Did He Really Win?

[Lord Bitememan]

Continuing from the blog posts:

Did He Really Win?

Recently the Iranians had themselves a little election of sorts. One has to add emphasis and italics when referring to anything the Iranians do in democratic terms. The winner of every election in Iran would be the clerical council. The chosen President in this election goes on to wield very little actual power. So, the great hubbub we now witness is on the streets of Tehran is a bit like who’s going to win this argument over Sidney Crosby’s handshake snub; even if Kris Draper and Nick Lidstrom win, they still lost.

All the same, I can’t help but challenge the conventional thinking that this election was somehow rigged. Call it the contrarian in me (do it, you know you want to), but I went through the arguments in favor of this notion, and found it an irresistible exercise. So, my top 5 reasons why I think it’s fully plausible that Ahmedinejad really did win the Iranian elections:

1. The West is biased towards the reform: We all love to comfort ourselves with the notion that somehow, deep down, our enemies really are just good people who don’t want a fight with us. We delude ourselves into thinking they would lead us to the golden promised land of peace if they could just seize the reins of power from their horrible leaders. And I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Nothing has been a more formidable notion in this country that the “Iranian reform” movement is a large force that has been gaining steam. Meanwhile the reality over the past several years in Iran has been anything but. The mullahs have shut down independent newspapers, the social police have cracked down, and at the same time the Iranian people have lines up lock-step with the government over the nuclear issue. This has not stopped the west from looking on the reform as some vanguard of a free democratic Iran, but the truth is that’s not what Iran voted for in the last election and the passivity with which Iranians accepted everything else the government handed them in the ensuing years gives us no good cause to expect they would really make it an issue this time either.

2. Passion is not the same as popularity: We were all awestruck in recent weeks to see the passionate, energetic crowds flocking to demonstrate in the name of their reformer. Of course, anyone with more than a year’s worth of memory can tell you about the fanatically strong presence of Ron Paul supporters. Anyone with access to a good elections atlas can tell you of Mr. Paul’s enthusiasm and that of his supporters didn’t translate to a lot of votes. Instead he finished a dismal 4th, and only by virtue of the fact that he kept campaigning long after every last candidate dropped out. Can passion make you text votes or attend an online poll to say your guy won? Yup. Does it mean your guy stands a chance? No.

3. Iranian polling isn’t exactly Rasmussen: America is a polling obsessed nation with countless firms and great scientific samples on which to run polling based models. And. . . we still screw up, sometimes in grand fashion. Just ask the VNS about the reliability from cycle to cycle of sample districts for exit polling. And we do this a lot. As it stands, the US conducts more polls asking Americans about Iran than Iran conducts of its own citizens. So is it any wonder that some great deal of dissonance might exist between what their polls say and what reality is?

4. Who’s rigging the result: If the result is, indeed, rigged, it must have been by an idiot. The reported spread of support is supposedly uniform, and even Mousavi’s home town is reported to have voted for Ahmedinejad. If it were rigged, there’s one of two ways to do it. One of them is cynical, like Saddam’s 100% election. The other is to manipulate the reported turnout in believeable ways so you have a close, but believable, result. If the mullahs were trying to send a message, the result would have looked like one of those Soviet Era elections. If they wanted a believable result they would have made it closer. This just looks like the work of an idiot. . . or an astounding but very real outcome.

5. Who gains: Who really stands to gain anything by having Ahmedinejad in? The mullahs were in zero danger of seeing any real loss of their power by letting Mousavi in. In actuality, would we bomb a reformist Iran, even to stop a nuclear program? I bet you nobody has a problem bombing Ahmedinejad’s Iran. Furthermore, it was bound to precipitate a fight with reformists, whereas just letting them have their little powerless president would have shut them up in a way police and shut down newspapers never would have. And, given a few years and economic malaise later, the hardliners could ride the crest back in. Any way you slice it, the mullahs really didn’t have anything to gain by manipulating the result, whereas tampering with it could have cost them a lot.

In the end none of it will probably matter. Iran is steamrollering towards nukes, and they will do so with the consent of their public. The question is, do we have the resolve to stop them, the prudence to let the Israelis do it for us, or the foolishness to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons?  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

I think the fact that they counted handwritten ballots without machines in three hours, I'm 100% confident that it was rigged. I'm happy the protests against their evil leader are being done!  

[Lord Bitememan]

To which I reply, mousey, with my latest blog post:

Allah’s Tiananmen Moment

* Posted by Lord Bitememan on June 16th, 2009 filed in Iran Iran · Tiananmen Square Edit This
*

Were you all watching it!? I know I was! Just look at those demonstrators out there! They’re fed up! They’re fed up of the censorship, the control of their lives, the dictatorship. They’re fed up, and they’re demonstrating for change. Surely democracy is just around the corner in China!

Remember that? Remember how euphoric the world got over the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square? Everyone was convinced back then, too, that democracy was just around the corner in China. Unfortunately, brutal reality was about to rear its ugly head. Out went the cameras. In came the military. Gone into thin air were the protests. Democratic reform? Off the table. The communist party clamped down, hung on, and would some day be headed by a man who shut down opposition newspapers in Shanghai to keep demonstrations from spreading. Political prisoners are, well, still prisoners. Uighurs and Tibetans are still oppressed. Media is still censored. China is, well, still the China that it was in 1990, just with more economic opportunity.

So, before we wax poetic about the demonstrations in Iran, let’s put this all in perspective. The mullahs still control the military. In a day these pro-Mousavi demonstrations can be shut down in bloody fashion, and Iran can become another example of unjustified western euphoria over a movement of young people. Iran too can see the bold but powerless crushed like a buzzing fly, and proceed on to another unchallenged two decades of despotism.  

[Pumona]

Rainbowfied Mouse

I think the fact that they counted handwritten ballots without machines in three hours, I'm 100% confident that it was rigged. I'm happy the protests against their evil leader are being done!

I agree there is no way that the election was not rigged. I can not believe that you would get that high of a percentage voting for one person. That's one reason it is better here. Oh wait it happens here in smaller ways.  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

@LB - Yeah. 'Tis true. I just hope that there is going to be hope in Iran. It's so unfair and unjust in my opinion. I hate it... people being oppressed and in a pseudo-democracy is just plain... horrid!

@Pumona - Yeah, it's just so illogical. I do hope their protests have an effect despite China's history!  

[The Hallowed Mouse]

@Rainbow - At this point it'd be nice to have a large army just march into Iran and reinstall the government as they did in Iraq.  

[Rainbowfied Mouse]

@Hallow - I really don't think a large army invading Iran would do much help unless the protesters asked for reinforcements.  

[TammiGirl]

Quote:

We all love to comfort ourselves with the notion that somehow, deep down, our enemies really are just good people who don’t want a fight with us.

Not to pierce your little neocon paranoia spoogefest here, but your precious Saudis didn't have spontaneous prayer vigils on 9/11, we did. This election was rigged and the people wanted a much less confrontational approach to the west. Not that folks like you, Jon, give them much incentive for that.