A Dangerous Game: Playing Politics with Iran
Congressman Mike Pence (R-IN) and Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA) have introduced a resolution expressing support for Iranian citizens, condemning the violence in Iran, and spouting off about the importance of free and fair elections.
Berman said, "It is not for us to decide who should run Iran, much less determine the real winner of the June 12 election...but we must reaffirm our strong belief that the Iranian people have a fundamental right to express their views about the future of their country freely, and without intimidation."
When I read this statement, my immediate thought was, "Why?"
Why must we reaffirm our belief in freedom of expression and democracy? It's not exactly a big secret that the United States holds these beliefs. And, current decade notwithstanding, we can be pretty good at working with longstanding and emerging democracies around the world.
Where we fail, again and again, is trying to overlay not only our ideals but how we put those ideals into practice onto countries whose cultures and traditions are different from ours. Our leaders have not, over the long term, shown much imagination when it comes to understanding that other socieities might have their own path to achieving such important ends as freedom and democracy.
Smart, experienced foreign policy experts of all political persuasions have suggested that President Obama has taken exactly the right approach to the situation in Iran, and that any strong response by the United States could be used by the Iranian government against the protesters. Yet, conservative members of the House and Senate, as well as conservative talk show hosts, have been insisting over and over that the President is not going far enough; that he needs to decry the election results and make demands.
In my opinion, these people don't know anything about Iran, don't care about Iran or the Iranian people, and couldn't care less what position they're advocating for as long as it's the opposite of what the President is doing. That's become the Right's MO on all issues since Obama took office. Whatever Obama says is wrong--reason, public opinion, and even public safety be damned.
And here we go again. Iran is reaching a tipping point. After the Ayatollah's speech today, protests are now increasingly dangerous. What will happen on Saturday, when protesters return to the streets? I don't know, but I fear the worst. I fear that the government will put down the protests, brutally and violently.
Pence, Berman, and the like are behaving as if they are blind to this potential outcome. They see an opportunity to score political points, and if it results in the deaths of tens or hundreds or thousands of citizens in a country so far away, who cares? The goal is to undermine the President for the benefit of the Repbulican party.
Such naked narcissism takes my breath away.
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Cross posted at Dagblog.
Ron Paul is the only member of Congress who puts reason above reelection.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/ron-paul-is-sole-dissenter-from-resolution-supporting-iranian-protests.php
June 19, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish there was a different dissenter. Ron Paul has diminished political value as he is often misinformed on so many other issues.
June 19, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a very important post. Thanks for writing it. It's maddening some little Congressman from some back wash area of the US can bully pulpit for mere political purposes in a land where they have zero influence. It also hurts the US long range strategic planning.
Of course, Congress is like sheep. That's how we got the AUMF garbage too!
June 19, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
PS: Please don't paint this as a "conservative issue". It's not. Members of both parties like to grand stand on "opportunities" like this.
Moreover, Ron Paul, is definitely a "conservative" claiming that the US needs to be more of a Christian nation etc. etc.
It's this knee-jerk reaction (on both sides blaming the other) that causes the electorate to lose. For example, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd are just as guilty of the fiscal mess we are in as the GOPers who pushed for no regulation.
June 19, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder what it's like to hate Freedom? I mean, what part of Freedom don't you understand? The Freely pursuing ultimate Freeness part? Or the "dom" part?
Really? The "dom" part? Oh. Ok.
Well, it's like this. Think King, now add "dom." And you get... Kingdom. Now do the same with Free. Add "dom." Freedom. There. It means, like, letting Freedom ring throughout Happiness-land.
And don't you think it's funny how they just couldn't find the guts, the courage, the - if I may - balls, to come right out and spell happiness the way we all think of it? Hapenis. From the Olde Englishe havepenis. Where they made the "ve" be silent, because of some treaty with the Germans, who needed to say things like, "Ve have meat in zee kitchen" and stuff. I read a booke once on where words come from, which is why I know all this.
And when you say such naked narcissism takes your breath away, is that in a good way? Like a Bruno hapenis way?
P.S. I hope this comment teaches you a little bit about what free-DOM means and why it's so important. Like in speech. So our rights can be fulfilled, which is why I say whatever
I want, wherever I want. And am Republican. Join our song, kids! Twitter it and hum! Like this --
La la la, free-DOM,
I got SOM,
'cause I'm AmeriCOM.
And you're only IraniDOM,
Wearin' your turBOM,
Ba-rumpa-bum-bom.
June 19, 2009 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
quinn, I hate to break it to you but it is a left-over issue from the Bush regime: The REAL objection is to conDOM(s).
June 19, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was hoping someone would come along and work them into my "Freedom Song (For Bruno.)"
All the others keep on going off on a tangent, dragging down the tone, and talking about "Congress." They disgust me. By a 405 to 1 vote, these clowns want to announce their position on how to do democracy. Seriously. The United States of America's Congress wants to ANNOUNCE its position. After starting two wars in the region within the last 7 years, and spreading these wars to a 3rd nation. After their President has just made a speech for peace, admitting the US helped overthrow Iran's democratic leader. After supporting Saddam in an 8 year war which he started and which killed hundreds of thousands of their kids. And after the 2000 and 2004 elections which were utterly flawed and failed and faked.
During all of which, Congress FAILED to do anything helpful. But now, they want to vote 405 to 1 to prove something about "democracy" to Iranians.
Bruno is the only appropriate response to horseshit like this. Other than maybe jotting down names and swearing blood oaths not ever elect these vegetables again.
June 19, 2009 6:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'll swear a blood oath. I'm NEVER voting for my current congressman again. The difference between him and a republican is that with a republican, I get fewer emails.
June 19, 2009 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
But but but....if everyone would just say NOOOOO! Instead of relying on those evil CON ~ DOMS the world would be just full of flowers and whatever the republicans are currently selling.
You Canadians just don't get it, do you? ohhhhhhh --maybe YOU get it and WE don't! No, That can't be right. Or maybe it is. But it can't possibly be. On the other hand...
June 19, 2009 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Orlando. Highly rec'd.
June 19, 2009 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote this post before the vote in the House and now I think they're all ridiculous (save Ron Paul--how does that happen?).
Democrats are terrified of being painted as anti-democracy in their campaigns next fall, so they do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.
Republicans are opposing anything Obama does, knee-jerk style, hoping for something, anything they can run on.
They're all asshats and I'm sick of every last one of them. Except Ron Paul. I don't agree with pretty much anything he stands for, but at least he most always has a rational and reasonable argument to make for why he thinks the way he thinks.
June 19, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
My sentiments exactly.
Excellent post. Rec'd.
June 19, 2009 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then they aren't leaders and should be tossed.
When you are the majority party and you still can't act with some degree of confidence, there is some serious rethinking that needs be done.
GWB walked into office in 2001 and rammed things through like he had a mandate!
June 19, 2009 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
W even did it again in 2004, rammed thing in like he had a mandate.
June 20, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
It needed to be said and thanks for saying it. Where was this US support for democracy & freedom of citizens when Musharaff had Pakistan under martial law? We can't selectively choose when to back democracy and when not to and expect to maintain any moral credibility. The US does more to legitimize the anti-Ahmadinejad forces by staying out of the fray and letting the will of the Iranian people be heard. And it is embarrassing that Ron Paul is the only one who rejected this nonsense.
June 19, 2009 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
More like humiliating. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, freaking Grenada. We're ridiculous.
June 19, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
"We can't selectively choose when to back democracy and when not to and expect to maintain any moral credibility."
this is an excellent point, dijamo.
And Orlando, great post.
June 20, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
No!
June 19, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
No? England, France, South Korea, Mexico, Canada... Do we not have productive relationships with these countries?
June 19, 2009 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ummmm, no. Really. No thanks. The really really REALLY best thing the US could do right now would be to Truly Deeply Madly work on healing itself. Any proposal that comes out of the US today is completely unclear in its intentions. The votes today show exactly the problem. It'd be great to see the US polity have all 4 wheels back on the road.
June 19, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you tongue in cheek here? With you, it's hard to tell. My point is that with our democratic allies, we work just fine. Some of those allies have been at one time, or are now, emerging democracies. We have trade deals, we have diplomatic exchange, etc. I'm not suggesting that the United States doesn't have things to fix. I know you know that. My point is that, while we are perfectly happy to do business with democratic countries, and perfectly happy to do business with undemocratic countries so long as they kiss our ass, we are not so perfectly happy to recognize democracy when we don't like the results.
June 19, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with every sentence in your post except this one and I suppose your conclusion that this 405 to 1 vote is an act of narcissism. I would never fault any post for one errant sentence unless as in this case it held, like a grenade with the pin pulled, a most dangerous misconception of what happened in that vote.
The nature of U.S. involvement in emerging democracies is revealed in just a few words: Vietnam, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Angola, Iran (1953). Each of them is both a country name and the name of an episode of the most grotesque state terror. The U.S. is the oldest democracy extant and so I’m not sure what “longstanding” means here except that I suppose you are referring to the Western European governments, that is, “old Europe.” And well, oh what’s the point?
This vote was not some episode of vanity in Cleopatra’s private quarters. It is business as usual in the number one purveyor of state terrorism in the modern era. Forget Iraq? Ok. Forget Habeas Corpus? OK. Forget torture? OK. But what about tomorrow? Votes like this tell you tomorrow will be no different than yesterday.
I am sorry to be so blunt but for me that one sentence undid all the good of the rest of the piece.
June 19, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you misunderstood my intent in writing that sentence. I am not suggesting that we don't meddle and that we haven't supported authoritarian regimes over emerging democracies.
The point is that we have fine relationships with governments that we like. But democracies that we don't like, we undermine. Also, I didn't forget Iraq or Habeas Corpus or torture, which I thought was evident when I said "current decade nothwithstanding."
In any case, I don't disagree with you about the history of U.S. intervention. But the vote today was political grandstanding at its worst, with no regard for how it might reverberate in Iran.
June 19, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
It may be worse than you think, O. I'm not trying to be rude, but even Canada and the UK - your two bestest of best buds - haven't God's own first clue what the US is really up to these days. We just had Clinton and Napolitano and McCain - all 3 - inform us, wrongly, that we needed to "thicken" the border to deal with terrorists, like those that "came through Canada on 9/11." We had to correct them. They had imbibed that deeply of Bushworld. By the way, you got a passport? 'Cause you pretty much need one to come here now. And in the UK, their government got absolutely hung out to dry by the US - under Obama - threatening to stop cooperating on terrorism if it ever revealed what had happened in those lil torture chambers. It wasn't bad enough to get dragged into the god-damn wars, the US' failure to want to deal with the past is now making things harder for everyone else as well.
Look. People love America and Americans for a whole lot of reasons. But they also know there's been a growing madness at the political-media-corporate-military level. And the Dems are not seen as having found their way free of that. And Obama? Everyone loves him. Because he offers HOPE. But they ain't movin' an inch based on hope alone. He has to actually, factually, practically, show that things WORK IN NEW WAYS.
Which is why I said we're all wishing the US, Obama and the Dems the best of luck in fixing the nightmare that's been dropped on their table. But meanwhile, unless it absolutely cannot be avoided, nobody wants to hear official Congressional views on politics, or get a hand-up in practice, or get any training or lessons. Remember. Iraq and Afghanistan are Exhibits 1 and 2 in "American Contributions to Democracy-Building."
June 19, 2009 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't that my point?
June 19, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then we are agreed. My quarrel was not with you but just with that one sentence. As for the vote, maybe it was just a little Congressional twitter to all the nasty people who look out for our interests in foreign lands that says we haven't given up on the empire just yet.
June 19, 2009 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
P.S. Larry, the narcissism I refer to is the knee-jerk reaction to oppose everything Obama says and does (on the part of the Republicans) and the knee-jerk reaction to vote in the way they think will protect their seats (on the part of the Democrats) with zero regard to the real lives at stake in Iran.
June 19, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Orlando, you have that exactly right. This is a great, great blog and thank you for posting it. And your statement about the congressional focus on re-election is right on. I just spent 30 minutes ranting at my nephew about the whole lot of congressional jackasses and how we seem to have very little effect on their actions. We all say we can vote them out but that doesn't help anything now. Who the heck do these jacks answer to? The lobbyists?
By the way, I just love your avatar.
June 20, 2009 4:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not to be out stupid-ed, the Senate gets in on the act:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/06/senate_condemns_iran_crackdown.php?ref=fpb
June 19, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. I read about this last night and I did contact my reps and told them this was BS etc.
Congress is often trying to get involved in things they should not be and not doing enough about the things they ought to have taken care of yesterday.
June 19, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
OK, this is even more important that everything else. I get home and don't feel like making dinner even thought I care a lot about nutrition, so I end up eating pretzels and drinking a little wine, promising myself that I will got to TipTop tomorrow for a real breakfast.
Sorry -- waaaay off topic!
Nevermind~
June 19, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice, C'Ville. Way to let the terrorists win.
June 19, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
OMG! You are right! I promise to reform! I am having strawberries with Greek Yogurt tomorrow before I go to work! Thanks Orlando, for the wakeup call! Wow! I Was so close!
OK! I will put granola over the top off all of it, and I am not kidding! I have it in my kitchen!!!!
Orlando! You saved me!
June 19, 2009 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another of those blasted Canucks chiming in. Of course, I actually do use the net to get opinions from all over. I really don't care if the person at the other end is purple with yellow polka dots - as long as a brain is in evidence.
That's the silliness here. 99.44% of the time the U.S. doesn't give a flying f**k how anybody else's election goes. Nor is this one about power : the mullahs have that.
No, it's part of the game to make s**t up and put on airs about something for which the 'reporting' is straight out of Rove's playbook.
Some can see it. I liked this piece
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/06/19/iranian-elections-the-%E2%80%98stolen-elections%E2%80%99-hoax-by-prof-james-petra/
June 20, 2009 3:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read the post you linked to. The foundation of that author's premise is that there is absolutely no evidence of voter fraud or election fraud.
Political narcissism aside, do you personally believe that there is no legitimate reason for Iranians to question the outcome?
June 20, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Orlando, your post is excellent. Whatever their motivations, the political narcissism is breathtaking.
Ali Khamenei's denunciation of Britain as “the most evil” of Iran’s enemies could turn out to be interesting. Both WaPo and the NYT reported that Rosemary Hollis, a professor of Middle East studies at City University in London said "Strange as it seems, they’re convinced that the British are the clever ones, manipulating things behind the scenes,” referring to an Iranian belief that Britain really pulls America's strings. Are the Republicans going to start screaming that Obama has weakened the US so much already, that the Great Satan has now been replaced by the Limeys? Or will the Democrats maybe notice that Obama's strategy is working?
Who knows? At least the Ayatollah doesn't think it's the French.
June 20, 2009 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why must we reaffirm our belief in freedom of expression and democracy? It's not exactly a big secret that the United States holds these beliefs.
Not since Nixon.
June 20, 2009 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
"In my opinion, these people don't know anything about Iran, don't care about Iran or the Iranian people, and couldn't care less what position they're advocating for as long as it's the opposite of what the President is doing."
What is really illuminating is when they come out with a straight face and compare their minority status in Congress to the plight of the Iranians protesting on the street.
June 20, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
tpmgary
There's always questioning the results. Did you see the bit from sign of the Times where they had a story on a CIA Twitter Revolution ( Green ) that cost $400 million ?
What do you think of partisan shots from the USA when Iranians know their government is being prevented from a rational ongoing domestic energy program because the USA found it convenient to paint horns on their heads....though why anybody would still believe Cheney over the CIA.
July 23, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink