the mother of all blog posts
Once again, I find myself having to defend people I don’t really like to defend. This is already getting old, and we’re only six months into the Obama administration. Today’s subject: elections in Iran. Prepare yourself for the mother of all blog posts.
Last Friday, presidential elections were held in Iran, and everybody’s favorite Holocaust denier, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was reelected with over 60% of the vote. In Iran and in the United States, apparently quite a few people were expecting an upset by reformist Mir Houssein Mousavi. In Iran, hundreds of thousands — even millions — of people have been demonstrating in the streets (just check YouTube for tons of videos — here’s one), and the government has really cracked down on them with riot police armed with guns, shooting live bullets and even killing some protesters. The supporters of Mousavi claim that the election was rigged, that their votes weren’t counted fairly, etc.
So let’s just get this on the record: I am neither a fan nor a defender of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I think it’s sad and horrible that not all people have the right to assemble and protest their government without the fear of being shot dead in the street. I like freedom and I don’t like government oppression.
I have to make that disclaimer because what I have to say next may make this my most unpopular post ever.
Americans, and in particular tweeple in the twitterverse, have gone absolutely stark raving mad over this Iranian election mess. I’ve watched it get worse and worse to the point where I just can’t tolerate the nonsense any longer. If you’ve gotten swept up in it, my apologies in advance because you’re likely to be offended. This is just simply nuts.
It all started when some Iranian protesters started posting real-time pictures and videos on Twitter. People were retweeting and it was actually pretty riveting. Contributing to the buildup was the fact that no major media outlets were covering this story over the weekend. Then, insanity broke out. Now we have all kinds of tweeters who’ve changed their avatars to have a green tint in solidarity with the protesters. In addition, the most die-hard sympathizers have changed their self-described location to Tehran. Why? Well, of course, it’s to fool the Iranian government, who reportedly is scouring Twitter for tweets using the hashtag #iranelection. That is, until last night, when the rumor started going around that the Iranian government was blocking this one particular hashtag (which I doubt is even possible), so now everybody should start using #iran9 or something. Like they couldn’t figure that one out.
Here is a sample of some of the things people are saying in the twitterverse:
Was young in ’79 and not going to watch history repeat itself. #iranelection They won’t get away with it this time.
Change your Twitter settings to show GMT +03:30 Tehran as your timezone + change city to Tehran to confuse the Iranian censors.
btw, if any of the Iranian government is reading this post…screw you and your “little man” inferiority complex #iranelection #gr88 #tehran
I mean, is this crazy? I’m not putting the names of these tweeple here because I’m not out to humiliate anybody in particular; rather, these posts are illustrative of some of the hysteria that’s taken over on Twitter. Additionally, not all those who are demonstrating support for Iranians are acting this crazily. It is possible to show concern for your fellow human beings without being a maniac.
And Twitter is certainly not the only place you can find this crazy talk. Conservatives all over have been frantic for President Obama to make some sort of statement in solidarity with the protesters. The Weekly Standard called for the President to give a speech in which…
He does not need to call openly for an uprising, but he should be taking the accounts of reporters and our intelligence operatives in Iran and broadcasting them to the world. He should be amplifying the voices of the Iranians who have, once again, been deprived of any say in how they will be governed, and using them to pressure the Iranian regime at a time when it is plainly very fragile.
Hyperbole, much?
So, let’s have a few facts, shall we? If you’re one of the people standing with your “brothers and sisters” in Iran who are protesting for “democracy,” just how much do you know about Mir Hossein Mousavi, the reformist candidate who allegedly had the election stolen from him? Perhaps you think that because the descriptive term “reformist” has been applied to him, maybe he’s at least ambivalent toward Israel rather than hostile? Or maybe he’s an advocate of complying with UN nuclear regulators to ensure that nuclear power would only be used for a peaceful purpose rather than to develop nuclear weapons? Or maybe he openly opposes terrorism as a tactic for effecting political change?
You’d be wrong on all counts.
Mir Houssein Mousavi has indeed said that he’d be open to negotiations with the United States, but only if the United States changes its policies toward Iran. Additionally, Mousavi has supported his country’s right to pursue nuclear technology. And, while Mousavi hasn’t come right out and said that the Holocaust was a big hoax like Ahmadinejad has, his statement of record — “Some people were killed there, some Jews were killed there, we condemn the killing of a single innocent person” — isn’t exactly unequivocal. Furthermore, it has been reported that Mousavi was one of the founding members of Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based political and paramilitary group that is regarded as a terrorist organization by the United States. Conservatives in the United States almost universally regard the defense of Israel as one of the most important foreign policy duties of this country. Why, then, would they be cheering for Mousavi?
Furthermore, there is evidence that the election is reflective of the Iranian people’s wishes after all. Polls done three weeks before the election showed Ahmadinejad with a lead over Mousavi. By most reports, he’s a very skilled politician. Additionally, he won with approximately the same percentage of votes in the 2005 presidential election. People in this country and in Iran, apparently, have made the assumption that because they didn’t get their preferred outcome, there must have been election fraud. Every election has winners and losers, whether or not there is fraud. Update: Two more articles asserting that Ahmadinejad may have actually won here and here, courtesy of @LegalCookie.
Which leads me to the part where I have to defend President Obama. Wisely, he has stayed mostly above the fray with regard to the Iranian election and the turmoil that has ensued. Let’s not forget that Iran is a sovereign country, and what they do with their elections is really not anybody else’s business. People in the United States are offended when international election monitors come here to make sure we’re having free and fair elections. We don’t like it when the governments of other countries voice their opinions about whom they’d like to see as the next President of the United States. It is this sort of foreign policy meddling by the United States in the past that has led to such an intense dislike of our country in other parts of the world.
Regardless of how the election turns out in Iran, President Obama will have no alternative but to deal with that person, so wouldn’t it be imprudent for him to take sides when everything is still up in the air? If he gave the speech that so many conservatives are calling for, in which he expressed solidarity with the protesters and by extension declared his opposition to Ahmadinejad, how could he ever expect to make any progress with an Ahmadinejad government? The answer, of course, is that he couldn’t. President Obama promised to use more “soft power” (or “smart power,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called it). Smart, in this case, is President Obama’s decision to let Iran determine who is going to be its leader and then proceeding to deal with said leader as the opportunity presents itself.
This isn’t your most unpopular blog post by me – I actually agree and think you stated it very well.
I’m not an Ahmedinejad defender, either, but the craziness about the election really has gotten to be a little too much. Yes, it’s terrible that so many people are being killed and injured and arrested. I hope the violence stops ASAP.
But what really gets my goat is all this talk about Mousavi as if he’s some great white hope as compared to the evil Ahmedinejad. There are tons of things that I don’t agree with Ahmedinejad, but guess what? Most of those things are things that I also disagree with Mousavi about.
Funny how that works, no?
He’s the “reformist,” yes, but mainly because he is more in support of women’s right, and even that is because of his very strong wife, who’s been anointed the Persian Michelle Obama.
We’re a multi-lingual household, meaning that we don’t have to rely on English news sources for our information about the rest of the world, and thank God for that, because the Western/English/American/whatever bias is ridiculous. More often than not, the reporters simply have no f***ing clue what they’re talking about.
I’m thankful that we not only have access to newspapers from Asia and the Middle East, but that we can read and understand them. It makes all the difference.
Sorry, that was kind of off-topic.
But my point is that there’s far more to this than meets the eye, and I guess I’m seeing that it’s a little too much to hope for that people inform themselves about a situation before breaking out the OMGZ and the !!!!!!1!.
Yes, everything about this situation sucks @$$. I support the people of Iran and hope that their country survives this turmoil and that the will of the people is realized. Even if that will is not something the rest of the world wants to get behind.
Good post. Glad you wrote it. I would have put something up on my blog, but the FBI’s been parked outside my house since like 9/12/01, and I goad them enough already by putting words like “InshaAllah” in my Facebook status.
I’m such a rebel.
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While it’s true that Mousavi is not exactly progressive by Western standards, he’s a damn sight better than the nut job who’s president of Iran now. Especially when there’s nuclear arms at stake.
But I don’t understand why acts of digital solidarity have you so up in arms, lawschoolninja. Before Twitter, none of us over in the Western world could have done anything regarding Iran’s protests. Now at least we can watch and read updates from the “front lines” and offer some encouragement to the activists.
And why shouldn’t democratic people be outraged when peaceful demonstrators are fired upon?
Also, Ballen and Doherty’s poll numbers aren’t that great: http://bit.ly/u8xLu For one thing, the Iranian election season is only lasts a month and this poll was done at the beginning. If polls from that early on were indicative of the final outcome, then Hillary Clinton would be our president.
All that to say, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that this election was rigged. http://bit.ly/2RtvLS And 10s of 1,000s of people wouldn’t be marching in the streets if there wasn’t some credibility to the fraud claims.
You’re right that the U.S. should not intervene. But that doesn’t mean we can’t cheer for the protesters…
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Very good post, I think it was thoughtfully put together. I, for one, would decry the election results if there were proof that they were fraudulent. I do oppose the tactics that the government is engaging in post-election, especially the threats/violence against students and the universities. It’s all very unfortunate. That said, there is no *proof* that the election was rigged and while certainly the Iranian people have the right (or should have the right) to protest what they see as injustice, that doesn’t mean that other nations (and it’s not just the US up in arms, several European countries are as well) have any right to intervene with the politics of a sovereign nation. However, that doesn’t mean we haven’t meddled in tons of countries every day for decades…centuries even.
I will NOT be turning my Twitter face green.
Like you (and Huma) said, Mousavi isn’t a savior. Yes, he may be a sight better than the current President, but where we have to deal with him (in international affairs, not domestic issues) is there really a difference? And if there isn’t, perhaps “the devil you know” is better. I don’t know.
I think President Obama has done the right thing by not succumbing to the pressure to get involved.
I found it interesting that you ID’d the conservatives as those pushing Obama for action, because as far as *people* I know, it’s actually liberals who are more up in arms about it. Everyone is interested, but the conservatives are more “stay out of their business” than my liberal friends are. Interesting…
And while I support the people of Iran and am a great fan of democracy
I wouldn’t look good as Elphaba.
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master ninja Reply:
June 17th, 2009 at 11:32 am
You’re definitely right, Chere, in pointing out that conservatives aren’t the only ones upset and calling for action from President Obama. It’s the tenor of the comments that’s different. Liberals who are urging Obama to speak out aren’t (for the most part) implying that he’s somehow derelict in his duties as a freedom lover like some of the conservatives that I’ve seen. Not to paint either side with a broad brush, though. Also, it’s a particular kind of conservative that’s the target of my ire — the kind that advocates an aggressively interventionist, moralizing foreign policy. Major pet peeve of mine.
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Excellent post Master Ninja. It’s good that you pointed out that Mousavi is not the “reformist” he has been painted as.
Though, the Iranian people have the right – us crazy Yanks call it universal and inalienable – to elect whom they please, so it is important that this whole mess be straightened out. And the flipside – they have the right to elect the person THEY want, so I agree that Obama has done right in – largely – staying out of it.
Taynegheel made a good point as well that the desire of the tweeple in the twitterverse to “cheer on the protesters” is aimed at “encouragement.” In the political realm [the study of and the practice of], it has the potential to make a huge difference. I saw quoted somewhere that one Iranian tweeted, “The American media may not care, but the American people do.” This has the potential to affect our relations and image for years to come.
As a political science nerd, this has caught my interest so I’ll continue following things closely.
::bows to master ninja::
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Great post! I agree with many of the posters above in that I believe that one should wait for proof before decrying the election result. While in my opinion the US should never support violence against freedom to assemble or speak freely, the election is as you say not anybody else’s business. If evidence of foul play in the election presents itself the US w/ the UN should react accordingly.
Until then everybody in the twitterverse really ought to chill out a little bit and take more of a wait and see approach before condemning the election results.
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