Your right about hindsight of course. I think both the USA and Britain would be glad to see democracy take root among Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East.
I think a very good candidate for democracy is Iran. The help needed by the USA and Britain is just a quiet consistent diplomacy of the elected government there. The episode in Iranian history that has to be healed is as follows. Note the Shah was ousted at the time. Reading the link directly may be easier.
iran-e-azad.org
The nineteenth century, coinciding with the rule of the Qajar dynasty in Iran, is remembered by most Iranians as an era of national subjugation by foreign powers, particularly Imperial Russia and Great Britain, both of which frequently infringed on Iranian national sovereignty. Control over Iranian oil fields made Britain the major power in Iran until the end of World War II. After the fall of Reza Shah's dictatorship in 1941, popular movements began to voice the Iranian resentment of British colonialism and the puppet regimes. In the late 1940s, Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq led the movement to nationalize Iran's oil industry. His movement had widespread support among the Iranian people, and the shah was forced in 1951 to appoint him as prime minister after parliament ratified the oil nationalization bill. Dr. Mossadeq's 27-month-term was devoted on the one hand to implementing the new law, and on the other to confronting the joint conspiracies of the court, reactionary clergy, and pro-Soviet communist Tudeh Party. The British essentially coordinated these conspiracies. Despite the ruling in Iran's favor on the oil issue by the International Court of Justice at the Hague and the U.N. General Assembly, British hostility towards Mossadeq's government persisted. In 1952, the United States allied itself with the British in this policy.
Unfortunately, Mossadeq's overthrow in a U.S.-engineered coup d'etat convinced Iranians that the United States had replaced Britain in defending the shah and depriving Iranians of democracy and their national interests. The brutal suppression of student protests and the killing of three student leaders only four months after the coup, on the eve of Vice President Richard Nixon's trip to Iran in December 1953,1 only served to confirm this view.
In a report submitted to President Eisenhower's National Security Council in 1953, U.S. policymakers explained their support for the shah:
Over the long run, the most effective instrument for maintaining Iran's orientation towards the West is the monarchy, which in turn has the army as its only real source of power. U.S. military aid serves to improve army morale, cement army loyalty to the shah, and thus consolidate the present regime and provide some assurance that Iran's current orientation towards the West will be perpetual.2
Mohsen Milani, author of The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution, writes:
The coup had drastic consequences. First, because it was generally believed that the United States had saved his throne, the shah lost his legitimacy. From then on, he was tainted as an American puppet... and most important, the foreign-orchestrated coup seemed to have touched the very sensitive pride-nerve of some middle class Iranians who perceived the monarch as America's shah.3
John F. Kennedy's election to the Presidency in 1960 raised hopes that the new administration would make the defense of human rights and democracy a foreign policy goal, and therefore dissuade the shah from his repressive ways and limit his dictatorship. The shah's extended trip to the U.S. in late 1962, however, was followed by a widespread crackdown on popular protests by SAVAK and the army in the first half of 1963, dashing all such hopes. As Iran expert Shaul Bakhash puts it:
One result of these developments was to push elements of the opposition toward an increasingly radical position. The suppression of the 1963 protest movement persuaded young men of the National Front that constitutional methods of opposition against the shah were ineffective.4
Milani agrees that the historical consequences were profound:
The June uprising had a profound impact both on Iranian politics in general and on the ulama community in particular. In the literature of most opposition groups to the shah, the June uprising symbolized the end of peaceful coexistence with the shah and justified the start of the armed struggle against his regime.5
In subsequent years, the shah increasingly strengthened the secret police, SAVAK, which had been formed in 1957 with American support. Notorious for its use of torture, SAVAK grew to symbolize the shah's rule from 1963-79, a period also characterized by corruption in the royal family, one-party rule, the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners, sweeping clampdown, suppression of dissent, and alienation of the religious masses, whose historic symbols were openly scorned. Throughout those years, the United States reinforced its image as the shah's protector and staunch supporter, sowing the seeds of the anti-Americanism that later manifested itself in the revolution against the monarchy. In this historical context, the forces that would build Iran's future - the younger generation - began to search for a solution to the country's problems.
I know plenty of Iranians who were students here in the UK when Khomeini took over and they became financially stranded. Although many of the parents stayed on in Iran (and are still there of their own free will) the students of the time were expected to go back and fight in the war against Iraq (and probably would have been gassed). Few did of course and struggled from being rich to being desperately poor in a month or two. Some turned to crime other flipped hambugers and survived somehow. My observation is Iranians are very proud of their nation and way of life. In fact it may surprise some USA citizens that most nations I have visited (I have never been to the ME though) , you will see a big proportion of it's citizens who love their country and proud of whatever achievements they have. Iran has plenty of problems for sure. They have suffered.
Some friendly diplomacy from the UK and USA, even maybe a few bucks in some pro democratic movements, could only help imho. |
