Editorial - Neither Real Nor Free - NYTimes.com

Anti-Neocolonialism in Iran

Editorial - Neither Real Nor Free - NYTimes.com:

Although a runoff was widely expected between the two top vote-getters, the polls had barely closed before authorities declared victory for the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And it was a landslide: 62.6 percent versus just less than 34 percent for the main challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi.

I followed this election pretty closely and this is a real bummer. And in the end, if Ahmadinejad got significant support it's our fault. US policies during the Bush years gave every tin pot dictator, theocrat and warlord from Teheran to Timbuktu free hand to play the anti-neocolonialist card. Everyone recognized that Bush's talk about freedom meant nothing more or less than US domination and that his crusade to liberate Iraq was intended to install a friendly puppet who would supply the US with cheap oil. It's hardly a surprise that most of the world doesn't distinguish between westernization and economic/political domination by the West, in particular by the US.

I'm really depressed that by all accounts the opposition movement is likely to fizzle. I pray that they have a civil war, their own civil war without US interference.