'What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say'

[Aidoneus]

In Memory of August 19, 1953
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH

"'I owe my throne to God, my people, my
army and to you!' By 'you' he (the shah)
meant me and the two countries-Great
Britain and the United States-I was
representing. We were all heroes."

Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran, Kermit Roosevelt, 1979

It is ironic that CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, published his book on the 1953 CIA coup in Iran and the return of the shah in the same year that "his majesty's government" was overthrown. An American friend gave a copy of the book to me shortly after its publication in 1979. I skimmed through the book and put it on my bookshelf. The CIA coup appeared irrelevant when the old and decadent institution of monarchy in Iran seemed to be finished once and for all.

More importantly, however, I, along with many other Iranians of my generation, knew the story full well and did not need Kermit to repeat it. We knew that the shah owed his throne to the likes of Kermit. But we also knew something that Kermit didn't know, or didn't say. We knew that we owe to the Kermits of the world our tortured past: years of being forced as students to stand in the hot sun of Tehran in lines, waving his majesty's picture or flag as his entourage passed by in fast moving, shiny, big black cars with darkened-glass windows; years of being forced to rise and stay standing in every public event, including movie theaters, while his majesty's national anthem was being played; years of watching a dense megalomaniac try to imitate "Cyrus the Great" by wearing ridiculous ceremonial robes in extravagant celebration of his birthdays or crowning of his queens; years of being hushed by our parents, fearful of being arrested, if we uttered a critical word about his majesty's government or his American advisors; years of worrying about secret police (SAVAK) informants, who were smartly, but ruthlessly, trained by the best of the US's CIA and Israeli's Mossad; years of witnessing our friends and acquaintances being taken to jail, some never heard from again; years of passing by buildings in which, we were told, people were being tormented; years of hearing about people dying under torture or quietly executed; years of being exiled in a foreign country, which ironically was the belly of the beast, the metropolis, the center which masterminded much of our misfortune in the first place; years of spending our precious youth to free or save thousands of political prisoners by marching in the streets of the metropolis, wearing masks to hide our identities and looking bizarre to those who knew nothing about our story; and, finally, years of trying to prove to the American people that the 1953 CIA coup was not a fig-leaf of our imagination or a conspiracy theory, that it indeed happened and that they, whether they like it or not, have a certain culpability in what their government does around the world.

Most Americans, however, did not believe our story or did not care about it until the 1979 Revolution in Iran and the subsequent storming of the US Embassy in Tehran by the "students following the line of Imam." Once 52 Americans were blindfolded and held by the students in what they called the "nest of spies," questions began to be raised: Who lost Iran? How did we lose it? Why are the Iranians so insanely agitated? Why do they burn our flag? Why do they hate us so much? In the midst of the hysteria, of course, no intelligent answer was sought and none was given. Surely, no meaningful answer was ever offered by the US government then or in the next two decades.

It was not until the US corporations-which, as a result of the US's economic sanctions and executive orders, were prevented from making lucrative deals with Iran-put pressure on the US government in the late 1990s that we saw the first admissions of guilt about the events of 1953. On April 12, 1999, in an offhand remark in front of the captains of industry, President Clinton said:(...)

--snip--

http://www.counterpunch.org/sasan08192003.html

Especially notable for 2 reasons:--1) good piece, 2) at over 300 words, quite possibly the longest single sentence in recorded human history. Well done on both counts..

[protect freedom impeach bush now]

1. icing on the cake , after reading All The Shah's Men - An American Coup

fits like a glove

AFTER reading --

All The Shah's Men
An American Coup And the Roots of Middle East Terror
by Stephen Kinzer