The long sad
history of U.S. support of anti-democratic regimes.
I don't totally buy the list. Yes, we know that U.S. corporations like
Standard Oil and ITT continued to do business with the Nazis during
the war, and that Henry Ford was a big fan of Adolf Hitler, and it is clear
that the U.S. allowed many Nazi war criminals to escape responsibilities for
their crimes so they could be used elsewhere for American interests, but I
think those complaints are more in the nature of the world being an unjust
place than a steaming indictment of U.S. foreign policy.
At a national, policy level, Roosevelt clearly opposed Hitler. That's
different from George Bush Sr. cozying up to Marcos, or Jimmy Carter
welcoming the Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment or Nixon
instigating the coup in Chile.
At least one BBC reporter on the ground in Egypt
insists that the Islamic Brotherhood is not a significant factor in the
protests -- they are just a canard offered by Mubarak consistently for 30
years to scare the Americans into blindly supporting his dictatorial regime.
So the 85 million people of Egypt-- no democracy for you! The U.S. has
several important interests in the Middle East-- your freedom and prosperity
don't figure into any of them.
No doubt the Obama Administration is giving
considerable thought to Iran these days. The U.S. backed the Shah's
despotic regime for 25 years. When protest rallies spun out of control
in 1979, the Carter Administration appears to have backed away from their
proxy. There was short struggle for a secular, constitutional
government, but when Ayatollah Khomeini was allowed to return, the radical
Islamacists succeeded in wresting control of the government away from the
moderates.
It could be argued that the lesson to be learned is that repression by
the Shah would have been better. But you could make an equally cogent
argument that the extremists were able to take control because long-term
unconditional support for the Shah had weakened the moderates.
It is possible that if Mubarak leaves, the Islamic brotherhood may
succeed in eventually seizing power. It wouldn't be the end of the
world. Iran today is really not the caricature that the U.S. likes to
present to the public, and Afghanistan and Iraq are not exactly sterling
models of the kind of alternative society the U.S. has in mind. But it
also may be the result of the U.S. supporting Mubarak for 30 years without
pressuring him to democratize gradually, to allow the establishment of a
moderate opposition with real power, and to cultivate the institutions of
society that moderate political power, like labour unions, universities, and
regional governments.
