When George Bush sleazed the 2000 election out from under Al Gore, he did more damage internationally than anyone has yet acknowledged. In securing the leadership of a leading democracy by applying the Cheneyan belief that the ends justifies the means, democracy lost its best proponent and its greatest selling feature.
What is democracy when it cannot claim integrity as the collective will of a majority of the people?
Hmm...
Since the leading proponents of democracy -- the US -- clearly no longer believed in it, no one else around the world needed to respect their democratic processes either. Democracy became an expendable commodity, little more than an unconvincing advertising slogan: 'Things go better with..."
A nice smile and a good pretense were the only requirements for ambitious, modern politicians. Corrupt world leaders scurried like cockroaches to give the appearance of democracy while holding onto power the way water skiers hang off their ropes.
Robert Mugabe took George's lesson closest to heart when he abandoned pretenses completely and simply ignored the results of the elections held in Zimbabwe last year.
Now ironically, the profoundly anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the Bush-republican model of retaining power by brazenly fudging results in his national election.
A clear indication that the Iranian results are fiction is Iran's ban on text messaging prior to the vote. Ahmadinejad's strategists realized there was a real possibility of collective protests following this crooked election. They tried to head this off by arresting opposition leaders and by removing the main medium of the opposition's organization: cell phone networks. Ayatollah Khomenei then quickly endorsed the phoney results and warned opposition parties against questioning them.
Unfortunately this didn't stop the riots.
Three days later people are still standing on the rooftops of Tehran shouting "God is Great. Death to the Dictator" (by whom they now mean Ahmadinejad). The rioters burn trash in the streets at night and beat up the police sent to disperse them.
Nice.
All this supports my deeply held personal belief that no good can come of the theft of democracy anywhere in the world. When such theft happens, it is an open expression of the contempt in which a country's leadership holds the opinions of its people. This is certainly what it meant under George W. Bush. The whole country, its institutions, laws and governance were up for sale by a government that no longer respected their own responsibility to the people or the people themselves. The challenge now facing the Republican party is to restore its own integrity. This is not impossible, but it won't happen soon and it will never happen under the leadership of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin.
When integrity evaporates throughout an entire system, it's like a desert wind that dries up the smallest beads of life-sustaining moisture. If a government will lie to its own people about national election results, they will have little trouble lying to them or anyone else about -- in America's case -- torture, secret prisons and domestic wire-taps, or -- in Iran's case -- the real purpose of a national nuclear program which, it seems clear today, is intended to build a bomb in order to exert pressure that will counter Israel's recalcitrance in establishing a Palestinian home state.
The middle east today, is a much more dangerous place than it was a week ago. I hope Benjamin Netanyahu understands that the Palestinian two-step is no longer a viable option. Like Iran's phoney election results, the world sees through the push-me pull-me forces that have prevented Palestine from joining the world in free self-determination and self-governance.
With the assistance of a few corrupt politicians, the world has now brought the middle east to the brink of nuclear war.
Leave Iran to Iranians. If only Iranians had involved themselves in American elections as much as America and Americans have involved themselves, what would be the response in the U.S.? Any country which has secret prisons, tortures people on suspicion and spies on its own people is a dictatorship. So when are Americans going to riot and overthrow their dictatorship?
We have to face it...big oil, big insurance, and big agra own this country. They own our lawmakers, and we have about a snowball's chance in he// of doing anything about it. They will put into power those who will let them continue to r@pe and pollute the earth, and rip off the people.
Sorry for the cynicism! But today has been a sad day, both for the good people of Iran, and for the good people of America. Universal health care is a pipe dream, and the torturers and destroyers of our Constitution go unpunished! My hope is beginning to fade!
Iranians take to the streets in protest. We The People, not so much. :-(
Democracy? I refer to the U.S. president as the electoral college president and so should you. We do not decide the presidency, the men in power that can rig and hijack elections like in 2000 and I am sure 2004 elect the presidents!
Cell phone text messages were more likely shut down to thwart the protests of malcontents who would use the media to undermine the election results (which they are attempting anyway).
Ahmadinejad is the rightful president of Iran & the sooner we come to terms with that is the sooner we can move forward on important issues like nuclear weapons.
Its also very inconsiderate to compare any living person to G.W.Bush. That's just wrong.
A few reasons:
--- a high number of undecideds- who historically tend to go with challengers rather than incumbents- combined with an unexpectedly high turnout
--- the poll directly contradicts virtually all of the municipal-level polls in days leading up to election
--- in a society where secret police are everywhere, there is a (strategic) tendency to play it safe and tell a stranger that you're going with the incumbent, which was the riskiest question on the entire survey
--- the poll was taken *before* the televised debate, where Mousavi embarrassed Ahmadinejad with how much better he performed
[me again] Go to http://www.juancole.com/ for Juan Cole's deconstruction of the election.
Kamau - your credibility and integrity as a source of viable dialogue has been broken here with your latest post. I suggest you find another venue, as I for one no longer regard your opinions as useful or fruitful.