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June 17, 2005

When Is a Democracy Not a Democracy? When a Foreign Leader Says So

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less." So wrote Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass.

So also speaks President Bush when he uses the word democracy, as witness his comments on the election in Iran, which featured seven candidates--would that we had so many choices!--two of whom have promised to improve relations with the U.S. As the AP reports it:

On the eve of Iran's presidential election, President Bush said the voting has been designed to keep power in the hands of a few rulers "through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy."

"The Iranian people deserve a genuinely democratic system in which elections are honest - and in which their leaders answer to them instead of the other way around," Bush said in a statement released by the White House Thursday.

Sounds great, Mr. President. When do we get that here at home?

Apparently Bush is worried that the wrong candidate--if the U.S. even has a candidate in this election--is going to win, so he's making it clear that democracy means exactly what he chooses it to mean, namely, an election in which the outcome favors the U.S. government. An election rife with intimidation and fraud in, say, Iraq or Afghanistan is perfectly legitimate, but one that is likely no worse in Iran is illegitimate.

Actually, the most likely reason for Bush's denouncing the Iranian elections even before they happen is to keep preparing the American people for an attack on Iran. After all, if the goal is to bring democracy to Iran, and that country already has democracy, then why invade? Iran has to be made out to be thoroughly evil so that an invasion is justified in the minds of the American people.

As Rush Limbaugh said today about the prisoners at Gitmo, "We're good, and they're evil." That pretty well sums up the neocon mentality.

(Thanks to Antiwar.com for the link.)

Posted by Mike Tennant at June 17, 2005 01:20 PM

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