Events in Iran Bode Ill for Democracy
Events in Iran Bode Ill for Democracy
Editor, Times-Dispatch: As I watch the events in Iran unfold, I am disturbed. Not with the political posturing -- that is an inherent by-product of the political process -- but rather the deconstruction of a democratic society before our eyes.
The original election was supposed to take place in a 24-hour period. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not expect the turnout at the polls or the thronging of the ex-pats to the international polling places.
Ahmadinejad likes the international stage that he has made such a fool of himself on. He likes the attention, the perks, and the lifestyle. Like all dictators, he has no desire to give these things up.
When the results were tallied the first day, not by an independent party, but by Ahmadinejad's own ruling party, and the results were not what they wanted, they extended the voting by another two days. Whole blocks of votes were lost, and most likely blocks of votes were counted twice. But we'll never know because there was no independent source that could be trusted by the people.
Now there are people dying. Martyrs are being made daily. With technology, there is no way to keep things quiet anymore. No way to shut the media down. A simple cell phone video tells the story of a young woman shot dead in the street with her father at her side. Uploaded, it runs as international news.
We can't go back in time to an age of filtered media and government sanctioned and sanitized news. We can tell the truth.
But as we tell the truth, we have a responsibility to act in accordance with what we know to be right and true. We can't just tell the truth, we have to fix what is wrong, too.
Leila Gaskin.
Richmond.
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I know greta, Communism was and is “real”.
It’s easy to look back on stuff with 20/20 vision.
But now that we CAN look back, shouldn’t we try to figure out what went wrong and not repeat it?
I think the fact that we did some crazy stuff that the public in the US didn’t know was going on…like Laos and Iran and South America…was scary too…and WAS REAL also. What IF the American public had “Twitter” back then, would we condone the things the CIA and it’s shadow government did?
Maybe the Communist saw what the CIA was doing and that is why they reacted the way they did, or maybe it was vis versa….who knows who started it, but it was a weird time. We didn’t understand the Communist because we didn’t understand our OWN government and it’s secrets either, so everything the Communists said was a big lie…even though our government was lying too? It was all shadows…now we can look back and the shadows are clearing….let’s keep it that way.
In fact, let’s start teaching our kids what really happened, what we know now.
Or is history just for the winners to write what they want.
Communism lost, We won. Communism was bad, We were good.
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.“
“Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.“ -1984
Stidebaker-Good point. They say that the winners always get to write the history.
There was a big flap between China and Japan very recently because the Japanese re-wrote their history books in order to soft-pedal the “Rape of Nanking.“
That was followed by a spate of media attention to the recent blatant “mistakes” and “misinformation” in our own history books.
You spend expend a lot of time and energy on your research.
I don’t always agree with your conclusions but I always appreciate your efforts.
Blackbird-Despite being on the front lines as it were and all the research in the world still will not answer all the questions.
One thing I can assure you of ASSURE you of is that the threat of communism was very real and very dangerous.
i lived in Europe in the 40’s and the early 50’s where the cold war was NOT cold.
Communism tends to be dismissed today because it is no longer in the daily news and it has proven to be a failed policy. Even its two greatest proponents ,China and Russia have abandoned it. One of the most troubled spots in the world today is a communist regime, North Korea.
Are there any well established democracies in the world continually at war?
Greta: there is a story in which a father is attending his daughter’s graduation ceremony. The father happened to bump into his old history professor who had also taught his daughter. As they talked, the father exclaimed that “the questions on your final exam haven’t changed one bit. The old professor replied: I know, but the answers have.
There is one thing in Studebakers post…he failed to mention Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers…they were the real “green” light for the 1950’s coups. The coup in Iran was under Eisenhower, Truman didn’t want to go along with it. I think Eisenhower kind of went along with it because he was afraid of Communism…the Dulles brothers seemed to thrive on anything they could lable communism…it was a scary time and a scary combination to have in our government. It is strange that Eisenhower made the “military industrial complex” speech and the “cross of iron” speech, but under his watch allowed a shadow government to exist and thrive in the US. The public didn’t know, maybe Eisenhower didn’t know….and the general public still doesn’t know or undertand how this has affected our relations in the world. I am still working on it myself. But from Obama’s recent reactions, I think he understands the past and is trying NOT to repeat it.
It is strange that it is the same two areas of the world…Iran and South America, but this time around we can’t really blame it on U.S.S.R.
Studebaker-Without judgement of right or wrong.
I will simply comment that what you have related here is quid pro quo international business as usual.
Most of the time the public knew nothing of these dealings and in any case could have cared less as long as their car started on a cold morning.
This is a microcosm of how global politics/business is conducted.
It goes on today in exactly the same way. Despite the declarations of “transparency.“
We vote them in and hope that they can, and WILL hold their own on the world stage.
Despite keen interest there is so much that we do not know, will never know and perhaps in some instances should not know.
There are many of us “old” news junkies that have been trying to keep up with these national and international affairs since the mid 40’s (including reading our history books. And it is amazing how many of those change drastically over the years) that are amazed at how uninformed the general public are in some aspects of the affairs mentioned in your post that is old news to us old timers. And without which solid argument is on very shaky ground.
I hope that a lot is learned from your post most especially that America is not the villian in the piece.
And that we do not nor should we always be expected to wear the proverbial “white hats.“
I don’t think Obama said anything in the beginning of the Iran protest, because frankly, we didn’t know much.
It would have been worse to jump to conclusions the first day afterwards.
Also they weren’t clubbing and killing people the first few days. It’s when the protests got violent that Obama started speaking up…which I think if you examine the timeline…was the proper response at the proper time.
He might have been a day behind, but given the delicate nature of our relations with Iran, and the different time zones, I think giving some time to examine the facts is warranted.
As for Honduras, it’s pretty evident..immediately evident, that a military coup deposing an elected President is against the process of Democracy..no mater what the politics of the President of Honduras. He was elected, if they don’t like him as President, then they need to impeach him, or vote him out next time around, like we do here. I think the problem was he was seeking to change the constitution that would have allowed him to run again, but again, they could have voted against the amendment.
Seems very suspicious that they HAD to have a coup to get him out of office, when they could have:
1. Rejected, by vote, the measure to allow him to run again
2. If the measure in #1 passed, Voted him out of office by offering the public a better alternative and allowing the people to vote
So it seems to me the people who are afraid of him getting back in office must have felt that both of these measures would have been passed by a VOTE ...and they were in the minority and would have lost. This sounds like a typical situation in South America where the people who own companies and big business, might not like the policies, but they don’t have the vote and confidence of the “worker”. A typical Cold War, Communist vs. Capitalist struggle. It’s always the same. All you have to do is call the guy a Communist… say he’s trying to Nationalize everything, link him to Castro…and bing…Americans think he’s evil.
So what do you do? Call up your friends in the military and have a coup, hoping the US will support it like they have in the past. But this time around there is no democratic reason to support a coup. I don’t know where you are coming from on that. No mater who aligns with him to support him.
If the guys a crook and a bad person, then why don’t they VOTE him out.
I think the Honduran elections ALLOW international monitors…unlike IRAN.
But here again, I don’t really know too much about this guy in Honduras, but the COUP was not the way to get rid of him, and that is why Obama responded quickly, not in support of the man or his policies, but more in support of a democratic process. Cause once you start supporting coups it’s the 1950’s all over again.
Studebaker - here’s where we find agreement. The MOST the President should do is issue a short, generic statement of support for those who seek freedom. We’re up to our necks in other countries’ business already and there seems to be mixed reviews floating around about the guy who lost. Obama should have issued one statement and then just shut up about it. The problem is that he goes from zero to “bold” in 6 seconds (once he did start talking about it) and knowing we weren’t going to physically intervene, made us look a little silly. I liked Obama’s initial response, but, he kept talking when he should have simply gone mute. He should have kept his mouth shut on Honduras altogether rather than publicly line up with Castro and Chavez. If we want to change our reputation internationally, it would be helpful and quicker if we did it with commerce rather than commenting or otherwise weighing in on internal political strife.
I don’t think there is much the United States can do. Even if we did everything right and for the right reasons, our history in Iran is a great liability for any good to come of it. Right after WW II we should have implemented a diverse energy science policy.
The 1953 overthrow the government of democratically elected [1951] Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh by the CIA & England’s Secret Intelligence Service & placing the monarch Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the Peacock Throne, set the stage for the 1979 Iranian revolution & hostage crisis.
Since the 1930s Iran had been negotiation with Great Britain for a better share of profits from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).
In 1950, King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia threatened to nationalize his country’s oil facilities if the American-owned Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) did not agree to share profits 50/50. Ibn Saud inspired by of Venezuela’s Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo who cut a 50/50 deal with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Exxon…ExxonMobil) and Royal Dutch Shell in 1948. ARAMCO agreed to Ibn Saud’s demand and the U.S government accorded the American oil companies a tax break equivalent to 50% of their profits on oil sales, the other 50% was diverted to King Ibn Saud via the US Treasury. This deal became known as “golden gimmick.” As far as I know, American taxpayers subsidized this deal from 1950 until 1980, after Saudi Arabia gained full control of ARAMCO.
When Tehran found out about the ARAMCO – Saudi deal, Mossadegh demanded a similar deal for AIOC, which the UK Foreign Office rejected. In March 1951, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. That July, Mossadegh broke off negotiations with AIOC. The British considered the possibility of an invasion to through occupy the oil area. President Harry S. Truman opposed military intervention in Iran but needed Britain’s support for the Korean War. The U.S. tried to settle the dispute through the International Court of Justice, but the efforts were rejected by both the British and Mossadegh.
Hence, the Joint U.S.-British Regime-Change Operation in Iran (Operation Ajax). United States and British officials plotted the military coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister returned the Shah of Iran to power. A British-led oil boycott, covert propaganda campaigns fostering pro-monarchy, anti-Mosaddeq demonstrations, Iranian collaborators working for the C.I.A. posed as Communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric’s home, turning the Islamic community against Mossadegh and created the environment necessary in coup to succeed. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi ruled as an all-powerful monarch until he was overthrown in 1979.
[In 1954, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company changed its name to the British Petroleum Company, now BP.]
If there is one place that Obama’s inexperinece has shown thru its on foriegn policy.He has made many mistakes going back to the campaign.His position on any world event evolves and mutates.
Ho did it when the Russians invaded Georgia by first calling on both sides to show restraint.Georgia was being invaded for heavens sakes.How do you show restraint…duck?
He did the same in Iran by first saying it really didn’t matter who won which ironically is true.But a week later he was lecturing the Iranian government to show restraint as they clubbed the protestors in the street.
No rational person is suggesting military action but instead Obama should have issued a public statement,FROM THE BEGINNING, that showed moral support for those who ostensibly voted for freedom by voting against Ahmadinejad.Moral support.Is that too much to ask from The One.
By the way Fantastic,what is the Obama Doctrine.Seriously I would like to know.Even if it changes by the end of the week, what is it TODAY?
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