Iran Had a Democracy Before We Took It Away
June 23, 2009 7:51 pm

By Chris Hedges,

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

The fundamental problem in the Middle East is not a degenerate and corrupt Islam. The fundamental problem is a degenerate and corrupt Christendom. We have not brought freedom and democracy and enlightenment to the Muslim world. We have brought the opposite. We have used the iron fist of the American military to implant our oil companies in Iraq, occupy Afghanistan and ensure that the region is submissive and cowed......

......"The central story of Iran over the last 200 years has been national humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who have subjugated and looted the country," Stephen Kinzer, the author of "All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror," told me. "For a long time the perpetrators were the British and Russians. Beginning in 1953, the United States began taking over that role. In that year, the American and British secret services overthrew an elected government, wiped away Iranian democracy, and set the country on the path to dictatorship."

"Then, in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, providing him with military equipment and intelligence that helped make it possible for his army to kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians," Kinzer said. "Given this history, the moral credibility of the U.S. to pose as a promoter of democracy in Iran is close to nil.

Especially ludicrous is the sight of people in Washington calling for intervention on behalf of democracy in Iran when just last year they were calling for the bombing of Iran. If they had had their way then, many of the brave protesters on the streets of Tehran today-the ones they hold up as heroes of democracy-would be dead now."........

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Rushpublic brainstorming session:
June 23, 2009 9:07 pm

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Jihad Walking: Jason Jones Compares American Knowledge Of Iran To Iranian Knowledge Of America
June 24, 2009 12:08 pm

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Jason Jones: Behind the Veil - Ayatollah You So
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

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Obama and Iran, Considered
June 27, 2009 7:29 am

James Zogby

.....The political leaders and commentators speaking the loudest and urging the most reckless behavior have absolutely no clue what is actually happening in Iran. As was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, everyone with a microphone and TV camera in front of them has now become an Iran expert. But, their badgering of the President is based more on an ideologically based fantasy of "spontaneous revolution," than on reality. It was this identical infantile disorder that led this same crew to believe that the overthrow of Saddam's regime would "cleanse" Iraq and spontaneously bring about democracy, or that elections in Afghanistan would miraculously liberate women and usher in a liberal democracy in Kabul.

Because of their lack of understanding of what is taking place in Iran, they fail to recognize that egging on demonstrators might result in two undesirable outcomes. The demonstrators may feel emboldened, believing that the US will act on their behalf--which it is not able to do--leading to a tragic replay of the Basra uprising of 1991. Or the fact that the regime might use overt signs of US encouragement to stoke even deeper anti-American sentiment, legitimizing an even more ruthless effort to crush the demonstrators. .....

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