Imposing Faux Democracy by Force

As our country's leaders continue to look away while Ahmadinejad steals an election and beats those who protest this theft into submission, consider what we are seeing.

Our president famously says that we can't impose democracy by force. This ignores Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, just to name three [Er, to name four. I hope I never have to handle the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch], but I digress.

The point is that supposedly, democracy can only arise if it occurs without any American support at all that might "taint" the democrats. And if that doesn't happen, those non-Westerners clearly just aren't ready for democracy, which doesn't suit them anyway.

If democracy is so unsuited to non-Westerners, why do thug regimes bother going through the motions of democracy? Iran, for example, actually pretends to have elections. Pre-screened (by the most rigid mullahs) candidates have a pretend campaign for president. Voters go the polls. And election results are announced. The mullah regime continues.

If democracy is so ill-suited to Iranians, why doesn't the regime just announce that the mullahs are selecting the president and jump right to the announcement without bothering the voters to go out and cast a meaningless vote? Isn't that just accepting alien Western ideas about the relationship between the people and the government? Yet Iran accepts the forms of democracy even as it rejects the substance of democracy.

I mean, it's almost as if democracy does mean something to Iranians, and the mullahs need to have the facade of real elections for legitimacy. Ahmadinejad insists their election was real. Massive protests in the street deny this assertion.

It seems like we could undermine a lot of this farce just by publicly and repeatedly denying the legitimacy of the vote and insisting the UN must look into the elections and oversee a new election under fair conditions. We could condemn Iranian government-supported violence against the protesters. We could spread information about the protests so Iranians don't think they are alone and the only ones protesting. We could insist that the Iranian people deserve real elections and real democracy.

We may not be able to reverse the stolen election (because we choose not to try), but why on Earth do we have to pretend that these elections were real?

Part of the Moslem world is extending their hand in desperate hope for our help. We're looking away, hoping the mullah regime can quickly suppress the protesters so we can get back to the nuanced work of trading away Lebanon to hezbollah in exchange for cutting off Sadr's boys in Iraq, trading Iranian cut off of support for Hamas in exchange for our acceptance of Iran's nuclear ambitions, and all the other State Department ideas that constitute a "grand bargain" in the Middle East that the Nobel Prize committee will reward in due course.

And all we have to do is look away while the Basij beat the protesting Iranians into submissiom

Ain't bargaining with Tehran grand?