The Fall of the Shah - One of America's Worst Foreign Policy Blunder

I have always believed that one of America's worst foreign policy blunders was its failure to support the Shah of Iran and defeat Islamic extremists back in 1979 - obviously the Vietnam War and the Iraq War may take the prize for the worse blunders, The Iraq War proving that nothing had been learned from the Vietnam fiasco.  Now a new book, "The Fall of Heaven,” by Andrew Scott Cooper, looks at the Shah and argues that much about the Shah was misinterpreted and that the United States and many in the media were duped and played for fools by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his fellow Islamic extremist revolutionaries.  From the fall of the Shah forward in time the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran have helped spread Islamic terror across the Middle East.  Ironically, Iran's regional arch rival, Saudi Arabia, has funded the same spread of terrorism.   I just received the book today, but a review in the Washington Post looks at the book and some of its disturbing findings. Here are excerpts:

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, known as the shah, has always been portrayed as both ruthless and craven — the last emperor of Iran who fled on the eve of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Nearly four decades after his death, a new book offers a more sympathetic, nuanced portrait of him and the dynasty he was born into. In “The Fall of Heaven,” Andrew Scott Cooper uses newly declassified U.S. documents from the Carter administration, interviews with the shah’s aides and revolutionary leaders as well as his own research in Iran to make the case that the shah has been misinterpreted, reduced to “a bloodless enigma.” Cooper, a Middle East specialist and the author of “Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East,” offers a convincing narrative about who the man was and the dynamics that led to his downfall. The shah came to power in 1941 after the British and the Soviets forced his father, Reza Pahlavi, to abdicate in his favor. He survived two major political upheavals, and by the early 1960s, oil wealth enabled him to modernize Iran. Religious leaders, however, accused him of Westernizing the country. Communist and nationalist activists criticized him, saying he distributed wealth and power among the ruling elite. His secret police grew more repressive, seeking to end opposition but instead alienating students and intellectuals.

The seeds of the shah’s downfall began in 1977, Cooper argues, after Saudi Arabia flooded markets with cheap oil. The shortfall in Iran’s oil revenue, combined with a drought, forced dissatisfied laborers to flock to larger cities, looking for work. The shah introduced political and social liberalization to ease the mood, unaware, Cooper notes, that his policies provided religious extremists with a context to mobilize the masses against him. According to Cooper, by the time he left the country in January 1979 the shah had, by his reforms, reduced his role to that of a constitutional figure­head. A series of missteps, economic disruptions and miscalculations by Western powers, as well as a well-funded opposition, crippled the shah’s efforts to save himself.
 Most shocking perhaps were the deceptive tactics the opposition used to demonize him. Cooper claims, for example, that Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, a nationalist-left activist who deposed the shah with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and later served as the first president, told him how they manipulated the Western media’s coverage of Iran. The revolutionaries “studied western journalists’ reporting methods, fed them story ideas, steered them toward sympathetic interviewees, and supplied them with the revolutionary movement’s facts and figures,” Cooper argues, citing Bani-Sadr. This led to the publication of grossly inflated numbers of activists jailed and executed by the shah’s secret police. The figures, Cooper says, helped provoke anti-shah sentiments and were not corrected, even after Red Cross inspectors investigated and rejected the claims. Revolutionaries themselves, the book notes, have since refuted the numbers. To bolster the impression that the shah was bent on murdering his people, the opposition initiated violence and blamed it on the shah. In the year before the victory of the revolution, the Islamists burned hundreds of private businesses, including cinemas, Cooper writes. The most brutal attack came in August 1978, when 430 men, women and children were burned to death at Rex Cinema in the southern city of Abadan — the worst arson since World War II. The inferno was intended “to destabilize and panic Iranian society,” Cooper argues. It also successfully fanned the flames of hostility toward the shah across the country.  The culprit, . . . was Hossein Takbalizadeh, an Islamist linked to a local Khomeini underground cell who was eventually tried and convicted of murder by an Iranian court after the revolution.
 The arrival of William Sullivan, U.S. ambassador to Tehran, in the summer of 1977 was not good news for the shah, Cooper contends. “He showed little or any sensitivity to the unique pressures that the shah faced at home by supporting U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East . . . . Sullivan continued to dismiss worries by moderate religious leaders — including opponents of the shah — over the consequences of the shah’s departure, arguing that their fears “were not very coherent or well reasoned.” It was only in the shah’s final days in Iran, Cooper concludes, that “Ambassador Sullivan received crucial intelligence suggesting that he might have backed the wrong horse after all.”
 Until the end, “nationalism was like a religion” for the shah, Cooper argues. Over nearly four decades, the shah transformed a backward, poverty-stricken country into a powerful one with the most educated workforce in the Middle East. This sober narrative will resonate with many Iranians — including myself — who lived under the grim conditions Khomeini introduced after the revolution. As other countries in the Middle East are going through similar transformations and vying for political reform, Cooper reminds us of the ability of power-hungry leaders, capable of manipulating people’s desire for change, to build even more brutal and unaccountable systems.

I have always seen parallels between the fall of the Russian imperial dynasty to the Bolsheviks and the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty to  Khomeini and his thugs.  In each case the revolutionaries who claimed to represent the people once in power unleashed a blood bath of repression and set back the respective nations by decades.  And like Lenin, Khomeini had been exiled instead of executed as, in my view, he deserved.  The Bolsheviks referred to Nicholas II as "bloody Nicholas," yet then went on to murder millions - tens of millions if one counts Stalin's famines in the early 1930's to wipe out wealthy peasants.  Khomeini depicted the Shah as a wanton murder, yet it was his own regime that oversaw a vast bloodbath using, of course, religion as a justification.

The Shah's real sin in the eyes of Khomeini and his faction was that he was modernizing and westernizing Iran and in the process weakening the power of the "holy men" and the hatred and ignorance they represent.  America should have fully supported the Shah and assisted in stamping out Khomeini and his fellow Islamic extremist.  Had that been done, much of the horrors since 1979 might have been avoided. 

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, in 1954

Quote of the Day: Gary Wills on The Hopelessness of Hoping for a Reformer Pope

As a ruling model, the Roman Catholic Church is based on the governing structure of the Roman Empire or a feudal monarchy with the king/emperor at the top, the cardinals and bishops as the equivalents of the feudal lords sworn by fealty to the king/emperor and the laity the equivalent of the serfs. Serf who are to obey their lords and financially support the entire structure that caters to the whims and conceits of the rulers.  And under the last two Popes, the system seems to have become even more disdainful of the laity/serfs.  Gary Wills has a piece in the New York Times that looks at the futility of hoping that somehow a reformer Pope could be elected by the coming conclave of cardinals who earned their positions by obsequiousness and sycophancy.  Here an on point excerpt:

[A] new pope will be elected by cardinals who were elevated to office by the very popes who reaffirmed “eternal truths” like the teaching on contraception. They were appointed for their loyalty, as were the American bishops who stubbornly upheld the contraception nonsense in our elections. 

Will the new conclave vote for a man who goes against the teachings of his predecessors? Even if they do, can the man chosen buck the structure through which he rose without kicking the structure down? These considerations have given the election of new popes the air of watching Charlie Brown keep trying to kick the football, hoping that Lucy will cooperate. 

As this election approaches, some hope that the shortage of priests, and their damaged reputation and morale, can be remedied by adding married priests, or women priests, or gay priests. But that misses the point. Whatever their sexual status, they will still be priests. They will not be chosen by their congregations (as was the practice in the early church). They will be appointed from above, by bishops approved for their loyalty to Rome, which will police their doctrinal views as it has with priests heretofore. The power structure will not be changed by giving it new faces. Monarchies die hard. 

In 1859, John Henry Newman published an article that led to his denunciation in Rome as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” and it showed that in history the laity had been more true to the Gospel than the hierarchy. That was an unacceptable position to Rome. It still is. 

The claim of priests and popes to be the sole conduits of grace is a remnant of the era of papal monarchy. We are watching that era fade. But some refuse to recognize its senescence. Such people will run peppily up, like Charlie Brown, to the coming of a new pope. But Lucy, as usual, still holds the football.  

Like the GOP which it parallels in many ways (e.g., denying scientific realities), the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy will cling to power and refuse all meaningful change until the church structure literally begins to collapse around them.  My prediction is that in the not too distant future the Catholic Church will become a black African denomination.  As it advances economically and socially, Latin America will follow the path of Europe, not Africa wher it will take many more generations to escape the ignorance and simple mindedness that are now prerequisites for the Church to thrive.

The Role of Gay's in America's War for Independence

UPDATED:  If you're interested in learning more about The United States's queer past, check out LGBT lecturer Michael Bronski's "Queer History of the United States of America."  It sells for $20.55 on Amazon.com.

For the last fourteen month's I have been writing an LGBT issues column in the print issue of Veer Magazine, a local alternative magazine that covers news, arts, entertainment, dining and cultural events.  Like this blog, my monthly column topics range from political issues to LGBT history.  The July, 2012, column (the print version of Veer hits the newsstands on the 15th of each month) will address the often forgotten role that gays played in winning America's war for independence (the boyfriend came up with the idea).  It is an aspect of American history that for too long has been hidden from the public eye and consciousness. Thus, it's an appropriate topic this 4th of July.  The following are excerpts from the upcoming July, 2012, column - locals can pick up a copy of Veer for the whole piece - followed by additional thoughts:

[M]any of us have heard familiar stories about the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers.  What we have not heard due to revisionist history and a sanitizing of reputations of many of the nation’s early leaders is the vital role that gays played in winning the United Sates’ independence from Great Britain.  Legislation recently enacted in California seeks to remedy this silence by requiring the inclusion of the contributions of LGBT individuals in the history curriculum.

However, until more progress is made on this front, most Americans remain ignorant of the critical roles played by some individuals who would likely be labeled as gays under today’s understanding of sexual orientation is literally non-existent.  .  .  .  .  Who am I talking about?  Four individuals immediately spring to mind: Major. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian military genius and chief of staff to George Washington, his young French assistant, Pierre Etienne Duponceau, Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens.

Yes, it’s true that at the time of the Revolutionary War the terms “homosexual” or “gay” had yet been coined.   But looking at historical accounts and existing correspondence, the major loves of these men’s lives involved those of the same sex.  And what’s even more significant is the fact that Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were well aware of the romantic inclinations of these significant contributors to the nation’s war for independence.  

Perhaps the greatest role was played by Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben.  Some maintain that the United States and its formidable military might not exist but for the contributions of this brilliant homosexual soldier from Prussia (modern-day Germany).  Von Steuben was recruited to the American military cause by Benjamin Franklin while he was in France.   For his part, von Steuben jumped at the opportunity since things were becoming too hot for him in Europe due to his many affairs with young men,  

As for von Steuben’s sexual orientation, historian Victoria A. Brownworth has noted that:

That Washington looked the other way with same-sex couples is most obvious in his dealings with Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben   .   .  .  Benjamin Franklin who provided the letters of recommendation to Washington, but Franklin was aware that von Steuben had been implicated in relationships with boys and young men and had been expelled from the court of Frederick the Great for homosexual behavior and was on the verge of being prosecuted when he left Germany for France.  .  .  .  Von Steuben’s relationship with Washington was close and there were no conflicts with Washington over von Steuben’s sleeping arrangements at Valley Forge with his young Frenchman, Duponceau.

There's considerably more in the column about Hamilton, Laurens, and Deborah Sampson, who served in the Continental Army disguised as a man under the name Robert Shurtlieff, but readers will get the drift of the column's .   More on von Steuben's many contributions can be found in a piece in the Washington Blade that was written for the gay history project last year.  Here's a sampling from the Blade article:

February 1778: Arrives at Valley Forge to serve under Washington, having informed Congress of his desire for paid service after an initial volunteer trial period, with which request Washington concurs.

March 1778: Begins tenure as inspector general, drilling troops according to established European military precepts.

1778-79: Writes “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States,” which becomes a fundamental guide for the Continental Army and remains in active use through the War of 1812, being published in over 70 editions.

1780-81: Senior military officer in charge of troop and supply mobilization in Virginia.

1781: Replaced by Marquis de Lafayette as commander in Virginia.

1781-83: Continues to serve as Washington’s inspector general, and is active in improving discipline and streamlining administration in the army.

Spring 1783: Assists in formulating plans for the postwar American military.

Washington rewarded Von Steuben with a house at Valley Forge (still in existence and open for visits) which he shared with his aide-de-camps Capt. William North and Gen. Benjamin Walker. Walker lived with him through the remainder of his life, and von Steuben, who neither married nor denied any of the allegations of homosexuality, left his estate to North and Walker. His last will and testament, which includes the line “extraordinarily intense emotional relationship,” has been described as a love letter to Walker.

The nation that von Steuben helped found has memorialized him with numerous statues, including those at Lafayette Square near the White House and at Valley Forge and Utica, N.Y. (where he is buried) and German Americans celebrate his birthday each year on Sept. 17, hosting parades in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago.

If George Washington was the father of the nation, then von Steuben, a gay man, was the father of the United States military.

Wikipedia also has this:

Steuben was the surname of Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730-1794), a Prussian officer who aided the colonials in the American Revolutionary War.  Places in the United States of America named after Steuben include:  Steuben, Maine; Steuben, New York; Steuben, Wisconsin; Steuben County, Indiana; Steuben County, New York;Steubenville, Indiana;Steubenville, Ohio

It is far past time that American citizens learn the real history of  the contributions of LGBT individuals to this nation.  Will the Christiansts scream and throw a fit?  Most definitely - one only need look at their opposition to the LGBT history law in California.  The fact that bigots and demagogues don't like the truth doesn't make it any less the truth.  This country needs to know the truth, not just disingenuous Christianist lies and anti-gay propaganda.

Clinton: Middle East Faces Disaster Without Reform

As the forces of anti-modernity and religious repression continue to hold sway across the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has issued a frank and all too accurate assessment of where the Islamic nations are headed without reform, and an end to corrupt and repressive regimes, and a religious elite who are are determined to stamp out opportunities for a more democratic and progressive future. Worse yet, given the constraints on outlets for advancement and opportunity for the exploding number of young citizens, all too many may opt for radicalism that could topple the existing regimes and spread instability across the globe. Insisting on an adherence to knowledge a millennium out of date is a disaster waiting to happen - both in the Middle East and in pockets of religious extremists across the world, including the Christo-fascist elements in the USA. These forces base their politics on religious derived hate and division rather than cooperation and mutual advancement. It's yet another example of religion being a great force for evil in the world. Here are highlights from Huffington Post on Clinton's analysis:
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Wrapping up a four-nation tour of U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf with unusually blunt remarks to a regional development conference in the Qatari capital of Doha, Clinton said economic and political space must be opened up for the Arab world's exploding youth population, women and minorities.
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Without that, respect for human rights, improved business climates and an end to pervasive corruption, she said young people and others will increasingly turn to radicalism and violence that will bleed outside the region, threatening not only Middle Eastern stability and security but the rest of the world.
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Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries' problems for a little while, but not forever," Clinton said. "If leaders don't offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum." "Extremist elements, terrorist groups and others who would prey on desperation and poverty are already out there appealing for allegiance and competing for influence," she said. "This is a critical moment and this is a test of leadership for all of us."

But the limits of Clinton's message were clear in Yemen, a fragile, politically closed and impoverished nation that is a critical U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. She said civil society in Yemen is viewed with deep suspicion by the government.
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"There is not the level of cooperation that there needs to be to improve the lives of the Yemeni people and put Yemen on a firmer foundation going forward," she said.
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Developments in Yemen appeared to underscore that concern. A day after Clinton met Yemeni opposition leaders at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, authorities in Yemen announced Wednesday that citizens must get prior approval before entering a foreign embassy. Yemen's official news agency Saba said the conditions were security precautions and part of efforts to fight terrorism and to preserve the embassies' security.
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It is sad to see backward monarchies and religious zealots continue to put power and control over the true well being of their people. Sooner or later, the lid will blow off and violence will sweep away these forces of reactionary thought and culture. Unfortunately, many innocent people will die in the conflagration. History has shown us this model time and time again, be it the Ancien Regime in France, Tsarist Russia and other nations.

Shah's Son Calls Crisis a Mmoment of Truth'

I have written previously about the parallels between the Russian revolution of 1917 and the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and how an allegedly tyrannical monarch was over thrown only to be replaced by an utterly vile and brutal regime that made its predecessor look like the height of compassion and moderation. Interestingly, the Shah of Iran's son (pictured above) shared some of his thoughts with what is taking place in Iran - a country that his father did much to modernize and poise for engagement with the west in a positive sense. Of course, these efforts were hated by the mullahs and fundamentalist extremists who now rule the country. (I had an uncle who was an engineer working in Iran in 1979 - he had nothing good to say about the fundamentalists and literally had to walk across the border to safety in order to escape the revolution). Here are some highlights from CNN:
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The son of the former shah of Iran called Monday for solidarity against Iran's Islamic regime, warning that the democratic movement born out of the election crisis might not succeed without international support.

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"The moment of truth has arrived," Reza Shah Pahlavi said at Washington's National Press Club. "The people of Iran need to know who stands with them." Pahlavi has lived in exile since 1979, when his father, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was overthrown during the Islamic Revolution. Under the shah's regime, Iran saw nationalization of its oil and a strong movement toward modernization. Still, his secular programs and recognition of Israel cost him the support of the country's Shiite clergy, sparking clashes with the religious right and others who resented his pro-West views.

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Citing anecdotes from people inside the Iranian establishment, Pahlavi said he had heard that security forces have begun to distance themselves from the regime. "It has already started," he said, citing reports that members of the security forces have gone home after their shifts ended and changed into plain clothes to join the protesters. "Many, many elements within the security forces, within the Revolutionary Guard, are showing discontent," Pahlavi said. "There is an amazing reflection that is happening. ... This is a movement that has blown out of proportion."

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Pahlavi praised the statements and tone of President Obama, saying that any outside attempt to interfere in Iran's internal affairs "will give the tyrants the excuse they need to paper over their own differences and target every man struggling for freedom as a foreign agent." But he said there was a difference between interfering in a country's sovereign affairs and standing for principles of human rights and democracy.

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In my view, one of the USA's big policy mistakes was doing nothing and allowing the Shah's government to fall only to be replaced by a far worse regime.