Pollyanna takes it in the shorts — again
No surprises whatever in Iran, although you’d never know it from the gobsmacked stupefaction of Not So Smart Power “experts”:
Barack Obama found it “exciting” and Hillary Clinton saw it as “a positive sign”. Others, like Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser, went further and praised it as a “vibrant democracy”. A variety of useful idiots at home and abroad expressed similar illusions about the Iranian presidential election on Friday.
Yeah, well, so much for that, eh? Omri rounds up useful-idiot (not to say devious-enabler) reax:
Back in reality, Moussavi wasn’t going to offer any real change on issues like nukes or Hezbollah and Hamas. But don’t let that distract you from how the “promising contender” and “Khamenei is wobbling” nonsense were also cut out of whole cloth.
As of this morning the Iranian political hierarchy has forcefully decreed that it’s game over for Moussavi. So let’s check in with the authoritative and oft-cited panel of experts who predicted the exact opposite:
*Karim Sadjadpour, who was feeding journalists expert opinion about Ahmadinejad/Khamenei tensions:
“I don’t think anyone anticipated this level of fraudulence,” Reuters cited the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Karim Sadjadpour. “This was a selection, not an election. At least authoritarian regimes like Syria and Egypt have no democratic pretences. In retrospect it appears this entire campaign was a show: (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah (Ali) Khamenei wasn’t ever going to let Ahmadinejad lose.”
Perhaps in retrospect it might appear that way, yes.
Plenty more over there, with lots of links as always at MR, which I am far too lazy to insert here. Do click on over and read the rest of it; I’ll throw in his spot-on conclusion as an additional enticement:
Genuine change may eventually come to Iran, either through slow institutional evolution or mass popular uprising. But when and if it does, these tools are certainly going to be among the last to know. Which begs the question of (why) they keep getting quoted, let alone why they’re allowed to influence policy.
An excellent question indeed, albeit one whose answer is pretty friggin’ obvious. And anyone who thinks all this is going to lead to anything more than another brutal crackdown is kidding themselves. Oh, and — Iranian “moderates?” Except by comparison with the zealots and lunatics in whose mailed-fist clutches Iran was, is, and will remain, ain’t no such thing.
Sorry to bust your little bubble there, Polly.
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