HOW AMERICANS CAN SUPPORT DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST–WITHOUT WAR AND WITHOUT THE U.S.-MIDDLE EAST FREE TRADE AREA
by Rosa Schmidt Azadi
OpEdNews, PA
March 20 2007
Part I of II: Democratic Aspirations in Iran and the Middle East
I agree with one thing Condoleeza Rice said: we shouldn’t give up on
the democratic aspirations of the people of the Middle East!
I’m an American married to an Iranian American. We live several months
of each year in Tehran, Iran. Over the years I’ve come to realize
that the people in this region are very unhappy with oppressive
governments. Though few Americans know this, the Middle East has
a long history of people striving and even giving their lives for
freedom and democracy. To understand why the region is plagued with
dictators and monarchs, it is necessary to study history, including
the role of the I-word, imperialism.
SETTING AN EXAMPLE OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP. If we American citizens
don’t want to give up on the democratic aspirations of the people of
the Middle East, and we don’t believe the Bush-Cheney-Condi program
is really about democracy, is there anything we can do to help? Yes,
and it’s easier than you might think.
To enable Middle Eastern people to achieve democracy, we must get
our military out of their faces and work on improving democracy in
our own country. We need to quit pointing fingers (and missiles!) at
people in other countries and start looking in the mirror. Instead
of focusing on what’s right or wrong with the Middle East, we need
to concentrate on what’s right and wrong in our own country’s foreign
policy and in our own model of democracy.
For Iranians I’ve talked with over the years, more democracy would
mean freedom from fear of repression, freedom to speak their minds,
freedom to build a country that puts the good of its citizens first.
However, given the history of colonialism and dictatorship in the
Middle East, many people in the region are a little foggy about the
nuts and bolts of citizenship in a democracy. For example, a lot of
folks have picked up the habit of passively blaming their government
(or foreign governments) for their problems without being able to
envision what citizens might do about it. That’s why our example of
active citizenship could really make a difference.
People in the Middle East read books and articles, use the internet,
watch satellite TV, go to college, discuss politics. They may lack
experience with the practice of citizenship in a democracy, but they
don’t lack interest. Most Iranians I talk with, for example, think
Americans are incredibly lucky; they watch us and they envy us. In
my opinion, the least we can do is to practice the democracy we preach.
We need to demonstrate the difference between what we citizens mean
by democracy and the "unitary-presidency, corporations-running-wild"
model Bush and Cheney represent. Working out the bugs in the democratic
model could be our most generous gift to the world and to history.
FREE TRADE IS NOT THE SAME THING AS DEMOCRACY. Currently, a counterfeit
of "freedom and democracy" for the Middle East is being peddled by the
Bush administration: "liberal economic reform," that is, "free trade"
for the U.S. with the region and a set of laws allowing U.S. companies
to invest in and profit from local resources.
This is all laid out by Antonia Juhasz in The Bush
Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (see
ls_of_war/).
The proposed U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area (U.S.-MEFTA) is like
NAFTA by force, and with countries that are not even our neighbors.
Occupied Iraq is becoming a U.S.-MEFTA showcase. Twelve countries have
taken steps toward "free trade" with the U.S. since the invasion. Is
it a surprise that the two countries that have so far resisted
joining are Iran and Syria? For some Iranians, however, what "rich
and democratic" America is proposing for the region may look like
the only way forward. Nevertheless, I’ve yet to meet anyone who wants
America to "help" Iran like America "helped" Iraq.
Although American democracy is widely admired, the fact is that the US
and the big powers do not have a good history of supporting democracy
in the Middle East. Quite the contrary, some might argue.
Why are we, who would never accept a king on American soil, so quick to
become friends and allies with Middle Eastern kings? Don’t we recognize
the double standard? Do we think these throwbacks to a bygone era are
"good enough" for the "natives"?
Or is it more insidious? The fact is, democratic movements in
resource-rich areas have often been unpopular with the rich and
powerful foreign interests that have grown accustomed to cheap access
to those resources. We talk about democracy, but our government
has often given generous military and political support to kings
and dictators who keep their own citizens down and keep the climate
favorable for, to use the polite phrase, foreign investors.
WHAT DOES DEMOCRACY LOOK LIKE? The democracy movement in the U.S. is
already working toward goals that provide the best possible support
to the democracy movement in the Middle East:
1. Impeachment of members of the executive branch who
break the law, as explained by Abraham Lincoln when, as a
Congressman, he sought impeachment of President James Polk
for starting an illegal and imperialistic war with Mexico
( vid_sw_070216_what_lincoln_really_.htm)
2. Election reform (transparency, paper trails, campaign finance
reform, etc.)
3. Education about the history and peoples of the Middle East.
4. Withdrawal of American troops (and mercenaries, and military aid)
from Iraq and the Middle East and promotion of a nuclear free Middle
East.
5. A Truth and Reconciliation Process for the Middle East.
In Part II of this article, we’ll discuss in more detail these goals
and their potential effects on the Middle East.
A CENTURY OF STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY IN IRAN. In pursuance of the
third goal listed above, educating ourselves, let’s discuss Iran,
the resource-rich Middle Eastern country I know best. Numerous
Iranian friends have recited for me the history of how various kings
made shameful deals with foreigners, including giving up pieces of
territory, and, of course, lucrative economic concessions (tobacco,
minerals, oil). Opposition to these deals, going far back into history,
is also remembered and honored. That opposition, because it favored
Iranian people over exploiters and oppressors, belongs in the history
of democratic thought in Iran.
August 2006 was the centennial of the Constitutional Revolution
in Iran. Why don’t Americans know that 100 years ago Iran had a
constitution that limited the powers of its monarch, setting up a
system similar to European constitutional monarchies in which the
king "reigned" rather than "ruled"? One of the main issues for the
constitutionalists, who were also nationalists, was that the king gave
too many favors to foreign (czarist Russian and imperial British)
economic interests. However, the king and his foreign allies struck
back, and after years of warfare the pro-constitution forces eventually
lost. Among the martyrs of the Constitutional Revolution still honored
in Iran were Armenian leader Yeprem Khan, bandit-turned-revolutionary
Sattar Khan, and American schoolteacher Howard Baskerville. A teacher
at a Presbyterian mission school in Tabriz, Iran, young Baskerville
had no trouble recognizing the democratic side; he led a band of
nationalists to break the royal blockade starving the city and was
shot at age 24 on April 19, 1909.
In 1953, Kermit Roosevelt of the CIA arranged a coup d’etat that
toppled the elected government of popular Prime Minister Mohammad
Mossadegh, whose "crime" in the eyes of American oil companies had
been nationalizing Iran’s oil. The reinstalled "Shah" (king) ruled
with an iron fist and the full support of the American government.
The American government’s cover story was that the Shah was our
ally in the cold war against communist Russia. During the Shah’s
dictatorship, Iran’s wealth flowed to U.S. interests as Iran purchased
weaponry, manufactured products, education, technical expertise, even
the beginnings of a nuclear power industry. Thousands of democracy
seekers, some of them my friends and relatives, were jailed during
the Shah’s regime.
In 1979, in a popular uprising, Iranians finally overthrew the
dictatorship and set up a republic (flawed though it came to be). Did
the heirs of the American Revolution congratulate them and offer
support? Guess again. The U.S. administration scurried to find a way
to reverse the revolution. Assets were seized, boycotts and sanctions
were imposed, visas were restricted, and Iran was labeled an outlaw,
terrorist nation.
The hostage crisis served and still serves as a convenient excuse
for U.S. "punishment" of post-revolution Iran. Few acknowledged
the connection, however, between the 1953 coup and the "preemptive"
seizure of the American embassy in Tehran (dubbed locally the "den
of spies") by revolutionary students. The students believed that some
folks working out of the embassy were spies plotting to bring back the
same dictator in a rerun of the 1953 coup. Not that I’m justifying
the taking of hostages; it’s just that it’s important to look for
the reasons things happen.
After it was clear that the Iranian revolution could not be reversed,
the U.S. administration encouraged Iran’s neighbor, Iraq, to launch
an all-out assault on Iran. Although the "world community" barely
remembers Iraq’s chemical weapons attacks on the Iranian town of
Sardasht and on Iranian troops, thousands of women and men who survived
the attacks suffer progressively more each year from their injuries,
and children of survivors are still being born with disabilities. The
execution of Saddam Hussein before he could be tried for those crimes
left these unseen victims without closure.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND IRAN. What about today? We all know that
the U.S. administration’s policy is regime change in Iran. We are
urged to hate and fear Iran’s president and not to ask what the U.S.
administration has in mind for Iran after the regime change. Bush is
openly threatening Iran with aircraft carrier groups in the Persian
Gulf and with a contingency plan to attack Natanz and other "targets"
with bunker-busting "tactical" nuclear weapons. The Bush administration
has arranged for the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran
even though what Iran is doing, enriching uranium for a nuclear power
industry, is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Someone I know, who worked in Iran’s American-sponsored nuclear power
industry during the time of the Shah, believes that powerful U.S.
interests still want the U.S. to be the only country to sell nuclear
power plants to Iran. Clearly, the U.S. government has blocked
German and now Russian contractors from completing that project since
the Americans left at the time of the revolution. The boycotts and
interference with Iran’s completion of their nuclear power plant
started even before the current propaganda campaign (e.g., that Iran
supposedly wants to build nuclear bombs to wipe out Israel). The
economic motivation is just one person’s theory, but it fits with
the U.S. sale of nuclear technology to Libya, the increased U.S.
competition with Russia, and with the plan for U.S.-MEFTA, doesn’t it?
During the fall 2006 municipal elections in Iran, the Voice of America
urged Iranians not to vote. So much for democracy. Recently there
was a mysterious car-bombing in a southern province, accompanied by
crocodile tears in the U.S. media about the "threat" of sectarian
strife between Sunni and Shia in Iran, as if "divide and conquer"
hasn’t been U.S. (and Israeli) policy in the region all along. None
of this, of course, encourages the besieged Iranian government to
ease restrictions on citizens’ political freedoms.
MINDING OUR OWN BUSINESS: PEACE AND DEMOCRACY. In the Middle East, you
can’t tell the players without a scorecard. The good news is that we
Americans don’t really need that scorecard because it’s not our place
to make decisions about who’s who in the Middle East. If we citizens
just tend to the business of our own democracy here in the U.S.A, and
work for peace and disarmament, we will be helping like-minded people
in the Middle East region to also achieve their democratic goals.
NEXT TIME, in Part II: How five specific goals of the American
democracy movement can help the democracy movement in the Middle East.
Rosa Schmidt Azadi is a long-time peace activist, an anthropologist,
and a retired civil servant who’s also a wife, daughter, sister,
aunt, great-aunt, godmother, and the mother of two college students.
After walking out of the smoke of the 9-11 attacks in New York City and
returning to participate in the recovery effort, Rosa began working to
prevent further death and destruction in other countries at the hands
of the U.S. government. Participating in a peace vigil at the World
Trade Center site for more than three years gave her the privilege of
talking with thousands of people from all over the world about things
that matter most. Dr. Azadi has earned two advanced degrees and is
still learning. Currently, she’s splitting her time between Tehran,
Iran, and upstate New York.
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