Inkless Wells

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Looking at Iran

by Paul Wells on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 6:14pm - 11 Comments

George Packer wonders why right-wing observers seem to welcome the corrupt Ahmadinejad re-election, and leftish observers demand that Westerners accept it. He concludes:

It’s remarkable how difficult it’s been for writers of many different ideological persuasions to say that scenes like this… are shameful. The reason, of course, has everything to do with the wars of the Bush years, at home and abroad, which have left so many thoughtful people incapable of holding onto the most basic thought. But it’s a mistake to let your attitude toward historic events be shaped and deformed by the desire not to sound like a neo-con, or to sound like a neo-con reborn. Trust the evidence of your eyes.

Tags: George Packer, iran

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http://intensedebate.com/people/SisyphusThis SisyphusThis

The full range …. well,probably not full ….

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/w…
Mulletaur

I don't know if they welcome or accept "the corrupt Ahmadinejad re-election", more like they doubt that the protests will change anything. Depressing, I know.

Mulletaur

Robert Fisk begs to differ, however :

"This was phenomenal. The armed special forces of the Islamic Republic, hitherto always allies of the Basiji, were prepared for once, it seemed, to protect all Iranians, not just Ahmadinejad's henchmen. The precedent for this sudden neutrality is known to everyone – it was when the Shah's army refused to fire on the millions of demonstrators demanding his overthrow in 1979."

Orson Bean

BTW did you check out the comments section at the end of Fisk's article? Talk about depressing. Some nutbar is convinced that Mousavi is a Jewish Mossad agent yada yada yada, another goes on about how Mousavi is just another Yankee tool and invokes the memory of Mossadegh and 1953 (so I guess that means that you have to support Ahmadinejad in order to maintain your trendy Chomskyesque Anti-American cred) . . .

Which sorta illustrates the point that George Packer makes.

BTW has anyone else here noticed that the "comments" sections of various UK newspapers and other media sites are often littered with unbelievably toxic, paranoid anti-Semitic posts?

Mulletaur

"BTW did you check out the comments section at the end of Fisk's article?"

In a mainly losing effort to try and retain the little faith I have left in the human race, I studiously avoid looking at the comments sections of all daily newspapers including those here in Canada. Fisk attracts an unnatural number of nutters – they don't call it fisking for nothing.

Orson Bean

I thought that George Packer absolutely nailed it with this quote:

" It’s become weirdly difficult for commentators on both the right and the left to have anything close to a normal reaction to what the world is seeing. Instead, everything gets filtered through what you think about Bush, Iraq, Obama, Israel, and other subjects that have extremely tenuous connections to internal politics in Iran and the actions of the people and the state there."

So true. It's like what Vietnam did to American foreign policy discourse a generation ago — warped it, so that everything was seen through that lens. And Iranian politics and demographics are so different from Iraq's. One of the subtleties that's lost in a lot of the discourse is the fact that a lot of the Iranians protesting dearly want reform, but are very much still committed to the concept of the "Islamic Republic". And that's something a lot of Westerners have trouble with conceptually.
–dB

It is bizarre to see Packer seemlingly endorse Obama's measured response, and then ignore the vast majority of actual commentary from what could fairly be called "leftish" sources which calls on Obama to continue what he's doing. Spencer Ackerman's commentary, to which Packer refers, suggests that "the dissenters want the Obama administration to refuse to recognize Ahmadinejad’s claims of victory; to express concern for the safety of the protesters; and then to get out of the way." Ackerman arrives at this conclusion by talking to credible Iranian-American sources. Packer's response seems to be less evidence-based and more sentimental than Ackerman's original claim, and yet it is Ackerman who gets critiqued along with Daniel Pipes?

I would say the same for Stephen Walt, who is a realist well before he is an idealogue. Walt notes the compelling evidence that the election was rigged, and then points to the recent evidence that indicates covert action will do more harm than good. Packer's declaration that what we are seeing is "a far greater peril" is probably true, but on what grounds can he state with certainty that historical evidence should be ignored because of said peril?

I don't think any reasonable (i.e. not published by Politico) progressive commentator is concerned with not sounding like a neo-con. Their bona fides on that front are pretty well shored up. If Iraq proved anything, in the media as in American electoral politics, it proved that being accurate is a better long game than pleasing the villagers. What I read from Packer is an attempt to make an argument about outcomes into an argument about ideology. He's comfortable having that discussion, I am sure. But it doesn't pass muster.

parched husk

Well said.

"Trust the evidence of your eyes". FTW, Packer? We don't know what the heck is going on, and to pretend that we do, or worse, to jump to conclusions based on incomplete, selectively interpreted, and potentially biased information, is as you say, a much worse option.

Hard as it may be for Packer to believe, this is in NO way about us. What we do is maybe not completely irrelevant but it's marginal at best. The only honest position to wait and see.

http://intensedebate.com/people/SisyphusThis SisyphusThis

We are all Georgians now.
Canuckistanian

love how the right is so concerned about the protesters when they were all singing: "bomb bomb bomb; bomb bomb Iran" a few months ago.
erasma

Charles Brown of the Undiplomatic blog cites McCain on what to do about Iran: "Well, we lead; we condemn the sham, corrupt election. We do what we have done throughout the Cold War and afterwards, we speak up for the people of Tehran and Iran and all the cities all over that country who have been deprived of one of their fundamental rights. We speak out forcefully, and we make sure that the world knows that America leads." Brown's comment: "It's almost as if McCain doesn't know its history . . . Take a moment to think about how the current government in Iran is going to react to this: McCain, whether he realizes it or not, is reminding them of just what the United States did for to Iran during the Cold War: support a coup against a democratically elected government in 1953 and from that point until his overthrow in 1979, support the Shah (whose secret police, to use McCain’s own words, systematically “deprived” Iranians of their “fundamental rights” including, I would note, the right to choose their government)." After the Shah, after Iraq, after Guantanamo, after hanging chads in Florida, the U.S. has no moral authority left to criticize others about democracy and fundamental rights.