Mideast Democracy
With all the talk of the U.S. and Britain bringing democracy to the Mideast, I thought I’d do a little google search to read the details behind another famous intervention of the U.S. and Britain in Mideast democracy: Iranian democracy to be specific.
This was a story i’ve heard referenced verbally from time to time, but I never read much of the details. More surprisingly when I spoke to others who I thought would perhaps know more about these events I was shocked to find they’d never heard about these events at all.
I found this piece at the NY TImes that details the events 45 years after when key U.S. government documents were leaked (but not yet declassified). Basically the UK approached the US in 1953 to seek US assistance in overthrowing the budding democracy in Iran in favor of restoring the Iranian emperor. While at first the British concern over the Iranian oil failed to interest the CIA, the growing strength of Iran’s communist party finally convinced them to get involved. The US ideological state apparatuses has now fueled religious fundamentalism as a method to deal with working class movements in at least three classic situations: In Iran in the 1950’s; in Afghanistan in the 1980s; and in the United States over the last several decades.
What I found most surprising in this article were the personalities involved but also the tactics used. For example the General on the scene to install the puppet dictator of Iran was the General H. Norman Schwartzkopf: father of the desert storm commander who would thirty-some years later make his own mark on Mideast democracy. Also the Mideast agent directing the overthrow for the CIA’s end was Kermit Roosevelt (see link) (grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of F.D. Roosevelt).
Another interesting fact revealed in this article is the way capitalist states and fascist movements can manipulate ideology beyond what many of us like to believe. For example the article says: <q class=”longQuote”>Iranians working for the CIA. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric’s home in a campaign to turn the country’s Islamic religious community against Mossadegh’s government.</q> Though clearly more violent, this tactic strikes me as eerily similar to the calls made by agent’s of the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign to religious fundamentalists: telling them they were calling from the Kerry campaign and asking for their support for same-sex marriage. Where else are these tactics finding their way into U.S. domestic affairs? Just because it’s not reported to us by the state media does not mean it’s not happening. The questions raised in books such as What’s the matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America point to an active attempts by ruling class agents to appeal to and usurp
working class ideals for their own narrow interests.
Anyway, it seems strange to talk about a strategy for the U.S. and Britain to bring democracy to the Mideast without any mention of recent history and the same two powers’ involvement in Mideast democracy. These events may have been adequately repressed here in the U.S., but I imagine they’re on the minds of Iranians and Iraqis. To not even acknowledge and explain why the U.S. and Britain now about-face 180° on the issue of Mideast democracy seems at the least irresponsible (and more likely suspicious) to me.