Courtesy Of "World News"
Just like Ronald Reagan, who mistakenly said that one man's terrorist was another man's freedom fighter, President Barack Obama should have known better than to call last year's post-election rioters in Iran human rights activists. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran understood this important truth when he challenged President Obama's imperial statement. Rioters that damaged and burned buildings, and attacked those participating in religious services and processions, were hardly human rights activists. But then there are the official records of empires, like the United States, which have always tried to impose their own violent and distorted histories, and then there are the unofficial records of free and sovereign states, like Iran, that have resisted such imperial machinations.
Jimmy Carter should have realized this in 1979 when he declared the Shah's regime in Iran was an "island of stability." Actually, everyone in Iran was cursing the cold, the snow, the Shah, and, of course, Americanization. While strikes and nonviolent protests paralyzed the government, the U.S.-backed Shah barricaded himself in Niavaran Palace. Sitting behind surveillance equipment, protected by his overly militant and Americanized secret police, and surrounded by chandeliers, gold-plated telephones, and jewel-studded gold cigarette boxes, his regime was plunged into a state of despondency. When the Shah finally fled into the arms of his imperial masters, he issued one more contradictory and false command, "Do whatever you consider necessary...I hope people are not killed."
The people of Iran knew better, though, for they had already buried thousands of martyrs. And they still know better today, than to believe in an imaginary and bogus world that a crumbling empire is still attempting to create. Those who died in the U.S.-led Iraq-Iran War, the victims of Iran Flight 655, including the hundreds of women and children who were massacred, and those who died in the recent post-election riots, can attest to this reality. Self-centered, extremely secular, grandiose, and militant empires are incapable of apologizing. But they are capable of funding terrorist organizations and internal groups for the purpose of overthrowing governments that are different, such as Iran's theo-republic. Iran's deadly rioters should have heeded the warning: "Visit America, before it visits you!"
In stark contrast to the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Iran recounted millions of ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court, on the other hand, discounted millions of votes and appointed another dynastical member to be leader of the so called "free world." Its global military, backed by a government-corporate controlled media and propaganda machine, decides what is news and history. There is no room for Islamic democracies or Mecca and Medina. Ayatollah Khomeini, mullahs, and imams do not exist. Americanization and its extremely violent individualism easily replaces the concept of umma, or community. Dissent becomes decadence, liberty turns into irresponsibility, and violence is peace. Like Reagan's illegal wars in Central America, the message is clear: "Be a patriot, kill a priest!" Only in Iran's case, it's: "Be a patriot, kill an imam!" Imperial chaos reigns supreme.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to single-out Iran's leaders by calling them brutal. It funds groups to discredit Iran's vibrant republic, invades and occupies surrounding nations for the purpose of containing Iran, and arms terrorist cells to destabilize Iran's government. Besieged on all sides by Americanization, and despite U.S. sanctions and covert terrorist attacks, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, still traveled to New York and spoke at the United Nations. While calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear war, something the U.S. has refused to do, a U.S. congressional member called on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be arrested and tried for "incitement to genocide." The unofficial record, however, knows who is really responsible for genocides and massacres around the world. It also poses a threat, as it judges and condemns empires and pre-emptive wars.
This was no more evident than in 2003, and while the U.S. was invading and then brutally subjugating Afghanistan and Iraq, that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Iraqi people, "Let me assure you that you will be free...I've seen President Bush almost every day since the conflict began and I can assure you that he is, like the American people, committed to your freedom. Coalition forces will not stop until...all of the Iraqi people are liberated."(1) Days later, people in Basra were drinking their own urine, and boiling their own sewage water, so they could have some liquid in their bodies. They also started burying their dead. Is this really the kind of freedom Iran wants?
With regards to President Reagan, the U.S. Empire and its proxies, last year's post-election unrest, and this year's peaceful gatherings in Iran; whether it be thirty years or only one year later, a terrorist is still a terrorist and a rioter is still a rioter. And while imperial leaders have tried to claim otherwise-from Nicaragua to Iraq and Iran, and many other nations over time which have tried to either resist the U.S. Empire or have suffered occupations-again, the unofficial version of a sovereign and free state has triumphed over the official (but twisted and fatal) narrative of Empire. When he said, "The enemies wanted to divide the people...and to create a civil war, but the nation was alert," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei was right, at least for now.
Dallas Darling - darling@wn.com
(Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.)
(1) Smith, Michael K. Portraits of Empire, Unmasking Imperial Illusions from the American Century to the War on Terror. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2003. p. 203.
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