove the election was stolen. It might indicate that for the average Iranian voter Ahmadinejad is just as popular then as now. Why?–economic populism? the perception that Mousavi is corrupt? Who knows. I don’t.
I’m just a skeptic I guess, but the motive among the western political poobahs to demonize Ahmadinejad as illegitimate gives me a reason to be skeptical.
Again, I condemn the brutality of the government’s response to the demonstrations. I am not on the side of Ahmadinejad.
Any group that uses “terror-free tomorrow” in its name automatically warrants close scrutiny before it is taken seriously.
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Read BooMan’s fp diary – What to Make of Terror Free Tomorrow’s Poll
As a prelude, Mousavi has already bypassed the Supreme Leader, sending an open letter to the powerful mullahcracy in Qom asking them to invalidate the election. Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, head of the election vote-monitoring committee, has officially requested that the Council of Guardians void the election and schedule a new, fully monitored one.
One of the stalwarts of Qom power, the moderate Grand Ayatollah Sanei, who had issued a fatwa against vote rigging, calling it a “mortal sin”, has already declared the Ahmadinejad presidency “illegitimate”. His house and office are now under police siege. Iranians eagerly expect a public pronouncement from Grand Ayatollah Muntazeri, the country’s true top religious figure (not Khamenei) and a certified anti-ultra-right wing.
Even more strikingly, a group of Ministry of Interior employees sent an open letter to the chairman of the Council of Experts (Rafsanjani), the president of the parliament (Majlis), former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, the heads of the legislative and the judiciary, and many other government agencies. The crucial paragraph reads: “As dedicated employees of the Ministry of Interior, with experience in management and supervision of several elections such as the elections of Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Khatami, we announce that we fear the 10th presidential elections were not healthy.”
The Islamic Combatant Clergy Association (ICCA), close to Khatami and supportive of Mousavi, said on its website that the counting process was “widely engineered [manipulated]”, and there was enough evidence to prove it. So for the ICCA, the election should be nullified.
Mohsen Rezai, who ran as a conservative and who is nothing less than a former head of the IRGC, also sent a letter to the Council of Guardians saying the election was illegitimate.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“1) Ahmadinejad’s vote percentage is approximately the same as in 2005…“
This is a specious argument.
AhmadiNejad got 60% + IN THE RUNOFF with Rafsanjani as the only other candidate. In the general election, which included six or seven candidates, he came in second with only about 19% of the vote, and Rafsanjani got about 21%. Further, the turnout for the runoff was three or four points lower than the turnout for the first round. So, there is simply no reasonable way to equate AhmadiNejad’s result in the 2009 election with the election of 2005. (I am working from memory here, so the numbers are approximate, but they are close enough to make the point.)
a poll released by the Washington Post, taken pre-election, was in line with the results.“
The source for that poll is highly, highly suspect.
If Saddam Hussein had died of an aneurysm and been replaced by a dedicated democratic reformer, do you have any doubt that the democratic reformer would have been treated as the next Hugo Chavez by our elite press and foreign policy Establishment?
No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who are some of these “many people”? I seem to have missed them.
As to your question, well, Saddam wouldn’t have been replaced by a dedicated democratic reformer any more than Reagan or Bush would have been replaced by a socialist.
Any real reformer, even a totally wimpy one, would have had to question US intentions in his country and would have been demonized by our guardians. Just, I might add, as you bought into the demonization of Chavez.
Chavez is a clown, but I used him in the exact sense in which you mean.
But don’t you see how this response contributes to the very problem you whine about in your post (which I agree with btw)?
You want to label people and countries and you use the propaganda to your advantage when it suits you. When the propaganda goes against you only then do you lash out and complain.
The same thing happened in Georgia last year–upside down was right side up and the mainstream media and both American parties adopted a story-line that suited their agenda no matter what the facts were. Russia was the aggressor. Same thing happened in Lebanon. Same thing happens with our debate over the Guantanamo detainees (absolutely innocent men are treated like “terrorists” because it suits both parties to simply pretend that those are the facts).
You may be right about Chavez but there is so much heat and so little light focused against America’s enemies du jour that when you avail yourself of using labels and adopt America’s worst propagandistic rhetoric you diminish your legitimate complaints.
“If Saddam Hussein had died of an aneurysm and been replaced by a dedicated democratic reformer, do you have any doubt that the democratic reformer would have been treated as the next Hugo Chavez by our elite press and foreign policy Establishment?”
It depends. Specifically, it depends on how the reformer would deal with ‘our’ oil.
If the democratic reformer had agreed to let Iraq serve as a US client state, invited the US to set up military bases and a Regional Imperial Command and Control center there he would be feted and honoured. If not, he’d be lucky to be treated as well as Hugo Chavez is.