Warning: OT, bigtime
there is a difference between such outrage and an understanding of geopolitical reality.
When our understanding of geopolitical reality leads us to impose on others conditions we would never dream of accepting ourselves, it is time to be very, very, careful.
The main effect of training foreign security services was to professionalize them and make them less likely to use expedients like torture.
Odd how so many graduates of such training went on to be such gratuitous violators of human rights, often applying the most atrocious methods to individuals who had nothing whatsoever to do with communism. Odd, at least, unless you have met and dealt with some of the individuals doing the training. I have. You would not believe some of the people who have carried our flag in the cold war in the 3rd world.
one deals with existing regimes, even if one has to hold one's nose, and tries to assess the options "on the ground"....
This is precisely what we did not do. Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and abrogated the country's constitution because his second term was up and he wanted to stay in power. The "communist threat" simply not exist: propaganda publications sponsored by Marcos spoke of "communist hordes knocking on the gates of Manila", but even CIA reports conceded that the communists threatened no more than a few remote sections of Central Luzon. If we had stuck to a policy of dealing with the system as it was, we would not have encouraged and supported Marcos in his quest to become absolute ruler - we had an opportunity to prevent the declaration of martial law, and deliberately passed it up. Philippine democracy was and is highly flawed, but only a historical illiterate could contend that allowing the scheduled election to proceed would have assisted the communists.
Iran is another case in point. If we had followed a policy of "dealing with the government in power", we would have dealt from 1951 to 1953 with Mohammed Mossadegh. Mossadegh was a nationalist who strongly opposed foreign intervention (a sensitive issue since World War II, when the country was practically partitioned between the British and the Russians, and before, when the British Anglo-Persian Oil Company exercised more sovereignty in Iran than the national government). We opposed Mossadegh not because he leaned toward the Russians, but because he nationalized the oil company. Lest that seem unreasonable, an account of the terms which he offered:
The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it. What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadegh's head.
A military show of force by the British navy was followed by a ruthless international economic blockade and boycott, and a freezing of Iranian assets which brought Iran's oil exports and foreign trade to a virtual standstill, plunged the already impoverished country into near destitution, and made payment of any compensation impossible. Nonetheless, and long after they had moved to oust Mossadegh, the British demanded compensation not only for the physical assets of the AIOC, but for the value of their enterprise in developing the oil fields; a request impossible to meet, and, in the eyes of Iranian nationalists, something which decades of huge British profits had paid for many times over.
Who was Mossadegh?
Earlier in the Year, the New York Times had noted that "prevailing opinion among detached observers in Teheran" was that "Mossadegh is the most popular politician in the country". During a period of more than 40 years in public life, Mossadegh had "acquired a reputation as an honest patriot".
How close was Mossadegh to the Russians?
Not even in the face of the coup, with its imprint of foreign hands, did Moscow make a threatening move; neither did Mossadegh at any point ask for Russian help.
What did it achieve?
The notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel, spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by noting that Iran had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran."
When to this is added a level of corruption that "startled even the most hardened observers of Middle Eastern thievery", it is understandable that the Shah needed his huge military and police force, maintained by unusually large US aid and training programs, to keep the lid down for as long as he did. Said Senator Hubert Humphrey, apparently with some surprise:
"Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our people? He said the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. aid-it was now capable of coping with the civilian population. That Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's planning to fight the Iranian people."
One scholar's postscript:
"Though it's hard to knock success, the American intervention was
probably a bad mistake. The Old man was not too crazy to have lead Iran, under happier circumstances, to what he sometimes proposed, a republic governed by its parliament under a king who reigned but did not rule."
Quotes from William Blum, Killing Hope, except last, from William Forbis, Fall of the Peacock Throne
Yaacov, who believes that Iranians deserved a despot, might be interested in the following bit of history, courtesy of the Library of Congress:
In October [1906] an elected assembly convened and drew up a constitution that provided for strict limitations on royal power, an elected parliament, or Majlis (see Glossary), with wide powers to represent the people, and a government with a cabinet subject to confirmation by the Majlis. The shah signed the constitution on December 30, 1906. He died five days later. The Supplementary Fundamental Laws approved in 1907 provided, within limits, for freedom of press, speech, and association, and for security of life and property. According to scholar Ann K.S. Lambton, the Constitutional Revolution marked the end of the medieval period in Iran. The hopes for constitutional rule were not realized, however.
Muzaffar ad Din's successor, Mohammad Ali Shah, was determined to crush the constitution. After several disputes with the members of the Majlis, in June 1908 he used his Russian-officered Persian Cossacks Brigade to bomb the Majlis building, arrest many of the deputies, and close down the assembly. Resistance to the shah, however, coalesced in Tabriz, Esfahan, Rasht, and elsewhere. In July 1909, constitutional forces marched from Rasht and Esfahan to Tehran, deposed the shah, and reestablished the constitution. The ex-shah went into exile in Russia.
Although the constitutional forces had triumphed, they faced serious difficulties. The upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution and civil war had undermined stability and trade. In addition, the ex-shah, with Russian support, attempted to regain his throne, landing troops in July 1910. Most serious of all, the hope that the Constitutional Revolution would inaugurate a new era of independence from the great powers ended when, under the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907, Britain and Russia agreed to divide Iran into spheres of influence. The Russians were to enjoy exclusive right to pursue their interests in the northern sphere, the British in the south and east; both powers would be free to compete for economic and political advantage in a neutral sphere in the center.
The more we read the history, the more it seems that the Iranians have been struggling against despotism for most of this century, and have been thwarted largely by intervention from those bastions of freedom, the US and Britain.
Why do we wonder that they hate us?
Whether pushing a country towards democracy will enhance its viability, or cause it to fall apart, is a judgment call, and we must allow some leeway for those who had to make it...
Perhaps. But we appropriated for ourselves the right to make that decision on behalf of others, and we shouldn't be surprised that the people who suffered the consequences of our decisions may grant us less leeway than we grant ourselves. |
