Iranian Elections

[I was scanning through Huffington Post this morning, and I found this article. It led me to write a response, which I have now decided deserves to be posted here, so here goes. --Liam]

As we settle in to see what the response from the White House will be to the results of Friday's run off election in Iran, it occurs to me that similarities between newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and George Bush are startling.

Both have managed to garner serious support from those who would most likely be the least supported BY them on the basis of their strong religious ties. In the United States, Bush managed to convince the poor and middle classes that his stance on Christian principles was more important than his policies which, in typical Republican philosophy, would be more concerned about the rights and welfare of the wealthy and the corporations than themselves. With Ahmadinejad, the poor and disenfranchised felt they had gained little from the recent reformer President, and decided if they were going to remain poor, they might at least regain their Islamic soul.

The difference between the two that when the Religious Right in THIS country support a candidate and expect him to dismantle every church/state separation and codify in law tenets of their religion, the Administration calls this "a return to American values", but when religious conservatives in Iran do the same thing, the Administration calls it "a sham election".

Wow, a double standard? Really? From THIS Administration? I must lie down and recover from the shock!

According to this article, a State Department official had this to say: "With the conclusion of the elections in Iran, we have seen nothing that sways us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region in the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon."

Interesting that we would list Iran as being out of step with two countries whose policies have only changed with U.S. interference. I'm not (here) debating the merits of what we've done in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does seem a bit intellectually dishonest to invade two countries, install a democratically elected government in both, and then use those countries as 2/3s of your argument as to the political currents in the region.

Just as an exercise, let's compare several elections. (Yes, I understand that the Iranian one just happened, so there may be more reports of irregularities in the future. But the Administration has already labeled it a "sham", so it's fair to dispute that knowing what we currently know.)

1) An election which, at least so far, appears to have correctly judged the will of the masses, and showed an overwhelming majority for the winner. True, the candidates were vetted by a non-elected religious cabal, but the final slate of candidates did include reformers as well as hard-liners, and there doesn't appear to be any real reason to believe those hundreds of "candidates" who were not allowed on the final slate would have stood a chance anyway.

2) An election which led to a slim majority of popular votes for the losing candidate, characterized by massive irregularities in a major contested area finally decided (legally) by the ruling person in that area, who happens to be the brother of the candidate declared the winner. The candidates from the two major parties refused to acknowledge candidates from other parties or allow them to participate in group events such as debates, even when those candidates had met all of the requirements to be on the ballot country-wide.

3) An election which led to the slimiest of margins of victory for the victor, characterized by widespread complains of irregularities and voting difficulties in major contested areas. The winning Candidate shows a marked tendency to work against the freedoms in his country, in favor of rule-by-religion (such as working against the rights of certain small minorities of citizens), for reductions in free speech (such as amendments to the core set of laws to prohibit a form of expression found disrespectful to the country) and for consolidation of power from the distributed "checks and balances" guarantees of freedom to a more concentrated "do what I say" power structure, even going so far as to propose an amendment to the core set of laws to limit the power of the independent judiciary to weigh laws against that core document.

Clearly it is possible to spin all three to sound invalid. If the second and third had occurred not in this country but in an Islamic country in an oil producing region, descriptions like those I gave above would be floated to garner support for invasion of those countries.

Put another way, it does not appear as though we truly support democracy, we support a democratically elected government when such government agrees with our philosophies. We really are an arrogant people.

Copyright (c) June 25, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net