[Marxism] The "democratization" of the Middle East

[Administrator Shannon <brian_shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I sent this to Marxmail two years ago as a commentary on Bernard  
Lewis's books.

WHEN MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES TRY TO WESTERNIZE

The publication of "All the Shah's Men" is a welcome antidote to Bernard
Lewis's main theme that Middle Eastern societies have only themselves to
blame for their "failure to modernize" in the modern era.

In fact, all serious attempts to adopt "democratic" social, political  
and
economic ideas have been undermined or destroyed by imperialist  
policies of
the West, particularly Great Britain and the United States. The fanatic
religious parties and regimes that they helped create serve both to  
check
the radical impulses of the oppressed people of the middle east and as a
convenient whipping boy when their actions spill over into violent
anti-Western actions.

AFGHANISTAN
A few months after 9/11, in an interview on National Public Radio, a  
former
CIA official casually remarked that the Russian-backed government of
Afghanistan had a program of "Westernization." Of course, since that
Westernization was being put into effect by a pro-soviet government,  
it had
to be overthrown.

Here again is part of the now famous interview with Zbigniew  
Brzezinski, Le
Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998: "Yes. According to the
official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during  
1980,
that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec  
1979. But
the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise.  
Indeed, it
was July 3, 1979, [6 months before Soviet intervention] that President
Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the
pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was  
going
to induce a Soviet military intervention."

IRAQ
Below is a contemporary U.S. government official's view of the  
February 1963
Baath Party's overthrow of the Kassem government (which included the
massacre of hundreds, perhaps thousands of Communist Party members  
and began
Saddam Hussein's rise to power) presented only one month after the  
coup. It is from an issue of Student Life, a weekly newspaper at  
Pomona College.

Below that is an analysis of the same February 1963 coup by NY Times  
writer Roger Morris
written March, 2003.

IRAN
Finally, a review of a 2003 book on the overthrow of Mossadegh, the  
premier of Iran.

Brian Shannon
_____________

"The February revolution in Iraq is basically a fulfillment of the 1958
revolution which overthrew the country's Hashemite monarchy, Dr. J.  
Russell
Andrus, U.S. rep. in Baghdad for the Agency for International  
Development,
told Pomona [College] students today. ... The people, he said, were
dissatisfied before the 1958 revolution with King Feisall II and his  
prime
minister, Nuri Said. Both regimes, the people felt, failed to carry  
out the
reforms they wanted. Nuri Said, who ran the Iraqi government until his
assassination in 1958, was intelligent and well-meaning. However, his
advances in hydro-electricity and similar projects failed to have an  
impact
on the people. Kassem's rule, which followed, was marked by  
bloodbaths and
by the infiltration of Communist 'technicians' and equipment, Dr. Andrus
continued.
"He finds the current trends hopeful, saying that 'the Iraqi people are
intelligent and there is no reason why they cannot build for  
themselves a
nation they can be proud of.'"

*     *     *     *     *

"Forty years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency, under PRESIDENT  
JOHN F.
KENNEDY [my emphasis], conducted its own regime change in Baghdad,  
carried
out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

"The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim  
Kassem, a
general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi
monarchy. ... America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely  
substantiated,
however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and  
in the
work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the
C.I.A.

"By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms
rivaling Israel's arsenal, threatening Western oil interests,  
resuming his
country's old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the
dominance of America in the Middle East — all steps Saddam Hussein  
was to
repeat in some form — Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous
leader who must be removed.

"In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq. ...
[W]ithout significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like
President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and  
Baghdad,
American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington  
set up a
base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and  
radioing
orders to rebels. [O]n Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in
Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem  
gave up,
and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad
television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime.  
"Almost
certainly a gain for our side," Robert Komer, a National Security  
Council
aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

"As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti- 
Communist
Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction  
influential
in the Iraqi Army.... [T]he 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath.  
Using
lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the  
C.I.A., the
Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated  
elite —
killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have  
participated....
The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used
against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against
Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil,  
Bechtel
and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad — for American  
firms,
their first major involvement in Iraq.
www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/history/2003/0314history.htm
OR http://makeashorterlink.com/?R10A2115C

*     *     *     *     *

THE NEW BOOK ON IRAN

"Fifty years ago, the CIA overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular,
democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and reinstalled the  
country's
exiled monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah. In "All the Shah's Men," Stephen  
Kinzer,
a longtime New York Times correspondent, covers this event in an  
exciting
narrative. He questions whether Americans are well served by  
interventions
for regime change abroad, and he reminds us of the long history of  
Iranian
resistance to great power interventions, as well as the unanticipated
consequences of intervention.

"Mossadegh's overthrow in 1953 undermined Iran's progress toward  
democracy
and independence, shored up a dictatorial monarchy backed by the United
States and ultimately strengthened the only opposition the shah could  
not
suppress — the Islamic opposition. Although Mossadegh's government  
was more
popular than today's Iranian regime, it was depicted in the U.S.  
media as
unpopular, and the coup against it was portrayed as a popular victory.

http://www.flyingfish.org.uk/articles/rushdie/03-07-06lat.htm
OR http://makeashorterlink.com/?M61A2315C






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