Monday, June 22, 2009

June 22, 2009--Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout History

Among the congressman pressing Barack Obama to forcefully condemn Ayatollah Khamenei for presumably rigging the recent presidential election in Iran and ordering the suppressing of dissent, senior Senator Jefferson Beauregard “Jeff” Sessions of Alabama stands out.

When it was pointed out to him that the major reason Obama offered for his originally muted publicly-stated position was that there is so much bad history between the U.S. and Iran that for him to “meddle” in what was at the time an dispute about the results of an internal election would again, as in the past, give the Ayatollah and his crowd another excuse to blame the demonstrations on the streets on American manipulation and thereby hope to stigmatize and defuse them.

This encounter was on TV and Sessions pulled himself up to his most distinguished height, he does look like a senator, and in effect said, “What does history have to do with this? Isn’t it true that more than half of Iranians are younger than 30? This means they’re too young to remember what happened between us and them.”

Well, they may be too young to have lived through the era of the last shah, who back in the 1940s and 50s we helped to place on his throne and then intermittently supported and protected. Most dramatically in 1953 when we restored him to power after he was forced to flee the country by nationalistic opponents. With the help of the British, who, as we, were equally interested in securing Iran’s oil for our own excusive use, the CIA organized the overthrow the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.

Some Iranians younger than 30, though, may have a living memory of the Iran-Iraq War which began in 1980 and lasted until 1988. It was ostensibly about a long-simmering border dispute but in fact was more part of the bloody, centuries-long struggle between Sunnis (who politically controlled Iraq) and Shia, who are the predominant faction in Iran. The Islamic Revolution had already occurred in Iran, the shah had been deposed, and the then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was eager to spread his influence in the region. And though the Iranians had recently released the 52 hostages they had been holding for almost a year and a half, the Americans, under President Reagan in significant ways supported the Iraqis.

Iraqis, who, by the way, were brutally led by, yes, Saddam Hussein. Our then best friend in the region. We offered him direct military support in spite of the fact that he, in what became his signature military strategy, indiscriminately used chemical weapons of mass destruction against the Iranians (and while he was at it, his own Kurds). Overall, at least half a million Iranians were killed and millions more wounded and maimed. All with U.S. support. History does, doesn’t it, have its twists and turns and ironies.

Anyone living in Iran does not have to have a long memory to remember this history—the wounded survivors of that war are visible daily on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan and every rural Iranian village.

So Barack Obama who does know this history of the United States actual meddling in Iran took the political heat and decided not to speak out too forcefully. It would undoubtedly have made him and the rest of us feel good to hear him offer a full-throated defense of democracy—almost all members of both parties in the House and Senate, in a demonstration that bipartisanship is not just an Obama idea, passed a non-binding resolution condemning the Ayatollah—but it would have only served to enflame things on the ground. It is certain that everyone bravely risking their lives on the streets knows where Obama and the rest of America stand—on their side.

And they know how counterproductive it would be for Obama to take the easy road and give in to the passions of the moment. They heard his speech two weeks ago in Cairo and that was enough for them to know what he thinks about our relations with the Islamic world and his commitment to respectful engagement. And they also heard Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech on Friday when he, among other demagogic and threatening things, not only blamed the U.S. for the current crises but also the British. (See New York Times article linked below.)

The Ayatollah knew he was pushing some still hot buttons for many Iranians who either vividly recalled British meddling in propping up the hated shah, and even hiding Salman Rushdie after a fatwa was issued on his life, or had studied the history of their own country. Something our Senator “Jeff” Sessions obviously failed to do.

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