Iran And The Ghost Of Democracy

It has been a year since the government officials counting the vote in Iran reelected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term as the country's president. This exercise in creative accounting not only proved famed political philosopher Joseph Stalin correct when he pontificated that the people casting ballots elected no one, that was done by the folks counting ballots, but also initiated a period of protest and repression which was longer than expected but not bloodier.

Amnesty International has released a comprehensive report on the repression portion of the protest-repression dyad. It makes for searing reading. It also constitutes a severe indictment of the Iranian regime and its bully boys. In addition, in the Amnesty International methodical documentation of the human consequences of the Iranian exercise in regime maintenance exists a charge of moral cowardice directed against the US and other Western governments.

The Obama administration generally and the president specifically have maintained a discrete distance from the dance of protest and suppression. This detached approach has been justified on a number of grounds. A firm stance in support of the pro-democracy factions would be counterproductive in that it would bolster the regime's claims that the opponents of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs were foreign puppets. Any measures taken against the Iranian regime would hurt the people we intended to assist. The US had to stay on message, had to focus on stopping the Iranian nuclear program regardless of any other consideration no matter how worthy.

All of these reasons (leaving aside any consideration of the lack of internal consistency) are superficially plausible. All make sense of a sort.

But the real deal exists on a more fundamental level. Any effective support of the pro-democracy elements of Iranian society (which, it must be noted includes members of the clerical ruling class) would automatically violate the imperatives of cultural relativism. This is not an inconsiderable fact given that Mr Obama and many of his "team" are strong adherents of the notion that no one cultural, social, political, or economic system is preferable to another. The president and others of his inner circle really believe that all political, social, economic, and cultural systems are ethically equivalent, and any value judgement which holds one to be "better" than another is the product of insensitivity, chauvinism, or xenophobia.

To take on the mullahs and their frontmen would demand that the US, as a matter of policy, declare that secular, pluralistic democracy is ethically superior to clerical rule, subverted elections, and the wholesale violation of human rights by the government of Iran. Any open, effective support for the dissidents in Iran would require that the US, as a matter of policy, hold that states and institutions produced by the European Enlightenment are inherently superior, hold a moral high ground in comparison to states and institutions produced by the Prophet and his successors.

That sort of thing has been, is, and will remain a definite no-no to people such as Mr Obama for whom cultural relativism is a species of revealed Truth. The only correct course of action open to a person who is a True Believer in the dictates of cultural relativism is expressing a sort of vague distaste for the violence associated with repression surrounded by a preternatural detachment which refuses all value judgments as unacceptable "privileging" of a specific outside political position.

So people die in Iran. So people scream in the torture cellars of Evan prison. So, even the graves of those murdered by the Thugs of the Koran are desecrated. Memories besmirched. Lives destroyed. Bodies mutilated.

Through it all the US, the current administration turns the other way, eyes carefully averted as if we were some thwacking great maiden aunt suddenly confronting a vulgar drunk on the steps of the church. Averting our collective vision not for any real world concern, any realpolitik goal, but simply due to the dictates of an intellectual fad of the moment.

A similar dynamic from the same root is at work in the refusal of Team Obama to name properly the enemy we confront daily not only in distant places but here at home. It is cultural relativism which denies us the right to name the threat which confronts us, the gangsters who menace us.

To call the enemy political Islam is to explicitly exalt other monotheistic religions over Islam. To call the people who try to kill us in Afghanistan or in Times Square, Muslims, is to contravene the requirements of cultural relativism as to do so holds Muslims as occupying an ethical niche inferior to those people who do not follow the strictures of Islam.

There is only one cause for the spineless American posture regarding the Iranian election. It is the same cause as underlies the gutless and brainless refusal to call the threat facing us and the rest of the West by its real name.

The cause is not, as is often alleged, "political correctness." That is simply one more convenient excuse for avoiding the truth.

The truth is simply that at the head of this nation there is a president afflicted by a very dangerous, even fatal mental virus. Other Americans of high rank or office have the same affliction. So do many in the elites of the media and academia. The president and all the others who think as he does have caught the same mind destroying disease.

The name of the disease is cultural relativism.

Unless and until the US government can get out from under the dead hand of cultural relativism the US will continue to fail to protect not only its own core interests but also the ambitions and goals of others who would be as we are--citizens of a republic who are still more free than not. In turn this means the US has surrendered its ancient and quite honorable calling to be the "city on a hill," a shining beacon of hope for all humankind.

Spinning Across The Line

The Iranians have made the decision to, "damn the West! Full speed ahead!" in their quest for the Really Big Mahdi Bomb.

As has been standard operating procedure with the mullahs and their men, the latest push has been covered in realms of rhetoric ranging from the dire need of "our patients" for radioisotopes from the aging US manufactured reactor to ever-so-sincere declarations that there is no incompatibility between enriching to twenty percent and the continuation of diplomatic conversations or negotiations or whatever.

Fer sure, dudes. Like you can't buy the isotopes elsewhere? Like the only place they are made is in your creaky old reactor? Get real!

And, there is no contradiction? Just what sort of hicks from the sticks do you blokes think we in the West are? You really believe that countries with the technological base and diplomatic experience the US/EU states possess don't see the fundamental contradiction?

There are several salient matters to be considered here.

The first is the Iranians do not have the capacity to actually fabricate the fuel rods for the reactor. The French do. Even the Argentinians can do the job. Not the Iranians.

Secondly, the hardest part of enriching to the ninety percent level necessary for a nuclear bomb comes at the beginning of the process. After hitting twenty percent it is, in a real way, all down hill. As few as 500 centrifuges of the type used by the Iranians could give the necessary highly enriched uranium in a matter of a couple or three months given twenty percent feedstock.

Outside of Iran is the looming reality that China will not support any new sanction regime. While the Russians are now making ugly noises over the Iranian lack of "sincerity," Vladimir Putin still gets much domestic mileage from opposing the US. The continued invocation of the US missile defense system as a roadblock to a new nuclear weapons reduction treaty is indication of this. The implication is that while China might not openly block a move at the Security Council backed by Russia, there is no certainty that Russia is in agreement with any new pressure plan.

Then, of course, it is more than a bit uncertain that any sanctions whatsoever, no matter how resolutely and completely enforced would have a positive outcome from the US/EU perspective. The Iranian government and military have shown themselves both resilient and dedicated to say nothing of creative in dealing with the past sanction regime(s).

Inside Iran the forces of government and opposition are focusing on the upcoming 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. It is possible that the "smashing blow" mentioned by the Supreme Leader will be directed against the opposition (Note: Pressure consolidates long before it fractures, particularly if the pressure is violently applied.) If so, that would be to the longer term advantage of the West.

But, before anyone gets too breathless with excited anticipation, it should be noted that the conditions inside Iran today do not run in parallel with the situation back in 1979. The opposition leadership is part of the Revolutionary generation, for example. Another consideration is that the working class has not joined the opposition. Thirty-one years ago it was the mass strikes rather than the street protests and bloodshed that cracked the regime wide open. (Admittedly it was the violence which caused President Carter to lose his tenuous grip on realpolitik regarding Iran.)

The Obama administration hopes for a new round of Security Council sponsored sanctions "within a few weeks." That is nice. However, it may be scarcely relevant.

If the Iranians can go ahead enriching to twenty percent without any meaningful as opposed to rhetorical consequences, the cone of options available to the US and the West will become severely limited. There will be essentially two left open: accept and accommodate a nuclear capable Iran or go to war.

It will be rather like July 1914 with one difference, one very critical difference to be sure. This time around one side most assuredly does not want to resort to war.

One can only hope that the mullahs of today and tomorrow and the days after are not in a great hurry to usher in the return of the Mahdi by pushing the new, Big Button in Tehran. Given the very strong eschatological (end of days or time beyond secular time or end days) thinking so rampant in Shia theological circles, it would not be prudent to bet the ranch on restraint being the primary Iranian governmental virtue.

Oh, well, as the ancient Chinese toast/curse has it, "May you live in interesting times."

We sure will be.