Why the Middle East hates the West - Part II

In Part I (above), Walt gave you the Reader's Digest version of how American (and British) support for the despotic regime of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi contributed to his overthrow in 1979 and the establishment in Iran of a true and fanatical theocracy led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

A theocracy  is a form of government in which clergy have official recognition as civil ruler and official policy is either governed by officials regarded as divinely guided, or is pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religion or religious group. That's bad, right? 

Well, that's official US policy. A state or people should not be ruled by people with religious principles! In America, church and state are separate. America's rulers are decidedly irreligious. The principles that govern "the land of the free" are the "principles" of secular humanism, which has become the de facto state religion. 

But let's return to the Middle East. The Shah of Iran was not the only despot supported by the USA. During the Cold War, any dictator who professed to be against the Commies was, ipso facto [That's enough Latin. Ed.], America's friend. By means of foreign aid, military support and the occasional coup (as in Iran), America propped up Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, Fulgencio Batista, Ferdinand Marcos, [That's enough dictators. Ed.]

However, the USA had never actually resorted to war to maintain in power a corrupt and incompetent -- but pro-Western -- dictatorship until... wait for it... Vietnam.  Yes, Vietnam -- the longest war in American history, the only undeclared war, and the first war America lost since the War of 1812-14. 

Most people think of Vietnam as being LBJ's war or Nixon's war. In fact, it started on President Eisenhower's watch, in 1954. And it rested on Ike's theory that if the USA "lost" Vietnam, it would next lose Laos and Cambodia, then Thailand, and so on. But hold on (nobody cried). How can you lose something you never had in the first place?

Vietnam was (with Laos and Cambodia) part of French Indochina and the larger French empire. The battle of Dien Bien Phu showed France incapable of hanging onto her colonies. What to do? Let them have their independence? No, that would never do. They might decide to be neutral in the Cold War, or, worse, support the Other Side. So the USA began its first colonial war, fully justifying, in the minds of the rest of the Third World, the use of the phrase "American imperialism".

American imperialism is not just a slogan invented by the Communist propaganda machine. It has been a fact of geopolitics for six decades, and remains so today. Today, though, the "empire" which the USA is fighting to maintain is in the Middle East. It is the "empire of oil".

Can the imperial storm-troopers quell the rebellious Islamists of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran? Don't bet on it. (Lifetime pct .983) We'll look at what happened to an earlier empire in Part III, below.

Wisdom about who really runs America, from someone who knew

Len here...again. Walt has been ill since 8 p.m. Montréal time last night, so I'm at centre hice for now.

Our post about the Afghanistan war -- "Reality check: the war in Afghanistan is LOST!" -- drew a terse and cryptic response from Agent 17, who wrote "Ike was right." Walt had to admit that he couldn't remember anything President Eisenhower had ever said, so asked for the reference.

Turns out our man in the souf was reading "Beware the Education–Industrial Complex", an article by Alan Singer published on the BeyondChron website in April of 2012. In the article, Mr. Singer picked a couple of very key points out of the President's farewell address to the nation on completion of his second term, in January 1961

"In the speech," Mr. Singer writes, "Eisenhower warned the American people of the growing power of a 'military-industrial complex', an alliance of the military with defense contractors that he saw as a threat to democracy."

The author's point is that America's transformation into an undemocratic, totalitarian state continues today. Mr. Singer puts it this way: "Democracy in the United States is now under a similar assault from an education-foundation-political-industrial complex."

The article is an attack on corporatism -- the subordination of the interests of the common people to those of big business -- written by one of the "progressive thinkers" who dominate the media. But the point is well taken, particularly in the US of A. You may think the maladministration of Al O'Bama is in charge, but it's really big business which drives government policy.

If you want proof, look no further than Obamacare. Why does America -- alone of all developed nations -- not have free (tax-funded) basic health care for all? Because the insurance companies and HMOs don't want to relinquish their obscene profits! Who screwed up America's financial system? The banks! Who insists on spending trillions of dollars on armaments we don't need and wars that can't be won? The military-industrial complex! I rest my case.

Click here to read the complete text of President Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address.