Clearly we're in the realm of myth, and foundational myth at that. It matters very little what westerners think about Moussavi's description of Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution. By locating the opposition within the promises of the Revolution, Moussavi claims a clear source of legitimacy, the same that the regime claims, and seeks to denies that legitimacy to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
Considering what the revolution of 1979 really represents, Ackerman needs to go back to school.
Contrast this "foundational myth" gobbledygook with Reuel Marc Gerecht, "The Koran and the Ballot Box":
Read the whole thing.WHATEVER happens in Iran in the aftermath of this month’s fraudulent elections, one thing is clear: we are witnessing not just a fascinating power struggle among men who’ve known each other intimately for 30 years, but the unraveling of the religious idea that has shaped the growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism since the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928.
The Islamic revolution in Iran encompassed two incompatible ideas: that God’s law — as interpreted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — would rule, and that the people of Iran had the right to elect representatives who would advance and protect their interests. When Khomeini was alive and Iran was at war with Iraq, the tension between theocracy and democracy never became acute.
Upon his death in 1989, however, the revolution’s democratic promise started to gain ground. With the presidential campaign of Mohammad Khatami in 1997, it exploded and briefly paralyzed Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the theocratic elite. God’s will and the people’s wants were no longer compatible.
To the dismay of Ayatollah Khamenei, who remains supreme leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the candidate whom President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “defeated” in the rigged elections, has become the new Khatami — except he is far more powerful. While Mr. Moussavi lacks Mr. Khatami’s reformist credentials, he is a far steelier politician. And the frustrations of President Khatami’s failed tenure have grown exponentially among a new generation that is less respectful of mullahs and revolutionary ideology.
Yet in the current demonstrations we are witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule. Islam’s categorical imperative for both traditional and fundamentalist Muslims —“commanding right and forbidding wrong” — is being transformed.This imperative appears repeatedly in the Koran. Historically, it has been understood as a check on the corrupting, restive and libidinous side of the human soul. For modern Islamic militants, it is a war cry as well — a justification of the morals police in Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the young men who harass “improperly” attired Muslim women from Cairo to Copenhagen. It is the primary theological reason that Ayatollah Khamenei will try to stop a democratic triumph in his country, since real democracy would allow men, not God and his faithful guardians, the mullahs, to determine right and wrong.
In contrast to Gerecht, Ackerman believes in the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution, BECAUSE IT OVERTURNED A U.S-BACKED REGIME.
But Ackerman, blinded by hatred, is wrong once again. As George Packer noted earlier, Ackerman is so intent on seeing the United States as the source of all evil in Iran, he can't see the bullets, truncheons, and rifle butts that are the real and immediate threats to the people on the streets. He suffers, frankly, from the same anti-Americanism and BDS that we've already seen in Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias - which is not surprising. Events in Iran have triggered some nasty partisan recriminations at home. And the debate is even more intense since it's likely we're looking at the Obama adminstration's first really substantive foreign policy failure.
If revolution fails now in Iran it won't because of events of long ago, from 1953. The realist "caution" of this administration will leave the president's hands soaked in the blood of this interrupted Green Revolution. Spencer Ackerman will be splattered along with him.
6 comments:
Donald, shallow ideologues like Ackerman and the specious pseudo-"journalist" Joe Klein are blinded, as you say, by BDS & also by general hatred and ignorance of American foreign policy in the region.
Reuel Gerecht correctly points out that the "foundation myth" that Ackerman prates about has been totally discredited by the corruption and misrule fostered by the clerical elite. Gerecht mentioned in passing that the hamstringing of Presidents Khatami & Rafsanjani, both cautious democratic reformists stymied by clerical ballot-stuffing and electoral sleight-of-hand re the selection of candidates for Parliament, have led the Moussavi backers to believe that no clerical type can effect the changes to a democracy.
Moussavi has been an opponent of The Supreme Leader Khamenei for three decades and is feared by the ancient fossils still clinging to power among the Ayatollissimos atop the "Islamic Republic."
The current regime only clings to power through the Brownshirt/Gestapo [or NKVD/KGB] that the Basiji represent---brutal thugs whose religious zealotry makes a mockery of any pretense at honest governance.
Iran's economy has been run into the ground by decades of corruption and mismanagement by "religious foundations" and other clerical racketeering. The mullahcracy in Tehran makes the Chicago Machine that coughed up Obama look like a bunch of politicians ruled by sweet reason alone. The grievances of the Azeris and other ethnic non-Persians are also manifold and the stolen election in Tabriz might spark a rebellion by Azeris [of whom Moussavi himself is a member] for some kind of Federal independence.
Obama is simply unable to stand up for the values that America has stood for for two centuries, since it would contradict his apology tours he's been making abroad to soothe the hatred of America fostered by the MSM in the USA, among its miscreants Ackerman, Klein, and of course, Excitable Andy Sullivan.
It is clear that all of Sullivan's agitprop is driven by one goal ... moving society towards the codification of his homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle, to the point that the critics of that lifestyle are stifled by the force of law ...
... By. Any. Means. Necessary, including using anything available to try and discredit his perceived opponents.
He's just another self-worshiper, who can't see the logs in his own eyes even as he tries to pick up other sticks to beat his opponents down and make his faith the EXCLUSIVE worldview.
So now, who's acting like a theocrat?
Obama=Jimmy Carter, but even more inept.
This isn't a rebuttal of Donald's argument-by-proxy (Gerecht vs. Ackerman).
This is just an observation of how quickly Donald goes from noting that "Events in Iran have triggered some nasty partisan recriminations at home" to making his own partisan recriminations:
"The realist "caution" of this administration will leave the president's hands soaked in the blood of this interrupted Green Revolution. Spencer Ackerman will be splattered along with him."
Soaked in blood? It's a good image, but I don't know if I can take it seriously from a guy who probably voted for the guy who sang "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. (Because, you know, bombs don't make a lot of blood, right?)
It's classic political chutzpah: note the nasty partisan recriminations, then engage in them (claiming all the while, probably, to be objective and above it all).
(Also, Gerecht was Sullivan's "Must Read" of the morning, so you guys have that in common.)
BenJB: You've just about used up your welcome here. When you think I'm wrong you ask for more evidence or link to Hilzoy of something. When you can't respond after I hammer you and your allies mercilessly, you turn around and attack me personally as a hypocrite.
Go somewhere else. This is not the place for you, and I don't need the aggravation.
Donald,
Thanks for the reply.
I think you do need the aggravation--just like I think I need the aggravation of reading you in the first place: reading what someone on the other side thinks is important for a functioning democracy (I think)--because at the end of the day, my vote is as good as yours, and the only way to win is to build some majority.
I may wish more people agreed with me, but I can't go around pretending that they do--and that's especially true after reading your posts, with which I often disagree.
So, to me, having someone who you disagree with is an asset.
But now, for my recent post: I don't think you're a hypocrite, Donald, I just don't think you've got a moral high-ground here. For one thing, as I noted in another recent post, you still haven't explained what you would like to see Obama do in this situation and you haven't argued for why those actions would lead to a better outcome.
I'm not calling you a hypocrite because you think Obama is wrong--I'm just asking you for your argument.
You say that Obama's hands will be soaked in blood if the movement fails in Iran--how can he avoid that outcome?
(Coda: while I think reading someone who disagrees with you is helpful, I can go elsewhere for conservative views; I'm not saying that I'll never comment here again, but if you don't need the aggravation, I can cut back.)
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