Implementing Democracy 1.01 in Iran

[Hippikos]

It seems that many Iranian opposition activists are currently spurning invitations from the White House.

Leading Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji is sitting on something many people would only dream of: a personal invitation to the White House today to meet with top U.S. officials overseeing the United States policy toward Iran, including the National Security Council’s Elliot Abrams and State Department’s Iran nuclear negotiator Nicholas Burns. It's even been dangled before him that President Bush may drop by the afternoon meeting of Iranian opposition activists. But Iran's most famous former political prisoner, who arrived in Washington earlier this week for a month long U.S. tour after six years in Iranian prison says, while tempted, he's not going to accept the invitation. And he’s not the only Iranian pro-democracy activist choosing not to go: among the others are former Iranian Revolutionary Guard founder-turned-dissident Mohsen Sazegara; student leaders Akbar Atri and Ali Afshary; Iranian American human rights activist Ramin Ahmadi; and Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah. Their demurrals hint at the complexity of the relationship between those Iranians seeking democracy and regime change and the American administration that says it has the same goals there.

“Democracy is not machinery that can be exported,” Ganji told me, through a translator, at a ceremony Monday night where he was the recipient of a press freedom award. “Democracy needs social infrastructure. Another precondition of democracy is to live in urban areas. Another precondition is a division between the public and private sectors. Another precondition is the separation of government from civic society, and the separation of religion and state. Another is tolerance.”

“Can you make a society that is urban, tolerant, democratic with $75 million?” Ganji asked, referring to the money the Bush administration has sought this year from Congress to promote dissident forces in Iran. “You could not even do that with $75 billion,” he concluded.

Neocons United: Please Take Note of what Mr.Ganji said...

[9th Engineer]

Good stuff, it's not our job to install democracy and it's certainly not a good use of our money. Put the $75 million into bringing our lagging technology sector up to standards.

[DanaC]

Unusually enough I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with 9th.

[MsSparkie]

More likely the $75Million would fund terrorists who sieze it.

[tw]

Ironic part is that Iran does have a democracy. A democracy where religious cleric could still veto some decisions. A democracy that reformers (clearly the majority of Iranians) were working to improve. What put the final nail into that reform movement coffin? Goerge Jr's Axis of Evil speech. After than, even the Iranian president Rafsanjani who was elected by a massive majority of reform minded Iranian, even he had to go along with the clerics extremist position. Polls on Iranian street demonstrated that after George Jr essentially announced the list of countries American intended to attack, then the majority (reformers) suddenly joined ranks with extremists. America had announced intentions to attack Iran.

[JayMcGee]

Rubish.

It can't b a democratic state 'cos it's not a capitalistic state

[Urbane Guerrilla]

To succeed as America has, you need political freedom -- making sacred the things listed in the First Amendment, and the Second to keep the First in fullest force -- capital, and secure property rights. Property/money must not be subjected to arbitrary confiscation or property will not be improved and money will not be invested, but instead hoarded and concealed. A social climate highly conducive to investment makes the wealth of a nation. So I'm with JayMcGee.

Tw would like to spin it that we're just going to invade Iran at our earliest convenience out of sheer imperialism, in accordance with Communist scripture, it may be supposed. While this is not so, to the objective observer at any rate, just how long and why are we supposed to put up with presently irreplaceable (and even if somehow replaced, still immensely valuable in any term, short or long) resources by unfriendlies?

Iran's democracy is unconvincing, and will remain so as long as it can be shortcircuited by its oligarchy. Checks and balances are not in their proper order here.

[Aliantha]

How should success be defined? What makes the US more successful than Japan for instance? Economically speaking I'd say Japan may have the upper hand. Ummm...military? China clearly has more soldiers. Nuclear weapons? No one knows who has them anymore do they? Cultural success? I'd say there's many 'nations' who work together in unity at least as well as the US if not better.

What do you think makes the US so superior?

You can accuse me of US bashing or whatever you like, but from the outside looking in, there's a country in severe crisis due to a huge number of actions and reactions by the government, not only of today but of the past.

I just don't understand what makes the people of the US so proud of what has been done by the government/people. I'd really like to get some idea of why there is this psyche in most of the american's I've ever met in real life, or interacted with online that the rest of the world looks up to you so much.

Being an American doesn't make you superior to anyone in any way, and yet that is the impression given constantly.

I'd just like to know why that is.

Please explain.

[DanaC]

Out of interest, I'd also quite like to know why UG keeps categorising tw as a 'communist'? Is it because he disagrees with current governmental policy and ideology?

America has many people who agree with Bush and many people who disagree with Bush. Are the people who disagree with Bush all communists then? Are they all anti-democracy? Isn't that something of a contradiction in terms?

[Hippikos]

Communism has long been gone practically everywhere in the world except for NKorea.

I believe only in the US people use it to describe the Boogey Man. "Daddy, could you look under the bed whether there´s no Communist?"

Democracy has many faces, doesn´t have to be an american. It all started in The Old World anyways.

[9th Engineer]

Japan currently has the upper hand in some respects. They don't have the same anti-trust laws that keep us from copying their keiretsu system and their social system is geared toward success in a professional capacity above all else. We still have an edge in some respects but, unless we get our act together and kick our habit of rationizing personal failure, we're toast.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Out of interest, I'd also quite like to know why UG keeps categorising tw as a 'communist'? Is it because he disagrees with current governmental policy and ideology?

I don't think current has anything to do with it. His views on Vietnam coincide precisely with what was put out during the Vietnam era from Moscow and Peking (we didn't start writing it Beijing until well after the Vietnam war) in the Sixties, when the communists did a hell of a job of marketing their slavemaking to an audience of American dupes -- war of national liberation, my bilobate ass. Liberations don't drive a quarter million people out to sea on rafts, or from the North into the South when Indochina was partitioned. Compare what tw writes to what the Soviets used to put out -- my, he's faithful to the Sovs: invokes the same boogeymen, picks on Israel, et cetera. I don't know where he's ever disagreed with a view the Soviets held. This is what tells me the guy's a commie, and he doesn't deny it, either -- the nearest he came to any rebuttal was a limp citing of The Pentagon Papers once. Precisely once.

America has many people who agree with Bush and many people who disagree with Bush. Are the people who disagree with Bush all communists then? Are they all anti-democracy? Isn't that something of a contradiction in terms?

Not all of these would be communists, no -- tw is unusual only in his persistent riding of the wave of the past. However, they conspicuously lack an understanding of the best idea to come out of the neocon philosophy -- it isn't really a movement so much as an area of likemindedness -- that a democratic republic is going to prosper best in a world full of other democratic republics rather than various brands of dictatorships, autarchies, and class-ridden or caste-ridden societies. The ew, it's neocons set are terribly weak on democracy, being not committed enough to it to see it prevail. These are feeble successors to "The Greatest Generation." Whatever their manifold faults (which I stipulate, and move on), those people knew what to do about totalitarianism, though it took totalitarianism plus imperialism to put them into action removing them. The ews seek any excuse at all not to win, which I think very shortsighted of them. They need to remember what McArthur said about substitutes for victory. Allow me to add that the usual substitute for victory is to fight a larger, more ruinous war later on. I haven't seen much war myself -- just an expedition or two, with medals to show for it -- but this strikes me as a bad thing.

The reason I am committed to libertarian democracy is that I've been in contention directly against collectivist totalitarianism before, and in that time got around the world and had a look at some un-democracies. I concluded that they suck.

There are non-communists on this board who fight with me all the time. Understanding this, I don't call them a pack of commies, but instead, about everything else in The Devil's Dictionary. Usually I harp on their want of wisdom. No, tw is about the only communist I can say I know personally. Most of the rest of the people who find me hard to take seem left of center, but are not as toys-in-the-attic out-there as tw. I do not, however, trust these to be any good at keeping the Republic.

P.S.: Hippikos, consult the "Made Up Words" thread for a telling remark or two anent "anyways."

[DanaC]

that a democratic republic is going to prosper best in a world full of other democratic republics rather than various brands of dictatorships, autarchies, and class-ridden or caste-ridden societies..................................The reason I am committed to libertarian democracy is that I've been in contention directly against collectivist totalitarianism before, and in that time got around the world and had a look at some un-democracies. I concluded that they suck.
.

Mine is a 'class ridden' society. Do you think America should attempt to impose a Libertarian democracy on Britain? Also, did you ask the people living in those 'un-democracies' if they thought their way of doing things sucked? You do realise I hope, that there are a lot of people in the world who look at the way your country is run and have to suppress a shiver of disgust, before shaking it off and thanking all that's holy that they were born somewhere else? What makes you right and them wrong? By what right do you and your ilk decide what is right for the world? By what right to you seek to impose your vision onto the world? And finally, what you have described as the neo-cons' best idea, is a form of globalism which they seek because it is best for America. It is self-interest. How is American self-interest 'right' for the world? Or is it just right for America?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

It's right for everybody on the planet to succeed and live well, Dana.

Most places, they don't. I call this a shame.

[DanaC]

Okay. So, if we all do things the American way, everybody on the planet will succeed and live well?
Could you define success in this context please. And, if everybody deserves to succeed and live well, why does America have 12.7% of its population living in poverty? (the highest in the developed world)