The other Kermit

If or when George W. Bush bombs Iran, or allows Israel to nuke Iran with its German made missile subs, I expect to hear him say what he has said about the amorphous forces gathering against us around the world: that “They hate us for our freedom.”

Americans have short memories and make a virtue of blind faith; so we don’t remember Kermit Roosevelt or Operation Ajax and we believe we’ve always been the good guys. Iran should be grateful to us or to Jimmy Carter for letting the Shah lose power, some of us would say, not remembering that it was Kermit, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt who as an agent of the British and of the CIA overthrew an elected Prime Minister, Muhammad Mossadeq and put the Shah on the throne in 1953. Mossadeq made the mistake of assuming that Iran’s oil belonged to Iran and not to the nation whose manifest destiny was to grab the world’s resources; he nationalized the oil wells and we had him ousted, just two years after he appeared as Time Magazine’s man of the year. Shah Reza Pahlevi’s gratitude and fealty to the West was manifest in giving the multinational oil companies access to Iranian reserves.

So much for free elections, democracy and the phony posturing of the United States. Our policy in this and so many other cases is that free elections are wonderful when and only when they result in pro-US (read pro-oil companies) governments. Iran has an elected government, much as Egypt has an elected government. Egypt has no oil. It isn’t about power to the people, it’s about petroleum to us. But “they hate us for our freedoms” Is Bush’s story and he’s sticking to it. His predecessor Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, did discuss the anti US animosity in Iran and it’s roots, but facts and the attendant hint of apology don’t sit well with our imperial ambition particularly during the crotch sniffing enterprises of the Republicans. Tough guys can’t admit of mistakes much less admit of not being tough.

Of course the Government of Iran doesn’t need much history to base its hatreds on – xenophobia and religious bigotry provide adequate animosity, but history certainly is more scrupulously observed in some parts of the world than it is here. Iraq remembers how the “Coalition” backed Saddam and Iran remembers how we backed Saddam against them and gave him chemical weapons to do it with. We put the bodies in those mass graves we’re always talking about. The world remembers how we have backed any form of government, brutal or benign as long as it gave us the oil or rubber or whatever else we want. It remembers how we hate them for their freedom.