Squaring the Circle of Two Rigged Elections

It increasingly looks like the Afghan elections were rigged by Karzai and his cronies. While that fact doesn’t surprise (newsflash shocker: Afghanistan is full of corrupt politicians and does not have the social and political infrastructure to support free and fair elections!), the reaction in Washington and in the media to Karzai’s rigging does serve as a useful reminder of the hypocrisy that infuses our differing treatment of different regimes.

I’m comparing, of course, the differing treatment of the rigged election in Iran and the rigged election in Afghanistan. While the two riggings are certainly not perfectly equivalent (there was no widespread protest and subsequent violence in Afghanistan, for one), it is almost laughable how different the two election frauds have been presented to us by politicians and by reporters. The rigging in Iran was, by and large, treated as an affront to all humanity that deserved, at the very least, strong rhetorical intervention from Washington. The Afghanistan rigging, on the other hand, has been decidedly under-reported, and has inspired barely audible mumbles and grunts from some of the same folks who were on the rooftops calling for Ahmadinejad’s head. Something has got to give here.

But it’s hard to say where, exactly, the consensus view of these two events went awry.

One possible way to square the circle would be to loudly denounce Karzai for being the corruption machine that he is, suggest that Obama withdraw support from the Karzai administration, and call for new elections in order to restore legitimacy to the fledgling democracy of Afghanistan. But no one is suggesting we go down that path, and for good reason. It doesn’t make a whole lot of practical sense, given that Karzai’s opponents are no better than Karzai in the corruption department, and another go at an election in Afghanistan is unlikely to result in a more legitimate outcome anyway. The democracy infrastructure is simply not up to the task.

A second possibility would have been to treat the Iranian rigging with the kid-gloves we are using in Afghanistan, and to greet the Iranian fraud with the same deafening silence we are hearing from the chattering class after the Afghan elections. This also doesn’t feel right, particularly in light of the inspiring and brave protests that erupted in reaction to the rigging injustice in Iran.

The only somewhat satisfying way to justify this differing treatment requires a cold, hard look at when and where democracy is a useful way of government. I would suggest that having an election in Afghanistan was a bad idea from the beginning. It was never going to accomplish anything positive on the ground, and was useful only for window-dressing purposes. Afghan society may one day be ready for a legitimate and functioning democracy, but that day is not near. A warlord-driven, pre-industrial, poverty stricken country with a drug-based economy and a tribal-based political infrastructure is not a good place to suddenly have an election. The failure of those elections, while unfortunate, was to be expected, and can therefore somewhat justifiably be greeted with cynical resignation rather than principled outrage.

Iran, on the other hand, is a wholly different story. With its large, young, highly educated, and technologically savvy middle-class population, Iran provides fertile ground for legitimate democracy. The crushing of that democratic spirit was rightly perceived as unjust, even tragic.

But because it is highly unpopular to suggest that democracy might not be appropriate in every circumstance and in every country and at any time, many pundits and politicians are left embarrassingly tongue-tied when asked to talk about Karzai and his election fraud. And the rest of the world can be forgiven for criticizing the U.S. for its hypocrisy: outraged when its “enemy” rigs an election, but silent when its “ally” does the same.