I give the Washington Post‘s Anthony Shadid credit for good intentions in his article today (6/3/09)–he realizes that there’s some aspects of Mideast history that his readers ought to know about but probably don’t. But it seems like any attempt to tell the truth about the Middle East has to be accompanied by a bodyguard of obfuscation. As with this passage:
The blacks and whites of U.S. policy always seem to give way to a far greater ambiguity in the region. Lies by a generation of authoritarian Arab leaders to their people have given many a healthy skepticism of any public statement, whatever the source.
You think maybe skepticism of U.S. statements has maybe more to do with what U.S. leaders have said, rather than those lying Arabs? Just a possibility.
And that’s followed by this:
Footnotes of U.S. history have become seminal events in the Muslim world. A half-century on, few people are unaware of the U.S. role in 1953 in helping overthrow Mohammad Mossadegh, the nationalist prime minister in Iran.
That first statement would be a great deal more accurate if it were reversed: Seminal events in the Muslim world have become footnotes in U.S. history. If a foreign power overthrows your elected government and installs a dictator, it’s pretty hard for that not to be a seminal event.
I think a good (meaning godawful) visual aid showing the bastardization of US history was the image of Nancy Reagan arm in arm with The Light of Liberalism as he proclaimed her murderous hubby practically a candidate for Mount Rushmore.
(Not that the guys up there are Jesus on a stick by any means.)
Spoiled my breakfast, I tell ya whut.
But the article doesn’t mention the fact that Mossadegh was elected. Instead, by labeling him “nationalist” (presumably due to his chauvinistic insistence that Iranian oil should be used to benefit the Iranian people) the article implies that U.S., by overthrowing him, was simply spreading democracy.