1000 x 90

LETTERS / The ‘News’ Never Questions the Legal or Moral Right of the Empire to Attack Whatever Country Is Being Discussed

Dear Editor,

American politicians and media talk of regime change in Iran as if it’s their divine right, and actively do so about countries worldwide. Most Americans think the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran by Islamist revolutionaries was the start of the Empire-Iran conflict. ‘Consumers’ don’t know that those Iranians were reacting to seventy years of American/British interference in their country in which Iran’s oil resources and people were terribly exploited by the Empire and brutally oppressed by an American installed dictator some of that time.

Winston Churchill, as a naval cabinet official, began abusing Iran before WWI using the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, known today as BP, stealing Iran’s oil to fuel Britain’s warships. During WWII British and American actions caused the death of large numbers of Iranians. The Empire was then replacing Britain as the world’s superpower. State Department official Wallace Murray described America’s intentions in 1942: “The obvious fact is that we shall soon be in the position of actually running Iran.”

In 1951 Iran’s citizens, perhaps encouraged by Truman’s promise to “assist free people to work out their own destinies in their own way”, elected Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister. Mossadegh fought Western exploitation, nationalized Anglo-Iranian Oil, expelled British technicians and broke off diplomatic relations with London. His was the most popular and democratic government Iranians have ever known: Time naming him its Man of the Year for 1951, called him “the Iranian George Washington”.

The British were furious and plotted to remove Iran’s democratically elected government hoping for American help. Truman opposed it but Eisenhower didn’t. Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, whose brother Allen Dulles was director of the CIA, wanted Mossadegh out. Both brothers had been attorneys at a law firm that represented Anglo-Iranian Oil.

The CIA launched Operation Ajax in 1953 headed by Kermit Roosevelt, inciting street violence creating revolution. Americans got access to Iranian oil, the Shah was given his throne and Mossadegh was imprisoned. Iran’s oil was again controlled by foreigners. America claimed all of this was done to prevent Iran from “going communist”. A 1953 State Department report concluded that Mossadegh had no communist sympathies and had opposed Soviet meddling. Iran’s main communist party had opposed Mossadegh.

To help the Shah control Iran the CIA and Israel created SAVAK, Iran’s notoriously brutal secret police. SAVAK specialized in torture learned from CIA instructional films. American presidents supported the Shah over the next quarter century with billions in aid, selling him the latest weaponry the same way we do with Israel.

Tremendous long-simmering hatred toward the Empire boiled over in the events of those 444 days in 1979-81. Americans would do well to remember the history that created the hostage crisis the next time our leaders accuse Iran of irrational hatred of America.

Carter used Iraq/Saddam Hussein to sabotage Iran’s new government. The Empire provided bogus intelligence assessments intentionally underreporting Tehran’s military power to encourage Hussein to invade Iran. He did, starting an eight-year war that eventually cost more than a million lives.

The Empire was officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war but provided Iraq with intelligence, billions of dollars in aid including chemical/biological (WMD) materials/anthrax, which Hussein used on Iran’s army and dissenting Iraqi’s. The war became a stalemate. Reagan officials knew that Iraq was launching WMD attacks but continued their support while denying knowledge of such heinous war crimes. Reagan repeatedly sent Rumsfeld to Baghdad to meet with Hussein; pictures of the two men shaking hands would later be displayed as Bush the second miserably failed to sell the war against America’s formerly favored tyrant.

On July 3, 1988, an American warship in Iranian waters shot down an Iranian airliner carrying 290 civilians. Reagan blamed the “barbaric Iranians” for the wholesale aerial slaughter; Vice President Bush, who was running for president, infamously spat: “I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”

Bush the second enabled impressive aggression towards Iran. Senator McStain sang “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”. America’s aggressive swagger was almost amusing but Bush’s provocations and acts of war against Iran weren’t.

Bush’s war plans against Iran reportedly included a false-flag plot hatched by Darth Cheney to send Navy SEALs in boats disguised as Iranian naval vessels to attack American warships in the Straits of Hormuz. The plan was rejected, but Bush supported the MEK, a government designated terrorist group that had previously assassinated American officials when it was fighting the Shah.

The Bush administration pressured the World Bank into suspending emergency relief after the 2003 earthquake, which killed more than 26,000 Iranians and left more than 100,000 others homeless. Bush imposed new sanctions on Iran, which to this day cause great suffering for ordinary people.

Obama continued threatening Iran. America/Israel created a wave of cyberattacks, sabotage and assassination in Iran which would be seen as acts of war if they were committed against America. The Empire sold a record amount of weapons to Iran’s regional adversaries, further raising tensions in the region. Obama ultimately chose cooperation over confrontation that led to the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions.

Much of this can be traced to Israel’s rejection of any peace proposals toward its chosen enemy, which it claims plans the destruction of Israel. Israel says that Iran lies about its nuclear ambitions. Some Israeli political, defense and intelligence officials, and all American intelligence agencies, have repeatedly said over the years that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons.

Trump admits Iran is observing the nuclear deal but still tore it up, proving once again that any agreement with America is a fool’s errand, educating other adversaries who might choose negotiation.

North Korea and other nuclear candidates have certainly noticed that the most surefire insurance against American aggression and regime change is an atomic arsenal. The easy examples are Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi, both of whom disarmed, were subsequently removed and executed. Now that its deal appears sunk, Iran may decide its safety lies in making a bomb.

Despite the American provocation and demonization against Iran, the country hasn’t started a war in modern history. The Empire has attacked, invaded or occupied dozens of nations over the past century, killing millions. It has thousands of nuclear weapons, and has used them. It’s surrounded Iran with bases in mostly hostile nations, which it has fully armed as well. Iran has no nuclear weapons, no bases outside of their area. America spends hundreds of times what Iran does on its military. Two thirds of ‘consumers’ falsely believe that Iran had nukes in a 2010 CNN poll and name Iran as the greatest danger to world peace. Most of the world views the Empire as the biggest threat.

The only country that benefits from dismantling the Iran nuclear deal and a war against Iran is Israel. Netanyahu has boasted about, and shown, his power to manipulate America, and always pushes America away from cooperation and toward confrontation. Netanyahu likes to compare Iran to Nazi Germany despite the fact that there are tens of thousands of Jews living as freely in Iran as anyone is permitted to live under an Islamist theocracy. Jews, who once numbered over 100,000 in Baghdad alone, have completely disappeared from America’s Iraq.

Iran is run by an authoritarian regime that crushes dissent with force but so is the Empire. Those “death to America” chants, shown to demonize Iran, are aimed at ‘our’ criminal government. Do you trust ‘our’ government? Iranians possess a power American ‘consumers’ don’t; the ability to distinguish between a government and its people.

It’s up to you to cut through the lies we’re fed about Iran by our misleaders and ‘our free press’ and to hold ‘our representatives’ to account for their actions. To understand Iran, we’d do well to begin with real history, not hysteria, and then do the same with ‘our’ other ‘burning issues’.

The American public dialogue includes the arrogant assumption that America has the right to pursue regime change against any nation it chooses. For the American ruling class and its media echo chambers, it’s an unquestionable mission with which Americans are “blessed”. Remember all of the forgoing when you consider all of the other ‘problems’ the Empire tells you about, like Russians, elections, Ukraine and on it goes. The Diebold Company bragged openly about their ability to change election results early in the deciders reign. American invasions of much of the world are an easy thing to remember when considering allegations against Russia or Iran.

The arrogant ignorance among ‘consumers’ about ‘our’ government’s actions brings to mind the quote from historian William Blum: “Americans are like the children of a mafia boss who do not know how their father makes his living, but then they are shocked when someone throws a firebomb through their living-room window.” The corporate news media serves ‘our’ government by concealing or making its crimes invisible. The media damage ‘consumers’ by not informing them why certain foreign countries find the Empire so horrible. They call it intervention to hide its true nature: invasion.

The ‘news’ never questions the legal or moral right of the Empire to attack whatever country is being discussed. The conversation is confined to narrow considerations about regime change somewhere without a hint of shame over its hypocritical allegations leveled against Moscow for “meddling” in American politics. The arrogance of America’s politicians and its ‘news’ media is staggering:   Misinformed ‘consumers’ shriek claiming that some crazy “regime” just tossed a firebomb through their living-room window.

for those of you who are interested i’ve begun a new blog experiment mainly of links to things i find worthy of your attention but i have and will include articles by me such as this one and it is: https://patriotismbydegree.blogspot.com/ 

Craig Dudley