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Saturday, March 05, 2005

Dumbest Statement of the Year?

In truth, in Iran as elsewhere in the Middle East today, America's sins were principally those of omission, not commission. Of course, the Eisenhower administration had toppled the popular government of Mohammed Mosaddegh in 1953 -- an event that has reached mythic proportions in Iranian minds.

This is the most jaw-droppingly assinine thing I've read in quite some time. With the blithe phrase "Of course," Kenneth Pollack dismisses the toppling of a democratically elected government and installation of a brutal dictatorship as not enough to enter into the realm of "commission," as something that the citizens of this country shouldn't really be blaming the US for. This is ludicrous, even if what he goes on to write were true, that

Thereafter, however, the United States paid little attention to what the reinstalled shah did. The Kennedy administration pressed him to reform, and got some traction for a brief time. But during the Johnson and especially the Nixon years, Washington simply stopped caring how the shah ruled. This was little understood by Iranians, who believed the United States was manipulating every development in their country.

Oh really? We didn't train the Shah's secret police, the Savak? We didn't provide him with other economic or military assistance?

Jack Clark 9:30 PM [+]   
Post #111008703366502728