SPEAKING
FREELY What made Iran's revolution any
different? By Dallas Darling
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
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The United States
has not always supported popular and democratic
uprisings around the world. As in Vietnam,
Guatemala, Chile, Haiti, and dozens of other
nations, it has resisted and sabotaged, even
militarily intervened in the name of national and
corporate security, to prevent democracies from
spreading. Regarding the various Arab Springs in
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, and Syria, ones
that have been welcomed and supported by American
political and economic interests, why wasn't
Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution considered
democratic too?
After World War II, the US
militarily occupied Iran and militarized
a regime, a regime that
granted allowed US corporations to exploit
resources like petroleum and forestry. It was also
used as leverage against Russia and China, two
Communist nations. The super-militarization and
exploitation of Iran, along with enforcing a
modernization program and secular market-oriented
economy, angered Iran's Muslim majority. It also
caused mass poverty and unemployment. Many
Iranians lived in hideously unlivable urban
settlements and shanty dwellings that lacked
sewage and water and other basic necessities.
By the mid 1970s, it was clear that the
US-backed and corrupt regime in Iran was in
trouble. Not only had the United States Central
Intelligence Agency assisted in arresting and
torturing and murdering thousands of political
activists and reformists, both Islamic and
Communist, but it prevented free and fair
elections. At one point, the US even toppled a
democratically elected leader. By 1978, US-trained
Iranian Guards were beating and machine-gunning
protesters and striking workers (Jaleh Square).
With Washington's approval, the SAVAK, Iran's
secret police, were seizing people from homes to
be tortured and killed.
It should have
been no surprise, then, when Iran's Supreme
Religious Leader returned and was overwhelming
welcomed by Iran's predominantly Islamic nation.
Neither should US leaders have been caught-off
guard when Iran's new republic wanted the
US-backed shah, who by now had fled to the US, to
be returned in order to try him for crimes against
his people. For the 20,000 Iranians that were
tortured and killed under the brutal shah's and
CIA's regime, it was justifiable that Islamic
students took 52 Americans hostage, holding them
in exchange for the shah.
But few in the
US recognized Iran's new democratic movement and
its new republican government. Extremely censored,
even fewer Americans found the US morally
responsible for the shah's tortured and murdered
subjects. Neither were there offers to make amends
for US involvement in overthrowing Iran's
popularly elected leader in 1953. Instead, the US
and its political leaders and pundits labeled
Iran's protesters and striking workers mobs of
frenzied zealots. Iran's democratic revolution was
nothing more than a circus manipulated by mad
religious dictators.
But in reality,
perhaps the US had grown anti-democratic, even
dictatorial. Since supreme power is held by the
people and exercised either directly or through
elected representatives, it was evident that the
US had lost its democratic compass. Not only had
US leaders imposed on Americans extremely
unpopular wars, but there was an ever increasing
economically wealthy and politically powerful
minority ruling and legislating laws. Still,
minority and individual rights were quickly
eroding, as were equal opportunities in regards to
education, employment, and health care needs.
As constitutional rights and laws
succumbed to corporate elites and their abusive
institutions, most Americans were led to believe
that only their "brand" of limited democracy was
absolute. Again, Christian, Consociational,
Industrial, Liberal, Popular, Pluralistic,
Islamic, Social, Jewish, and yet Direct
Democracies and their systems were often
denounced, even crushed by America's
Military-Industrial-Corporate Republic.
Anti-democratic wars have mentally, emotionally,
psychologically, morally, and civically bankrupted
America's limited democracy and its once vibrant
popular organizations.
Like many wonderful
ideas, democracy has to travel through a nation's
collective mindset and emotional psyche. Sadly, it
is often shadowed by its doubles-bad ideas that
are close enough to be easily mistaken for the
real thing. At the same time, it is sometimes
wrongly associated with undemocratic regimes, as
in the case of the US-backed regime that ruled
Iran. Democracy is extremely hard and takes a
tremendous amount of work and effort by citizens.
It must always be tempered with toleration,
engagement, education, and trust, all of which
have been neglected in the US This is the reason
for a disastrous democracy.
America's
"disaster democracy" is now incapable of
militarily intervening and occupying or dominating
Arab Springs that are occurring throughout Africa,
the Middle East, and Asia. As the US's
military-industrial-corporate republic's global
power rapidly declines even more, alternative and
different democracies, some initially much more
bloodier and deadlier than Iran's Islamic
revolution turned republic, will continue to
happen. One thing is certain, though, various
forms of democracies and popular ideas will
evolve, challenging US hegemony that is often
confused with democracy.
Perhaps if the US
would have been open and accepting to Iran's
democratic evolution in 1979, or Iran's own
Islamic Spring, it could have at least started to
prevent its own demise, its own road to a
disastrous democracy. And if the same political
and corporate elites in America would have
supported Iran's theo-democracy back then, not to
mention other diverse popular movements throughout
the world, maybe they would not have fought
against democratic ideas and movements that
troubled them back home. They might even be able
to recognize democratic movements today, like
Occupy Wall Street.
Dallas
Darling is the author of Politics 501: An
A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and
Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly
Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism,
And Consumerism in the Context of John's
Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of
Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics,
Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a
correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read
more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com
and wn.com//dallasdarling.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
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