Posted February 8, 2002

Hitler

[Regarding Paul Clark's guest column of February 2, "Demonizing America's Enemies":]

While I agree with Mr. Clark's basic thesis regarding Iran, I am not sure he is right about Hitler having been elected. I thought he had failed to get a sufficient vote (was it around 30%?). He was then appointed by president Hindenburg at the behest of powerful rightist groups of industrialists who were apprehensive about the fast-rising strength of the Communist party in Germany (which would have disowned them). The industrialists thought Hitler was the only guy who could take on the Communists. They expected to be able to oust Hitler from government after he had defeated the Communists. After Hitler came to power, he staged another election, one that was controlled by his hooligan stormtroopers. Of course, he easily won that one.

~ Hans M.

Iran

[Regarding Paul Clark's guest column of February 2, "Demonizing America's Enemies":]

Khatami may have gotten 70% of the votes but because only him and 3 other mullahs were allowed to run. And he was the least evil. So please don't try to sell the Iranian regime as democrat. This is a regime that tortures, executes, stones women to death.

~ Ramin F., Spain

I think Mr. Clark was being disingenuous regarding President Bush's statements on Iran being ruled by a "few." As Mr. Clark undoubtedly knows, Iran is not ruled by its elected officials but by the continuing oversight of Khomeini and the Islamic Council. Undoubtedly, positive changes have been made in Iran with regards to more pluralistic representation in government. The popular election of Mr. Khatami is a positive step, but the ultimate power is still in the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Council to veto and override both legislation and election results. This has been proven in a number of actions lately. Mr. Clark must have known that it is this oversight and control residing in the hands of a small religious council of Islamic conservatives that Mr. Bush refers to. Whatever relations and agreements we have with the more liberal and reasonable Iranian officials must be suspect due to the ultimate power of the Islamic Council to negate and overturn any agreements. The religious conservatives may have taken a more "behind the scenes" stance in governing Iran, but we should not forget where the real power resides. Mr. Khatami and other elected figures serve only at the pleasure of the theocrats and Mullahs.

~Dan M.

Your writer Mr. Paul Clark makes a major mistake when he characterizes Khatami's faction of the regime as the choice of the people. My wife is Iranian, and has voted in the elections Clark speaks of. If the author went the step of actually asking anyone who voted about the nature of the political process in Iran, he would see clearly that it is a sham democracy. My wife voted for Khatami along with the others, not because she wants a seyyed mullah in office, but because the other alternatives were much worse. She and 80% of Iranians, voted for the least of several evils. As you may or may not know, there is a body of mullahs in Iran's government, called the council of experts. They decide who can run for elections and who cannot. By the time the voters get to the polls, the vast majority of candidates are disqualified. The only reason Khatami looks like a moderate, is because the people he has run against have been some of the worst imaginable humans possible.

~ Ivar K.

Paul Clark replies:

Several people have expressed criticisms of my discussion of the aptness of (as well as the motives for) Bush characterizing Iran as being dominated by an "unelected few who repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom," I will attempt to respond briefly to several of these. As a general statement I should say, that while I was perhaps one of the first to criticize Bush's comments about Iran, many people, left and right, have criticized Bush's sudden demonization of Iran when things seemed to have been improving markedly in recent months and years.

I thought it was obvious that I am not defending the Iranian regime (I would certainly not want to live there), but question whether Bush's approach to Iran is productive or counterproductive. For example, Alex Bromley accuses me of defending the regime, the intention was no such thing (I believe I indirectly compared it to Hitler, hardly much praise -- although in fairness it is nothing close to the Nazi regime.)

As to some specifics, Parham Eshraghian for example, says that "Bush's reference was to the clerical regime and not the so-called 'democratically elected' (yet powerless) President Khatami. Bush is right on in putting that evil regime on notice that it's citizens are tired of backward policies amounting to a jackboot pressing down on their collective necks."

Many people have responded that obviously Bush's comment about unelected few doesn't apply to the elected part by definition. But how many of the tens of millions of people who watched the speech know that Iran has an elected President? Very few, I'll guess. Wasn't his comment misleading, in suggesting that Iran was no different from say North Korea, which really is a pretty unitary despotism? Wouldn't it have been more honest to take 10 more seconds to acknowledge something like, "While Iran has made strides in recent years towards moderation and democracy . . ."? Or was Bush deliberating painting in black and white with very broad strokes in simply declaring Iran part of an "axis of evil"? This is the whole point, that he was demonizing Iran by actually making it appear to be something more, or less, than it really is.

A lot of Bush supporters have pushed this "he was talking about the mullahs" line, but first of all it is not my understanding that the President of Iran is powerless by any means, and that the days of Ayatollah Khomeini when he ruled almost as a dictator are long past. As in any society there are many different "powers" and it is impossible to ever precisely define the limits various groups have. The President and Parliament play an important role in ruling Iran. So does the Spiritual Leader, who is also indirectly "elected" to be head of the Iranian "Church" and state. The Spiritual Leader is elected by the Assembly of Experts which is elected by the people (with some restrictions on who can run). I don't think it is really accurate to call the Spiritual Leader "unelected." (The US president for example is not "directly" elected either, as we know -- Bush did not receive a majority of the popular vote, but of the Electoral Votes -- neither is Tony Blair or any other European Prime Minster "directly elected"; they are selected by the majority party in parliament.)

It is true that the Expediency Council does much of the day to day ruling and often seems to actually make law, and this Council is appointed by the Spiritual Leader, yet many people have compared this Council to the president's Cabinet in the US (which is appointed and not elected and which writes "regulations" which are de facto "law"). Is the US ruled by an "unelected few" because John Ashcroft and Don Rumsfeld are appointed?

To simply discard the more democratic elements of the Iranian regime and dismiss it as an "unelected few" oppressing the Iranian people is a gross mischaracterization. After all, one could arguably make the same claim about the United States, one could argue that an "unelected few" in the US Supreme Court make all important decisions, they can veto any law passed by Congress, a state legislature or even a voter initiative, perhaps even de facto appoint a president.

Whether or not the Iranian regime is tyrannical is open to some question, depending on your perspective -- there does not seem to be great deal of internal dissent -- but I don't see that it is the US's business if it is. If the US is simply going to oppose regimes because of their internal policies then I don't see why China and Tajikistan aren't first in the list. If they are "exporting terror" that is a different matter, but their internal policies are their own business.

Eshraghian goes on to note that "True democracy in Iran is, in the words of the son of the late Shah of Iran, when the people will be able to vote in a referendum towards deciding their own destiny." They have recently had a referendum on the current Constitution, for what that's worth. Anyway, the argument over "true democracy" is sort of like the argument between the Stalinists and the Maoists over who practiced "true socialism." It is a purely unanswerable and abstract question. Can you ever have "true democracy" in a country with tens of millions of people? I don't think so.

Warren Prosser, offers a longer and more thoughtful response with which I find myself in agreement on several points. He opens by noting that:

"I find it interesting and disheartening that Mr. Clark would select one small, and irrelevant comment, from President Bush's State of the Union address for his platform to rail against America. Mr. Clark's assessment that President Bush did not receive a majority of the popular vote certainly tells us a lot about his politically affiliation. I am sure he overlooked this same attribute of our former President Clinton."

It does not seem that either Iran or the European Allies see the comments about Iran as irrelevant; and it is hard to see how criticizing the president constitutes a "rail against America." I had thought criticizing the president was American as apple pie. Clinton never received a majority (43% and 49% respectively), but one could note that he at least received more votes than anyone else, unlike Bush. I would say after 8 years of Clinton we have had enough of presidents being less than honest. Things like the Taliban treatment of women are convenient scapegoats but hardly why the US went to war against Afghanistan -- or the US would have bombed Saudi Arabia too. Quite frankly, I don't see that whether or not the Iranian regime is elected is any US business, but Bush clearly sought to demonize them with his disparaging "unelected few" remarks.

I agree with most of the rest of what Prosser says, about the need to deal effectively with regimes rather than adopt policies which punish ordinary people in those countries, and with the point that in terms of US/Iranian relations most of the sin has been on the side of Iran.

In conclusion, while I have received many letters of criticism I have not had anyone contradict my main point, which is, regardless of how bad the Iranian regime is or is not, it seems to have the vast popular support of the Iranian people. While one might well make the case that in Afghanistan the Taliban did not have the support of the majority, and many other regimes around the world would never win a majority in a fair election, Iran is a different circumstance. There has been no Tiananmen Square (as in China) or local uprising (as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Russia). "The Iranian people's hope for freedom" which is supposedly being thwarted by a few, seems rather to be the Iranian people's support for their regime. In eastern Europe during the cold war, for example, it was entirely accurate to speak of "captive people" who were repressed by unelected regimes which did not have the support of the people, and which regimes crumbled once the threat of Soviet tanks passed. Bush seems to suggest that Iran today is something like Poland or Hungary during the Cold War. Bush was trying to sound like Reagan at the Berlin Wall, but that was an entirely different circumstance.

If anyone has any evidence to suggest that the majority of the Iranian people really don't support the Iranian regime I would be happy to hear it.