Will the US Support Democracy in the Middle East?

As we see the whole wmd thing and the threat to the US that Sadam's Iraq posed be debunked we see a shift wholesale in reasons given to justify the war. Oil and desire of Israeli hawks and their US supporters can't be mentioned, so we are left with Sadam was a bad guy and the US has the white man's burden of helping those beknighted Arabs have democracy. So it is worthwhile to view the US histroy concerning democracy in the region.

Two interesting articles about the history of US relations with Iran and Syria are interesting. The story of how the US backed Sadam's ascension to power and backed him strongly till 1991 is more well known at this point.
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Iran:

Quotes:

In 1953, Iran had a democratic government. This is a very jarring thing for us to realize now because we are not used to seeing the word "Iran" and the word "democracy" in the same sentence. The fact is, however, that Iran was developing a long, rocky but democratic path in the early 1950s. For reasons which my book explains in great detail, the United States decided, in the summer of 1953, to go in and overthrow that democratic government. The result of that coup was that the Shah was placed back on his throne. He ruled for 25 years in an increasingly brutal and repressive fashion. His tyranny resulted in an explosion of revolution in 1979 the event that we call the Islamic revolution. That brought to power a group of fanatically anti-Western clerics who turned Iran into a center for anti-Americanism and, in particular, anti-American terrorism.

The Islamic regime in Iran also inspired religious fanatics in many other countries, including those who went on to form the Taliban in Afghanistan and give refuge to terrorists who went on to attack the United States. The anger against the United States that flooded out of Iran following the 1979 revolution has its roots in the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953. Therefore, I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that you can draw a line from the American sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran, through the Shah’s repressive regime, to the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the spread of militant religious fundamentalism that produced waves of anti-Western terrorism.
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Mossadegh was one of the very first leaders of what we then called the Third World to stand up to the existing imperial system. He was a huge figure. He was on the cover of Time magazine as their Man of the Year for 1951 because of the importance of what he was doing.

Iran, at that time, was the home of the largest corporation, the largest industrial economic enterprise, in the entire British Empire the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This oil company had been, for decades, reaping huge profits in Iran. But most of those profits went back to Britain. ... He nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This enraged the British, and they decided they would stage a coup against him.

Mossadegh got wind very quickly of what they were doing. And to end the British efforts, he decided to close the British Embassy. He sent all the British diplomats home, and along with them, all the secret agents who were plotting his overthrow. That left Britain with nobody on the ground to stage the coup. They came to President Truman and asked him to overthrow Mossadegh on their behalf. Truman threw them out of the office...

But then, at the end of 1952, President Eisenhower was elected. Even before he had been inaugurated, the British realized that everything was changing in Washington. They sent one of their senior agents to Washington to appeal to the incoming team to change the policy that Truman had set -- the policy of nonintervention. And this secret agent wrote in a memoir many years later that I quote in my book, that when he was flying over to Washington, he decided: "If I ask the Americans to overthrow Mossadegh in order to rescue a British oil company, they are not going to respond. This is not an argument that’s going to cut much mustard in Washington. I’ve got to have a different argument. "

And he came up with the argument: "I’m going to tell the Americans that Mossadegh is leading Iran towards Communism." He figured that this was going to be the argument that would win over the Dulles brothers and the rest of the Eisenhower team. He was right. In short order, the policy that Truman had set of nonintervention was reversed. ...

from buzzflash dot com

Stephen Kinzer, Author of "All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror"

Iran

SYRIA:
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In September 2000, 99 members of Syria's intelligentsia - writers, teachers, lawyers, engineers, film-makers - published a letter in the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat declaring a kind of war on the Government. Called Charter 99, it demanded an end to the 1963 state of emergency, the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles, freedom of the press and the right to hold public meetings. Two months later, Assad freed about six hundred political prisoners and closed Damascus's notorious Mezzeh prison, where political dissidents have been mistreated ever since it was built by the French. (The much harsher Tadmor prison in the eastern desert is still in use.) A month later, the Government issued a licence for al-Domari (the 'Lamplighter'), the country's only privately owned newspaper. Meanwhile, more civil society networks were forming, and more declarations were being issued. Although the government press in Syria ignored them, Lebanese newspapers reported their activities and published their statements. Some of their pamphlets circulated as samizdat in universities and schools. On 3 June this year, 287 'Syrian citizens' published an appeal to Bashar in the Lebanese daily as-Safir. The petition warned that Syria faced two enemies, Israel and the United States, and was too weak to defend itself against either. While making the usual demand for an end to martial law and the release of political prisoners, it also argued for something more fundamental. 'The authorities have no remedy for our ills,' the petition stated. 'There is a real cure, which is national reform.' Rather than appeal to America to deliver democracy in Syria, the signatories appealed directly to Bashar.

What is happening in Iraq and in Palestine is just the beginning of what America calls the new era. The characteristic of this era is the use of force by America and Israel. We should stop them from achieving their goals by repairing our society and making our country strong. The way to do this is to have a free people. The masses have been ignored and excluded from public life. You should let them come back and use their power to protect the country.

One of the signatories was Sadek al-Azm, a recently retired professor of philosophy. A participant in civil society groups that include both Marxists and Islamists, he spoke to me about the message of the American war in Iraq for Syria. 'In meetings, we asked ourselves: suppose this happened here? Who would go out and fight for the regime? No one said: "I would." The strength of civil society is to tell the regime to be legitimate. There is a difference between defending the regime and defending the country.' He said the Syrian dissidents who drew up the al-Hayat petition have studied the political process in Turkey. 'When Erdogan said: "I have to submit to Parliament," the Americans could not tell him to go to hell. What Arab leader could say that without the Americans laughing him off the stage?' Syrian democrats are not waiting for democracy as a care package from the American Armed Forces so much as wanting to seize it themselves as a weapon with which to confront the American empire.

Bashar Assad's regime is experimenting with a tactic his father wouldn't have bothered with: explaining itself to the population. Vice-President Khaddam justified government repression to an audience at Damascus University in 2001: 'We will not allow Syria to become another Algeria or Yugoslavia.' One of the country's Intelligence chiefs, Majid Suleiman, who is said to be close to Bashar, published an article in as-Safir on 15 May. In 'Syria and the American Threats', he declared that Syria would acquiesce in any arrangement the Palestinians reached with Israel. It was an important change. Until then, Syrian policy, laid down twenty years ago, had been to reject any arrangement that compromised Palestinian rights, even if the Palestinians accepted it. Suleiman insisted that the US still needed the Syrian presence in Lebanon. Only the Syrian Army could maintain surveillance of Hizbollah, the Palestinians and the Sunni Islamists. Without Syria, he wrote, violence might well break out in South Lebanon and provoke another Israeli invasion. His argument cast Syria in the role of guardian, rather than opponent, of American interests in Lebanon. (That was also Hafez's line with Kissinger and Baker.) As for Syria itself, his view was that those who were against the regime were a 'loyal opposition'. He believed the opposition in Iraq, by contrast, had been American agents. Surprisingly, Suleiman praised Riad Turk, a Communist leader who had been imprisoned by the regime for twenty years, for remaining loyal to the country. Turk, nonetheless, was awaiting trial for his criticisms of the Government. 'This was the first time ever,' Sadek al-Azm remarked, 'that they deigned to discuss problems openly without resorting to the language of bombast and attacking their enemies with the old slogans.'

Does the United States really want democracy for Syria and the rest of the Arab world? Should it? Since 1949, when the CIA staged the first of the Arab world's many military coups in Syria, America has helped to suppress democratic movements throughout the Middle East. I remember interviewing one of the founders of the Syrian Baath, a former Cabinet minister who had long since left the Party and gone into silent opposition. Dr Hafiz Jemalli was in his eighties when we met fifteen years ago in Damascus. 'If we are democratic,' he said, 'we will be unified.' He was thinking of pre-colonial Syria, which the British and French turned into the statelets of little Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel/Palestine. 'If we are unified, we will be a danger to Israel.' Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and the rest of the coterie who gave America its Iraq war are not interested in changing regimes only to see them become a danger to Israel. Will the US really allow Arab electorates to choose to resist Israel's colonisation of territories occupied in 1967, American control of their oil and the imposition of American military bases in their countries? Or will American rule in the Middle East founder on the contradiction of a 'democratisation' that ignores the people?

Charles Glass is the author of Tribes with Flags and Money for Old Rope, a collection of despatches on the Middle East

Syria

 

No substantive reply from the supporters of the Iraq War.

Just ridicule. "I refust to accept that the US isn't always evil". "I find it ridiculous that these contries were on the road to democracy." No need to comment on the specific cases where we supported coups against democracy. Just ignore the facts.

Finally a statement that the poster "doesn't feel Personally responsible for the structure of governments in far away countries. " The problem is that Pres Bush is saying that we are at war because we are promoting democracy and different government structures in a far away country.