I’m going to ignore the call to arms or whatever in the OP and just look at some of the numbers.
Last I saw Ahmedinejad was ahead by about 29 points.
Compare that to some famous American blowout landslides. Roosevelt beat Hoover by 18 points. Reagan beat Mondale by 18 points as well. Roosevelt rolled over by the hapless Alf Landon by 24 points. Ahemdinejad easily outdistanced all of them! If one were to believe these results one would have to conclude the Ahmedinejad is not only the clear winner, but that he is phenomenally popular in Iran despite the country’s disastrous economy.
Nate Silver has some pre-election polling up at 538. Apparently the Iranian polling has not been as sophisticated as in the US, but I think we can get a sense of things from what’s up there.
Recent polls had Mousavi close (although they fluctuate wildly and the performance effects of minor candidates is obvious). I’m just very skeptical that Ahmadinejad was able to double Mousavi’s vote share given those polls. Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part; I (and I think most Americans) want to see Ahmadinejad out, but it makes me :dubious:
Even better, we can lob our millions of now defunct television sets over there.
Seriously, this election is sickening. It’s all but inconceivable for Ahmadinejad to have won with 63% of the vote, and taken a city like Tehran here he is very unpopular. An across the board win with similar margins of victory everywhere simply reeks of manipulation.
Agreed, its the uniformity of the totals that is most suspicious, a “one size fits all” landslide victory. Its clumsy and amateurish, Karl Rove could have advised them better. “Don’t claim a landslide, win by a squeaker, and call it a mandate. Hell, work it right, you can actually lose the popular vote but win in the Electoral Madrassa.”
Political chicanery as performed by the Keystone Kops. That’s one of the big trouble with hyper-religious people, they figure since God knows everything, they don’t need to know anything.
This is something that affects the Iranian people almost exclusively. Foreign policy is set by the clerics, who wield the real power in Iran. For all his bluster, Ahmedinejad (I’m sure I spelled that wrong) is no real threat to anyone outside that country. This is an internal issue for them, and we should keep our noses out of it just like we do in China, Saudi Arabia, etc.
I think before America can talk about the fraudulent elections in other countries, we should probably straighten out our fradulent ones. Even if we’re not all that fraudulent, at least get it to the point of some kind of accuracy with a minscule .00000x% percent of error, instead of what we had to deal with for the Al Frankin issue and Bush/Gore issue.
Strictly speaking, the results of the election are fixed before the election ever occurs. The mullahs of the Council of Guardians have to approve of the candidates before they can even run. Oh, there might be a candidate that is more liberal in his policies here and there, but the mullahs put the kibosh on anybody that doesn’t toe their line. In reality, then, they’re simply choosing one stooge over another, which is why the results are in my opinion not worth getting worked up over.
Well they are pieces on the chessboard. Their President is like a mask that they put up to exhibit their willingness to follow certain lines of thinking. If they picked Ahmedinejad then that shows that they want their mad dog out in front. It’s not something to get worked up over, if you care about it as a Democratic process, being that it’s not Democratic in any way, but it does tell us a lot about Iran’s policy posture.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did offer to monitor American elections. One can speculate as to whether he really meant it, but I think I need not ask Plan B whether he thinks Ahmadinejad’s presence would have been at all helpful.
Or the young people could give up on the whole thing since they now see it’s a complete joke. Reformist candidates have boycotted the elections in the past for that reason. Although the “stooge” comment puts it a little too strongly, why would the ‘next generation’ bother when the mullahs hold the real power, pick the candidates and then rig the vote if they want? Looks like this one was a fake. Which is funny because I got the distinct impression the mullahs don’t like Ahmadinejad much either.
Having watched a few talking heads, the consensus seems to be that the clerics are somewhat divided, with a small majority backing Ahmadinejad. I also agree that the most likely outcome will be apathy next time around, or if there is some real unrest we’ll see a Chinese style crackdown. These guys aren’t going to give up power easily.
I hate Iran as much as any frothy freeper, but I’ve had just about enough of the U.S. acting aggressively to do awful things to Middle Easterners in the name of democracy. Maybe it’s because of the clusterfuck in Iraq, maybe it’s because this sort of thing didn’t work out the last time we tried it, or maybe it’s simply because four years in the army taught me a healthy hatred of people who try to do things to other people “for their own good.”
It’s not so much that I’m *totally *opposed to nation-building; Post-WWII Japan and Post-Korean War ROK are two excellent examples of raising countries from the ashes of their own bad governments. It’s just that at some point between then and the present, we’ve forgotten the how’s and why’s. We suck at it now. We’ve lost a lot of our credibility thanks to Iraq, not to mention a helluva lot of good men and women. And you want to do the same damned thing in Iran? No thanks.
Khamenei & Mousavi are old rivals, apparently. So it’s not about keeping Imadinnerjacket, it’s about the supreme leader shutting out a rival from his own generation.
Also, I think they may be intentionally committing obvious fraud to provoke an uprising & then crack down. The regime can win & they know it.
We’ll see. And back to the OP: the idea that the U.S. can do anything about this is absurd. What’s happening is unfortunate but the U.S. has no leverage on Iran, has little spare military power and it’s help is clearly not wanted at all.
