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The Hypocrisy of Democracy
By Justin Soutar (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)
From 1953 to 1978, the US kept Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi's regime flourishing with piles of money to the tune of $20 billion, mainly consisting of weapons, arms contracts and technical support in return for his assortment of godless and unjust domestic policies that favored the Western petroleum corporations. In return, the Shah permitted a band of Western investors to reap handsome profits from Iran's oil business in an unjust system which diverted much of the income to their personal enrichment as well as that of the Shah. In response to discontent with this inequity, the Shah grew dictatorial, assuming absolute power in defiance of the Iranian constitution. His policies included mass arrests, detention, torture and execution of political dissidents without trial; constant surveillance of the citizenry through SAVAK, a 25,000-man intelligence agency; the suppression of religious practice; and most important of all, laissez-faire capitalism that steadily increased the Iranian poverty rate. While the “White Revolution” brought a redistribution of land among peasants, this had no lasting effect in the face of the foreign oil companies’ self-serving manipulation of the market. Moreover, the reform program introduced unpopular Western innovations such as female suffrage and compulsory secular education. At the price of breaking the Law of God, earning Middle Eastern suspicion, violating the principles of self-determination and noninterference in the affairs of other countries and alienating the people of Iran, America obtained much of the oil it needed to stay rich. Iranian religious leaders, intellectuals and workers united in ever-louder opposition to the Shah. The joint partnership of the American government and media elite squelched all the bad news, successfully keeping US citizens in the dark. But the truth eventually leaked out in 1979, when the Iranian citizens rose up in unison against the Shah and overthrew him, bringing in the fiercely anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini with fantastic jubilation. Unfortunately, the US government could not stand the combination of a virulently anti-American leader with the overwhelming allegiance of his people. He was a perfect scapegoat for the US, which immediately piled false condemnations upon him and a year later we helped Iraq to fight a war against Iran, partly to punish the latter for its breakthrough to democracy. The Constitutional Revolution of Persia, the overthrow of Ahmad Shah, the election of Mohammed Mossadiq and the joyful welcome given to Ayatollah Khomeini are all classic examples of a nation’s people asserting their right to self-government—what G. K. Chesterton called democracy—despite external pressures and intervention. As Thomas Jefferson alluded to in his remark quoted above, fallen human nature tends to obscure and threaten true democracy. We Americans must be on our guard for the evil of a relentless transnational mega-corporate greed disguised as the good of an unselfish worldwide spread of democracy.
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