Moral Dilemma by dreamtrove

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Moral Dilemma

POSTED BY: DREAMTROVE
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 02:30
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Sunday, December 18, 2005 5:34 AM

Okay I take it back. This Iranian president isn't someone we can work with. But I still think the govt. of Iran is. I sympathize with the perpetual embarassment of having to perpetually apologize for an abomination of a president who is both ignorant and malicious, because, well, because I'm a conservative. I understand the position. But we should probably consider if maybe we can leverage the Iranians to impeach him.

But this moral quandry goes further. The EU is trying to block Hamas from the Palestinian elections. On the face of it, this is no way to start off a democracy. On the other hand Hamas is evil. I remember a story when some terrorists broke into a jewish settlement and murdered a single mother and her five daughters, which was their goal, a randomly selected jewish family, the PLO deplored the act saying it was a crime against humanity. Hamas said "this is a glorious day for Islam and Palestine." And this was just par for the course for them. If they came to power I would not be in the least surprised if they started rounding up jews from settlements on the west bank and putting them in concentration camps.

While I like the idea of open democracy, it's important to remember that disasters can and do happen. The classic example of course is the National Socialists coming in to power as a third party and exterminating 11 million people and starting a war that killed 50 million more. The national socialist party and anything closely resembling it is illegal in German politics. Are we going to, through our sense of democratic purity, go to Germany and demand that they let the National Socialists run in public elections?

When Andrew Jackson came in to office as a third party candidate, as a democrat, he signed in to law a piece of legislation authorizing genocide against the indians as public policy. Unltimately the democrats became a more normal party in regular elections but it took many years to remove some of the intrinsically bad ideas from it. Without getting into a partisan squabble here, I think the idea that any political party should have a right to run is a good one, but also it would be maybe adviseable to set standards which parties should meet before running, to prevent something like this happening to some other country?

Just interested in hearing thoughts from both sides, if anyone's still reading this forum.

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Monday, December 19, 2005 9:20 AM

NIKNAK

Who decides which parties can run? How can you have a fair democracy where people are excluded based on which beliefs those in power think are acceptable.

If people can't run for election they may choose to resort to (more) terrorism instead. Better to fight them at the ballot boxes.

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Monday, December 19, 2005 11:15 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Unfortunately, Iran's democracy is a farce and its president is a puppet of the hard-core Islamists. Just noticed his latest decree, straight from the mullahs, banning the playing of any "Western" music on Iranian radio. Even Kenny G.

On the other subject, I wish that the EU would give the Palestinians, particularly Hamas, a little more wiggle room. Remember, two years ago Muqtar Sadr was proclaiming jihad against the US and our "puppet" government, and now the Sadrists are part of one of the largest political parties participating in the Iraqi elections.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, December 19, 2005 11:43 AM

UNREGISTEREDCOMPANION

I strongly object to calling anything by Kenny G "music".

~~~~~
"Funny and sexy. You have no idea. And you never will."

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Monday, December 19, 2005 2:11 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by UnregisteredCompanion:
I strongly object to calling anything by Kenny G "music".

~~~~~
"Funny and sexy. You have no idea. And you never will."

Per the Beeb, Kenny G. is popular background music for Iranian stations. This revelation may change some folks opinions about the desirability of nuking them back to the stone age

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4543720.stm

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, December 19, 2005 3:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Unfortunately, Iran's democracy is a farce and its president is a puppet of the hard-core Islamists. Just noticed his latest decree, straight from the mullahs, banning the playing of any "Western" music on Iranian radio.

My understanding is that the current President actually ran on something of an anti-corruption campaign and that the source of the corruption is the ayatollhas. Apparently (and not too surprisingly) some ayatollhas have carved a cozy niche for themselves in Irans economic life, to the detriment of the average person. Ahmadinejad came from a poor family (I think his dad was a blacksmith) and his campaign was based on putting religion back into religion and honesty back into the economy. I wonder what his track record has been on anti-corruption.

Quote:
Profile: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ...Mr Ahmadinejad was born in Garmsar, near Tehran, in 1956, the son of a blacksmith, and holds a PhD in traffic and transport from Tehran's University of Science and Technology, where he was a lecturer.... Several of the 52 Americans who were held hostage in the US embassy in the months after the revolution say they are certain Mr Ahmadinejad was among those who captured them. He insists he was not there, and several known hostage-takers - now his strong political opponents - deny he was with them.

... Mr Ahmadinejad... had the support of a group of younger, second-generation revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis. His presidential campaign focused on poverty, social justice and the distribution of wealth inside Iran. At home in Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad has a populist streak, calling his personal website Mardomyar, or the People's Friend. He also has a reputation for living a simple life and campaigned against corruption.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4107270.stm

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Monday, December 19, 2005 6:17 PM

DREAMTROVE

Well, he's a very new president, and Iranian politics are very complicated.
I think denouncing the democracy in Iran as 'a farce' is not being fair. The Iranian democracy is flawed, but not a farce. There are at least two major parties of radically differing views, between which an outcome can not readily be determined beforehand.

Unfortunately, farce is the more common form of democracy. Egypt's democracy, for example, is a farce. All former soviet states, including Russia, have a farce for a democracy, as do many africans and middle eastern nations.

On the global scale from "you call that democracy?" aka Zimbabwe, to "representational govt." aka Europe, I'd say Iran is probably half way inbetween.

Remember, as much as we would like to think America is at the top of this list, it isn't. We have two major democratic flaws:

1. We have only two political parties. These parties frequently conspire to shut third parties out of debates and equal airtime and funding laws.

2. We have a winner takes all system. Though our legislative branch is more or less representational by deault of the fact that our political parties are geographically uneven, the executive has no compromise in it. This contrasts with many European democracies where the second and even third ranking parties in an election might get booby prizes equiv. to sec. of state or some such.

Iran's democracy has been known to bar candidates and parties from elections, but then so has Germany, which is generally considered one of the better democracies.

They also have a serious flaw in that no one can politically survive directly opposing the will of the supreme head of their majority faith, shiiism.

But before you go all ape over that last point, I want to point out that this is the state of many many countries in the world, which happen to be catholic.

My problems with Ahmadinejad started when he started acting like an idiot. I get that he's the western-style conservative candidate, in Iranian terms, meaning he's the equiv. of a republican, which means a slightly less gung ho type of theocratic socialist in our terms. He just shouldn't provoke hostility towards powers that can and might squash him like a bug, such as American, Israel, and Europe.

Niknak,

I generally agree. On the other hand, what if because of a fervor of anti-Americanism, the most anti-American party, Hamas, comes to power, and then rounds up and exterminates the quarter million jews living in the West Bank. Bear in mind these people are for the most part Israel's inner city poor who were given the land in a homesteading act, they're not really the evil oppressor, but relatively innocent bystanders in the Iraeli govt's expansion plan.

I think that in view of the events in the German election in '33 and the American election of 1828, a vetting of candidates for platforms of genocide, or perhaps platforms that in any way are in serious violation of international law, is justified. If we can't do that, then in some countries, the 85% ethnic group will continue to intentionally vote into power a group who promised to exterminate the 15%, as happens in Africa.

I don't think that a govt. should be allowed to ban parties without some international support for the idea like Iran did in the 2002 parlimentary elections, which they fortunately reversed in the 2004 election cycle.

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Monday, January 9, 2006 1:42 AM

GRAVY

As an Iranian I think it's funny when you try to legitimize "democratic" Iran. Sure, Iranian politics are complicated, and not only to outsiders but to most Iranians as well, but there's nothing complicated about wether or not Iran is a democracy. I'm not even an Iranian in the "truest" sense, born and raised in Sweden, but I think I can speak with a little authority on the matter. Everything, from the political landscape to the cultural life in Iran is muddled in an identity crisis of sorts - so it's very hard to get a grip on the Iranian people or the countrys political history or it's social climate. But one thing that is sure is that Iran is not and has never been a democracy. There are no civil liberties to speak of - and if at times the social climate opens up it's only at the arbitrary whim of the government and the Ayathollas who rule the government (one month it's ok to do something and the next you'll be arrested for the same thing) - hundreds if not thousands of newspapers are shut down every year, the government can arrest and murder people as they wish without any scrutiny. And do not be mistaken about the Ayathollas and their role; they are not a "shadow government" puppeteering the "democratically" elected government - no, they are the real government, they are the courts, they decide which parties are allowed to participate in elections and so on. Democracy in Iran is a farce. And a lot of country's claiming to be democracies are not, but surely Germany can not be counted as one of them. Putins Russia is a good example, but Russia is very democratic if you compare it to Iran.

And one other thing, Ahmadinejad didn't suddenly start to act like an idiot, he's been an idiot all along. This is a guy who wanted women and men to ride in seperate elevators when he was mayor of Tehran.

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Monday, January 9, 2006 6:30 PM

DREAMTROVE

I don't think anyone was saying it's not a farce, but like Russia, and other non-democracies, a process is there by which the people can enter government, and in so doing, hope to some day alter it. This is very very different from a systen in which there is no such chance, and thus change is impossible without armed rebellion. The US would do well to build on the system in place to reform it into a 'true' democracy. Bush and Co. want to invade because it's a puzzle piece on the PNAC MidEast block. But realistiacally, that's a moronic plan.

Russian democracy is in some ways far more flawed than Iran because Putin possesses enormous power and need to bow to no international pressure. Even so, it would be a much better idea to try to reform that process from within than to invade Russia.

I'm not a fan of social militarism in any event, and so even if I thought it were the easier way to change the govt. I would have no interest in doing so. Using military force to enforce social change is just a road which is not worth going down because everyone has a different idea of what needs changing where, and if we allow this continue we will end up in a world war, which is what happened the last two times this sort of thing went unchecked.

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 2:30 AM

GRAVY

First of all, no matter how valid or invalid Irans "democracy" is, I never suggested an invasion or anything of that sort. I wish I could say that the US shouldn't have anything to do with Iran and its progress, to just stay away as much as possible, the only thing it's ever done is harm the country. But, in reality, since America is a world power and in many ways the power centra of the world, its absence in the middle-east would be devastating. Now you don't have to like American foreign policy, I sure as hell don't, but that's beside the point because no matter if we like it or not, America compose an important function in the middle-east.

An example. Before the wall fell, Soviet and eastern europe were the stabilizing power in the balcan region (good or bad is, again, beside the point). When that power went away the region quickly destabilized and there was chaos. The same thing could be said about the US's role in the middle-east.

So I think when talking about Iran or any country in the middle-east you can't leave out American influence, but it should be kept at a minimum, meaning: NO INVASIONS =)

And again, about Iran; it's not a democracy in any way. There are no democratic institutions (they can call it a parliament as much they want, but it has no democratic validity) and no civil liberties. And the comparisons to Russia are pointless anyway, mine as well, because russia isn't a democracy either. And the chances you spoke of, to make change in Iran, do not exist. Because "people" can't enter government just like that, it's the Ayathollas who "weed out" the candidates and once you get elected you can't do anything unless they approve it. And believe me, it's much more complicated than that.

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