Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Ajax

There is a fact that goes entirely unmentioned in David Ignatius' article about the Shah of Iran, the Islamic Revolution, and its pertinence to Pakistan today. Other than Jonathan Schwarz, who knows what it is?

Posted by IOZ at 10:40 AM | email »
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13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Shah didn't have nukes?

10:54 AM
Brian said...

Well...the CIA and the British were responsible for putting the Shah in power in 1957?

Funny that Mr. Ignatious did not mention that even once.

10:57 AM
Anonymous said...

Oh wait, he mentioned that, that's what I get for trying to guess before I finished reading the damn thing.

On second thought, I'll go with what Brian said.

11:00 AM
Anonymous said...

He mentions the US role in installing the Shah in 3 to last paragraph.

11:09 AM
justin said...

Does Pakistan have a nationalist/unionist movement that we are currently undermining?

Wait, that's probably a dumb question.

11:28 AM
jm said...

Well, there's the fact that in ousting Mossadegh in 1953, a democracy was replaced with a ruthless, authoritarian autocracy (I think I'm being triply redundant here).

Also, the relative ease and bloodlessness of the coup encouraged the CIA to employ the tactic numerous other times in subsequent years leading to, not surprisingly, much of the blowback we're presently dealing with.

11:28 AM
Ellen1910 said...

If there's one thing I hate, it's a jap test bright and early in the morning.

11:51 AM
Hurf said...

Iraq perhaps?

12:01 PM
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1:56 PM
Thomas Daulton said...

Ummmmm, that the U.S. has neither any right nor legal mandate to decide what type of government the Pakistanis ought to live under?

I'm not sure if I should get credit for that answer, because Ignatius does say that "the more we meddle, the more likely we are to get things wrong." But he seems to be speaking from the pragmatic point of view -- "the more likely we are to achieve a result we don't like". Not even asking, whether we have any moral or legal standing to influence these events.

If that is the answer, though, it's a silly quiz. Because it's a well-established fact that you cannot be a "respectable" Beltway pundit, nor publish in a mainstream newspaper, unless you take for granted the basic assumption that U.S. interests (covert or overt) automatically trump any laws or self-determination for foreign people. I got two words for you, "Monroe Doctrine", [but it was expanded world-wide after about 1918].

3:18 PM
Rojo said...

Given the title of your post, I'm gonna have to go with the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953.

Ignatius alludes to it--"The disaster of Iran happened partly because of American meddling -- in installing the shah in the first place and then enabling his autocratic rule."--but doesn't mention what existed before we installed the Shah and "enabled" his dictatorial regime (dictators allied with the US are always "autocrats," not "dictators") by building up the SAVAK.

3:30 PM
Anonymous said...

Hah, as rojo mentiond, your post title gives it away. The Americans had no need to pressure Iran to become a democracy, its parliament accomplished that feat on its own in 1951. Then the democracy-loving Americans launched operation Ajax to overthrow said democracy and reinstall the shaw, precisely because Iranian democracy was considered undesirable. Just as Pakistani democracy is today. Ignatius tries to draw an analogy between the two countries and our difficulty fostering democracy there, when the fact is that we have been doing our best to stamp it out for decades.

9:10 AM
Brian said...

heck, what about the difficulty in fostering democracy in the United States?

10:43 AM

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